# Installation from a boot floppy HOWTO

## phong

I had to install from a boot floppy (couldn't boot from the CD), though I thought I'd write up a HOWTO for others while I was at it.  It's in the documentation forum now:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=8690

I would appreciate any feedback - corrections, suggestions, success or failure stories from anyone that tries it, etc.

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## Naan Yaar

This

```

# bzip2 -d stage?-*.tar.bz2

# tar xvf stage?-*.tar

```

could be changed to:

```

# bzip2 -dc stage?-*.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -

```

A bit less typing and less space usage.

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## delta407

Aren't you supposed to extract with permissions? (Pass tar the "p" flag.)

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## phong

 *Naan Yaar wrote:*   

> This
> 
> could be changed to:
> 
> ```
> ...

 

That's a good idea (I can't edit it in the doc forum though, doh).  Thanks.

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## phong

 *delta407 wrote:*   

> Aren't you supposed to extract with permissions? (Pass tar the "p" flag.)

 

Well, the tar on tomsrtbt (which seems to be pax, which I'm not so familar with) doesn't have a "p" flag, but from my results and the man page on the disk, it appears that the default behavior is to restore permissions.

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## phong

 *delta407 wrote:*   

> Aren't you supposed to extract with permissions? (Pass tar the "p" flag.)

 

Well, the tar on tomsrtbt (which seems to be pax, which I'm not so familar with) doesn't have a "p" flag, but from my results and the man page on the disk, it appears that the default behavior is to restore permissions.

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## Naan Yaar

Excellent document, by the way.  I am a big fan of tomsrtbt - it is very useful in many ways.  So, it does support ext3 now?

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## phong

 *Naan Yaar wrote:*   

> Excellent document, by the way.  I am a big fan of tomsrtbt - it is very useful in many ways.  So, it does support ext3 now?

 

Yep, ReiserFS too.  Although, if it didn't, it wouldn't be a huge deal (converting ext2 to ext3 is apparently trivial).

I was quite impressed by tomsrtbt.  Even if you're not looking to install Gentoo from a floppy, it's a super useful thing to have around just for emergencies or to play with.  I was blown away with how well it automatically detects hardware and how much stuff is crammed on that disk.  It did a better job than the major distribution CDs I've tried.

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## lilian

Hello,

i a linux beginner, and so a Gentoo beginner.

Your procedure is a great help for me, many thank's.

When i enter the first command "cp /mnt/cdrom...."

i got the following message: "when copying multiple file, last argument must be a directory". So i did it file by file.

Do i got an old version of tomsbtbt ?

This is just a remark

Regards

Lilian

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## lilian

i did a miss, i tried to unpack all files   :Confused: 

sorry.

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## phong

I've just updated the HOWTO with some minor corrections and clarifications based on some of the feedback that I've gotten.  It's still viewable at https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=45856.

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## Zu`

Hi   :Very Happy: 

I just started bootstrapping (GCC3.2) on an old Pentium 75Mhz, thanks to your HOWTO  :Smile: 

I just hope it'll be done bootstrapping by next week or so.. Oh well, it's just for fun, I'll see what happens  :Smile: 

Your HOWTO is very good although I used Leka Rescue Floppy (LRF). It's very good and it had support for my NIC (ne2k-pci) right from the floppy. It doesn't support ext3, so I had to go for ext2. But after the install (if it ever gets there) I'll change it to ext3 with tune2fs. No problem there.

Well thanks again, and if you like I'll let you know how the install goes.

Cheers

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## wilbertnl

 *phong wrote:*   

> I had to install from a boot floppy (couldn't boot from the CD), though I thought I'd write up a HOWTO for others while I was at it.  It's in the documentation forum now:
> 
> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=8690
> 
> I would appreciate any feedback - corrections, suggestions, success or failure stories from anyone that tries it, etc.

 

First of all, I appreciate the effort you pay to create a Howto for Gentoo based on floppies. I browsed the bootable ISO from Gentoo (1.2) and I found in the /isolunix directory a kernel and a rescue.tgz. Would it be possible to create a boot flop from this kernel, which will look on the CD for the rescue.tgz and create the well known installation environment?

Sounds interesting to find out, hm? Maybe I spend some time on this.

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## wilbertnl

 *Naan Yaar wrote:*   

> Excellent document, by the way.  I am a big fan of tomsrtbt - it is very useful in many ways.  So, it does support ext3 now?

 

It does: use explicit mount -t ext3

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## trebinor

I followed the HOWTO directions to the letter, but something's wrong when I get to the part where I chroot into /mnt/gentoo.  I get '"/lib/ld-linux.so.2:  version 'GLIBC_PRIVATE' not found (required by /lib/i686/libc.so.6)."

What am I doing wrong?  I cannot continue from this point.

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## rac

hd_strait3's CD-mounting question has gone here.  Please don't post support requests to threads in Documentation, Tips, & Tricks.

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## Curious

 *phong wrote:*   

> I had to install from a boot floppy (couldn't boot from the CD)

 

 This is a great howto, but you might want to check out this little gem:

http://www.maxtux.co.uk/dist/debian/3.0/i386/cd1/install/sbm.bin

 ( Heh heh, yoink!  Or get it off any mounted Debian 3 CD 1 )

 Write it to a floppy using 'dd'.

 I found this doing a Debian install for a friend.  It's a boot disk image that allows you to boot CDRoms on machines that can't do it natively in bios.

-- Curious.

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## ghetto

 *Zu` wrote:*   

> Hi  
> 
> I just started bootstrapping (GCC3.2) on an old Pentium 75Mhz, thanks to your HOWTO 
> 
> Your HOWTO is very good although I used Leka Rescue Floppy (LRF). It's very good and it had support for my NIC (ne2k-pci) right from the floppy.

 

I tried to get tomsrtbr to work right for a day or two then saw your comment about LRF and im glad i did.. its awesome. Supported the network cards on all three of my PC's right from the floppy.

Im also in the process of bootstraping some legacy hardware, in my case a Pentium 100Mhz,  with 32mb ram...and without a cd-rom..

Im curious to know if your Pentium is finished bootstraping, how well does it run?

 :Cool: 

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