Slick Booting (Part 2)

[Doug]

(continued ...)

4) One other trick I do I to copy all of the
    slackware install files to a partition that
    never gets mounted, at the end of the disk.
    Why? This way I can install slackware from
    the LILO boot menu with *no* FDD or CDROM!
    Let's take the scenario where you want to
    change from reiserfs to ext3. For me that
    is simple. I select "BusyBox/Rescue" from
    the LILO menu. Then I type "setup" on the
    command line, which launched the slackware
    setup program. I choose my desired file
    system type and let it format. Then I
    select hard disk as the source of my
    install files. I always have them there
    at the end of the disk. I only keep a
    subset there: the a, ap, n, x, and xap.
    After those are installed I can always
    load the others ...

5) I always keep my DATA on a separate
    partition from slackware. This way if I
    do need to switch filesystems, reformat,
    or repartition, I just don't touch the
    data disk. This is how my partitions
    look right now:

    /dev/hda1   - Small DOS and UMSDOS partition
    /dev/hda2   - Linux swap
    /dev/hda3   - Windows 2000 (FAT32)
    /dev/hda5   - Slackware root filesystem
    /dev/hda6   - HOME (never changes)
    /dev/hda7   - small partition contains the
                  slackware install files

Although it takes a while to set things up this
way, it is very nice because I always have that
busybox/rescue in my boot menu, and I can also
reinstall slack any time, from the hard drive,
with no FDD and no CDROM. For me this is quite
important because I use small computers that
actually have no FDD or CDROM.

One other thing that is pretty wild ... I found
a way to create a windows install bundle. I
actually have things set up so that not only
can I reinstall slack from LILO, I can also
reinstall win2k, from LILO, with no cdrom and
no floppy. I will share how I did if people
are ineterested. Bascially windows has an
"unattended intall" method. I set it up so
it will install windows on next boot (from
hard drive), then I saved that to an .img
file from linux (using DD). Now, if I want
to reinstall windows ... all I do is DD that
.img file to /dev/hda1, reboot, and select
DOS/Windows from the lilo menu. It will
automatically start the windows install!
No FDD, no CDROM, no nothing, just that
one .img file.

So after lots of tweaking I can now reinstall
slackware or windows from hard drive, from
the lilo menu, with no FDD or CDROM. I think
this is pretty slick. It can come in VERY
handly while traveling, if something goes
wrong, say on a laptop or whatever ...

   -- Doug