So you bought a jallopy (Compaq Armada M300) from eBay a while ago, hoping to use it for a linux box and internet browsing. Ofcourse it came with no CD, and it can’t boot from a USB anything (key or CDROM), and ofcourse it doesn’t have a floppy…you’re lucky it even had a HD.

No problem…here are two ways you can do an install… the least painful:

1) Put the HD in another computer and use it to boot up a CD.

This isn’t for the faint of heart when it comes to opening things up. Most laptops (barring my beloved old macs) have easy ways to remove the old 2.5″ HD…you can use another more modern laptop with a CD to boot say Windows or a Linux distro like (my favorite) Xubuntu ( I really love them!). Ubuntu is finally a linux ready for prime time…bar none.
Anyhow, boot the CD and proceed with the install on that HD.

2) Put the HD in a USB enclosure.
You can either boot up from a CD and begin installing on the USB drive, or like me, use an iso of Ubuntu in vmware to boot the live disk,then do the install.

If it’s a fresh hard drive, then you’ll want to install GRUB or LILO. I used GRUB and make sure you pay attention to the steps so that you can force Ubuntu to install the master boot record on the USB drive. Twice I did the install and coulnd’t figure out why it wasn’t booting when I replaced the drive…it’s because I had not created an MBR. Dumb moment I know…

Once you replace the drive GRUB may complain with this error:
“Grub error 21: Selected disk does not exist”

it’s saying…hey, I know I”m supposed to boot into this OS, but I can’t find the drive(partition)! That’s because when you installed your disk had a designation…say hd1. Now you put it in another computer and it’s designation is say hd0… what is GRUB supposed to do?

Press e for edit, and you’ll see something like: root (hd1,0)
Add a line (command is at the botton) and type root (,0) means you hit the tab key for it to tell you what it did find. For me I changed to hd0 and then I hit ‘b’ and Ubuntu booted up.

Once you’re in Ubuntu open terminal so we can fix this permanently or it’ll keep giving you that error.

type: sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

find where it says “## End Default Options ##”

edit the line where it says root (___,_)
where the blank indecates what you found when you tabbed above.

Voila! brand new install. Feel free to ask questions or ask about your specific situation!

Technorati Tags: xubuntu, linux, install, no cd, no floppy, hard drive, old computer