Installing Xubuntu using Alpine boot floppy

This material is retained only for historical reasons ... Since 1.7.7, Alpine does not have floppy boot images, the Linux kernel versions 2.6.22 is too large to make a workable system fit on a floppy disk. Other distros (or DOS operating systems with LOADLIN), or other boot media, are more appropriate for this task in modern times URLs on this page may no longer function.

Some computers does not boot on cdrom or USB. Then you can use Alpine boot floppy together with an USB with alpine to install Ubuntu. This document describes how.

You will need atleast version 1.0 of debootstrap to get feisty installed. Therefore, set APK_PATH to point at http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/apks or use alpine 1.7.3.

Preparing boot media

• Create a floppy from http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/bootimages/usb.flp
• unpack the http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/usbdrive/alpine-1.7.2-i386.tar.gz usb image to an usb drive.

wget -q -O - http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/usbdrive/alpine-1.7.2-i386.tar.gz | tar -zxv -C /media/usb

• boot the floppy with usb inserted. You have alpine running.

Set up environment

• Log in as root (no password required)
• setup networking with:

setup-alpine

• Unless you run alpine-1.7.3 or newer, set APK_PATH to network. This is to get newest version of debootstrap:

export APK_PATH=http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/apks

• Set up http proxy if needed:

export http_proxy=http://proxy:8080

Prepare the harddisk

• Load driver for IDE disks if you run IDE. If you have SATA or SCSI disk you will not need to do this.

modprobe ide-disk

• use fdisk to create the desired paritions

fdisk /dev/hda

Here I will use this simple layout:

/dev/hda1	swap	128MB
/dev/hda2	ext3/

Delete all partition(s) using 'd' in fdisk. Create the swap partition as above with:

n       (New partition)
p       (primary partition)
1       (partition number)
<enter> (first cylinder = default)
+128M   (size of partition)
t       (set type)
82      (partition type 82 hex for swap)

Create / partition

n       (new partition)
p       (primary partition)
2       (partition number 2)
<enter> (default first cylineder)
<enter> (use rest of disk)
w       (write and quit. Warning! this will destroy all your current data on your disk!)

• Create and enable swap:

mkswap /dev/hda1
swapon /dev/hda1

• Create filesystem on disk (format)

apk_add e2fsprogs
mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda2

• mount the root partition

mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /mnt

Running debootstrap

• Allow debootstrap to run mount inside chroot

for i in /proc/sys/kernel/grsecurity/chroot* ; do echo 0 > $i ; done

• install and run debootstrap utility

apk_add debootstrap
debootstrap --arch i386 feisty /mnt

From here you can chroot to your mount point, edit your /etc/apt/sources.list, install a kernel and reboot.