Installing Xubuntu using Alpine boot floppy

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.alpielinux.org/alpine/v1.7/apks or use alpine 1.7.3.

Preparing boot media

Create a floppy from usb.flp
unpack the 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.alpielinux.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 pardition 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.