How to install linux with out CDs

I have an ibm thinkpad, with no CD drive. How would I go about installing Linux on it?

If you have the money, you could buy an external CDROM. Does the Thinkpad have a USB port on it?

Yea... I ordered one off ebay, but it still hasn't arrived, and I was just hoping there was some way to install without a cd. I have an external hard drive and another computer (with a cd drive) could I possibly install it on a partition of the external drive, and then move it to my laptops internal HDD? But I don't know if that would be remotely possible given the fact that my main computer is a PPC mac, so I wouldn't be able to install an x86 OS. Hmm.... Normally I'd just wait for the CD drive to come in, but someone is interested in buying the computer, and I'm going out of town in a few days. (Windows crashed on it... it had a lot of viruses from it's previous owner) so I need to get a new OS on it, if I want to sell it before going on a 2 and a half week long vacation. Anyways, I'm guessing there isn't much I can do, but if someone happens to know anything I'd greatly appreciate some advice.

If you were in such a rush, why did you order one from ebay? You could have been done already. I would never buy anything electrical from ebay.

I wasn't in a hurry when I ordered it... I didn't know I was going to sell it. I'm probabably just gonna end up buying a cd drive from walmart.

That's a good idea.

Hi

You can install linux without cdrom.
But you bios would support pxe boot installation then you can do without media you can do installation.




Vijayan

Here is probably the quickest and best answer.. It should become obvious that you can install linux to the hdd from a bootable usb stick.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

::note:: I don't have anything modern enough to boot from usb. I haven't done this.

Well I just got my CD drive in the mail... and I tried to boot ubuntu from it, but my computer does not detect the cd drive... any advice?

If the drive isn't seen in my computer, then make sure that USB is enabled in the BIOS and that USB drivers are installed. If it's seen and it just won't boot from the drive, then change the boot sequence in the BIOS.

Go BOIS setup then use auto detective options. Then check while booting after POST process the CDROM is enabled.
Do have any other OS installed in ur machine?

There are a lot of assumptions here.. Does this thinkpad have the capability to boot from usb?

I've looked and I don't think that it does... it's a model R31... I've gotten MuLinux to boot from floppy, but I want to get a more permanent distro on there. Like Ubuntu. I don't necessarily need to boot from my external cd drive... I just need to find a way to install something.

If it boots from a floppy then everything should be good.. You can use that to get into your external drive.

Usually external usb drives can be found as /dev/sda so you should be able to mount them in the normal way (mount -t <whatever file system> /dev/sda /cdrom0)and then access the install routine you need. this will take some experimentation. I would be very tempted to try a frugal install of puppy or dsl as a start. DSL have boot floppys for download which will launch an external cd-rom. I used one to install slackware 10 on a 486 (ide drive, but same issue, no cd drivers in the bios) there was an option on the boot menu for drive /media location.

A side note.. I don't think linux will make this machine any more marketable. Most people don't have a clue how to use it.

try network installation via http or FTP
for exemple with fedora ( freebsd also ) in the boot u can choose to install via http (ftp ) then give URL of the server ...
need a hight speed connexion