Q4OS Forum

kreemoweet

Member

Registered: 2019-06-26

Posts: 4

Run installer from HDD?

I've been attempting to boot the q4os-3.7-i386-install.r1.iso from hard disk. Debian documentation suggests that Debian installer
ISO images can be run by putting them in the same root directory as the special Debian "hd-media" vmlinuz and initrd files, and using
Grub2 to boot those. Does this apply to the q4os installer images also? My machine's BIOS does not boot via USB, and my optical drive
is broken. It's IDE/PATA-connected, and those are very difficult to find nowadays.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,992

Re: Run installer from HDD?

I haven't tried this in years, and I had quite a torrid time getting it to work back then (an old 32 bit machine with no USB or CdRom) although I don't know if this could be easier now, but what I would say is if you are just wanting to try out Q4OS it might be easier to use it in a virtual machine, VirtualBox is probably the easiest to use although I have recently been using QEMU/KVM and getting a better experience but with a bigger learning curve.

kreemoweet

Member

Registered: 2019-06-26

Posts: 4

Re: Run installer from HDD?

Well, I gave it a shot, and the answer seems to be NO. It brought up the Debian Installer, but it would not recognize my old RealTek ethernet card, and
it did not have a suitable driver to offer. This is something that has never happened before with any other OS or installer, including several versions of
the Debian Installer. With some difficulty, I got it to proceed anyway, and all I got installed was the Debian base system. All the
Q4OS stuff in the iso was apparently ignored. I am attempting to doctor up this install from another Linux system so I can get Centaurus 3.7 installed. The
ethernet card is recognized in the base system, and the necessary r8169 module seems to be present in the kernel. I figure if I can get the local-apt-repository
package installed, I can then extract and install all the packages included in the Q4OS install ISO, and see where that gets me. But, the /etc/apt/sources.list
file needs to be populated, and the necessary apt configuration made to use those sources properly. I have been unable to discover what the deb entries
for Centaurus 3.7 are supposed to be, or what apt configuration file editing needs to be done. If anyone here can provide that info, I would be most grateful.

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,501

Website

Re: Run installer from HDD?

You could also give a try the Q4OS installer, please see https://www.q4os.org/dqa012.html . Although it's designed to run on ARM devices, it should install Q4OS on another architectures as well. Just install a bare Debian, and then use the installer to get Q4OS installed.

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,501

Website

Re: Run installer from HDD?

In addition, here you are the set of Centaurus repositories:

deb http://q4os.org/q4repo q4os-3-0-cn main
deb http://q4os.org/qtderepo buster main
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ buster/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main contrib non-free

kreemoweet

Member

Registered: 2019-06-26

Posts: 4

Re: Run installer from HDD?

Yes, the Q4OS install script worked well, thank you. I had to manually install a couple of packages to get my ethernet connection working, and a
couple more to satisfy the install script. I wish all Linux distributions had such a script available!