From a Parallel Port ZIP Drive

I couldn't check this method by myself, because I don't have such a device. Please check the appropriate Install-From-Zip-mini-HOWTO. Also I don't know how much these installation methods are supported by the Linux distributions or the micro Linuxes. I suppose you have to fiddle around a bit to get this working.

From Jeremy Impson <jdimpson@acm.org>: I installed Red Hat 6.1 on a Libretto 50CT. It only has a PCMCIA floppy drive. (Which BTW isn't well supported by the default PCMCIA floppy driver. I needed to download a patch from some Linux on Libretto web site.)

Linux will boot off the PCMCIA floppy drive, however. It just can't go back to the floppy after loading the kernel. My Libretto (the 50CT) only has one PCMCIA slot (later models had two slots, or I could have gotten the enhanced port replicator, which gave it another slot). So I couldn't boot off a floppy and then mount a remote filesystem.

So I downloaded ZipSlack (Slackware designed for running from a ZIP disk) and used another PC to load it onto a ZIP disk. I attached the ZIP drive to the Libretto (via the parallel port on the regular port replicator that comes with it) and booted from the Slackware boot disk in the PCMCIA floppy drive. When booted, I removed the floppy drive and inserted and configured a network PCMCIA card. At this point he kernel is in memory and it is using the filesystem on the ZIP disk.

I partitioned and formatted the Libretto's harddrive and then ftp'd Red Hat 6.1 installation source onto one of the new partitions (the partition that would become /home when everything gets done). This is the key: if you don't have enough disk space to have the installation files plus enough to actually install the OS on to, this method won't work.

I shut down the ZipSlack kernel and rebooted it using a RedHat install disk in the floppy drive. I pointed it at the RH6.1 installation media already on the harddrive and started the install.