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Fedora Core Floppy Installer

Overview

This allows bootstrapping the Fedora Core install from only floppy diskettes, without booting from a CD or temporarily copying stuff to your hard drive. It uses FreeDOS to create a RAM drive, unzips the relevant Fedora install files from the FC boot.iso (isolinux), then uses LOADLIN to boot into the FC installer. From there, you can choose from a variety of installation methods (NFS, FTP, HTTP, etc.).

Current floppy disk sets support installs of Fedora Core 3, 4 and 5.

Quick Start

  • Use rawrite.exe (Windows) or dd to create five floppies from the supplied image files. Do a Google on this if you don't know what I'm talking about.
  • Boot into the first floppy. 
  • Follow the instructions, inserting the remaining floppies as necessary.

The entire process is pretty crude and temperamental. There is plenty of room for improvement here (kernel parameters, text-mode installs, etc.)

Images

Fedora Core 5

I based off of the FC4 installer and tested it personally.

Here is a .tar.bz2 of the six images you'll need for this. Label your floppies FC5 Floppy Install 1, 2, etc.:

fc5fd.tar.bz2

MD5SUM: 1d87bd8d0273e9af18c1e011f5f780dd

Fedora Core 4

Many thanks to Dale Smith for updating the FC3 installer for FC4. I have neither created nor tested these images.

Here is a .tar.bz2 of the six images you'll need for this. Label your floppies FC4 Floppy Install 1, 2, etc.:

fc4fd.tar.bz2

MD5SUM: 8d785da6b384946df40e5222a551be7a

Fedora Core 3

Here is a .tar.bz2 of the five images you'll need for this. Label your floppies FC3 Floppy Install 1, 2, etc.:

fc3fd.tar.bz2

MD5SUM: d45186b923d115eef3dffccad82241a0

Credits

Program Location
Fedora Core http://fedoraproject.org/
images/isolinux/boot.iso (initrd.img, vmlinuz)
FreeDos (Beta 9, SR1) http://www.freedos.org/
Info-Zip (DOS version) http://www.info-zip.org/UnZip.html
loadlin http://suse.mirrors.tds.net/pub/projects/loadlin/loadlin-1.6/update-1.6c/
tdsk http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/ramdisk/
TurboDAT http://www.ultrasmart.org/UsefulDOSsoftware.html

Comments / Feedback

You can send comments and feedback to gnustuff at thisiscool period com. I probably won't have time to answer support questions, though you can try. Feel free to take this away from me and improve it.

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Legal and Disclaimer

Usage of this program indicates your acceptance of the following license conditions. If you do not agree with these terms, do not use the program.

This program comes with no warranties, either express or implied. In no event shall I be liable from any damages resulting from the use of this software.

See license.txt on the first floppy for further details.

Enjoy!