InstallUbuntuWithoutRemoveableMedia

This page is an adaptation of Marc Herbert's http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linstall.html

This page will guide you through obtaining the files necessary to boot the Ubuntu installation from a FAT or NTFS partition, thus allowing you to install Ubuntu without any sort of removeable media. This guide assumes that you are running Windows NT, 2000, XP, or any other NT-based Windows. You can also perform a similar procedure on Windows 9x, but you will either need to use LOADLIN or GRUB4DOS. Marc Herbert's site also desribes the LOADLIN procedure, but I have never done it myself.

* Create a directory called boot in the root directory of the first primary partition of your hard drive (usually drive c:\, which it will be referred to as from now on).

* Download linux and initrd.gz from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hoary/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/ubuntu-installer/i386/ and save them to boot.

* Download Grub For Dos from http://grub.linuxeden.com/wakka.php?wakka=UploadFile/files.xml&action=download&file=grub_for_dos-0.4.0.tar.gz

* Extract grldr to c:\grldr.

* Append c:\grldr="Install Ubuntu" to c:\boot.ini.

* Create a new folder in c:\boot\ called grub, and in grub create a new text file called menu.lst.

• Note: menu.lst may need to just be in c:\boot; can someone check and update this page?

* Open menu.lst in a text editor and paste the following text in the file:{{{ title Install Ubuntu kernel (hd0,0)/boot/linux vga=normal ramdisk_size=14972 root=/dev/rd/0 rw -- initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.gz }}}

* Save menu.lst, reboot, and select "Install Ubuntu" twice. You now have a network installation of Ubuntu going.

This procedure should be possible using a disk image, but it may be necessary to use a different kernel and pass some special argument in menu.lst to tell it to boot from the CD image (I've done it using Knoppix).

Would someone please try this and verify that it works? I did this myself a couple months ago, and it would be good to get other people's experiences.

CategoryDocumentation