[clug] Ubuntu on IBM X series laptops

[Nathan Robertson]

Hello,

On 30/05/2006, at 9:53 PM, Arafangion wrote:

> Edward Lang wrote:
>
>> Anyone in Canberra experienced in putting Ubuntu on X series laptops,
>> sans
>> CD/DVD drive? I'm in the weak position of also having WinXP on my
>> desktop at
>> the moment so I can't kickstart an install that way, unless the  
>> LiveCD
>> can
>> host network installs...
>
> I wonder if one could purchase one of those large USB keys, and put  
> the
> LiveCD ISO onto them, and boot that?

A friend of mine has one of these laptops. We couldn't get the USB  
key booting, and we ended up setting up a TFTP and bootp servers on  
another machine, and netbooting it, then doing a network install. I  
think we did this with Fedora Core 3 or 4 (can't remember), but it  
worked fine.

I assume Ubuntu supports netbooting and network installing.

A fair while ago I used a tftp server on Windows that worked fairly  
well - I'm pretty sure it was http://www.solarwinds.net/Tools/ 
Free_tools/TFTP_Server/

As for a DHCP server, it might be best to try to run ISC DHCP out of  
CygWin. http://www.angelfire.com/linux/skip/dhcp/ seems promising.

Failing that, I'd grab VMWare player (free as in zero cost) for  
windows from vmware.com, download a Linux image from them and install  
a TFTP and DHCP/BOOTP server on that and do it the easy way.

Good luck.

Regards,
Nathan.