0710b2 is distributed as a DVD ISO file, but it's too big (~5.5GB) to burn on a single-layer (4.7GB) DVD. So I'm trying to install from the ISO file, as some have reported in the forums doing successfully. But so far it's not working.
I'm starting from instructions for
installing Gentoo from a USB Flash drive. The process is basically to create a bootable HD partition containing the DVD files, then booting into that. But the original (0704) LMCE bootable partition continues to boot, not the new 0710 partition.
Here's my steps. If someone can correct them, I'd appreciate it.
# Partition the LMCE HD (>6GB).
# If there's a usable existing partition, use it (empty it first).
# If a new partition is necessary, create one from unpartitioned space if there's enough. If an existing partition has enough empty space, shrink it with parted first. A safe and convenient method is to use the
GParted liveCD, which is especially helpful when the existing partitions don't allow you to unmount a target to be resized while still accessing files needed on it (eg. a single Linux partition).
# Since the bootloader used is syslinux, which requires FAT, and the partition is >4GB, the filesystem should be FAT32 (mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/<partition>) .
# Mark the new partition "active" (bootable), and mark the old boot partition unbootable (eg with g/parted or with fdisk).
# Install an MBR.
# LMCE's installed version of syslinux doesn't include the mbr file, but the Ubuntu 0710 (Gutsy) version does. So you have to download
the syslinux package, use ar to extract its data.tar.gz file, then use tar to extract its usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin file.
# Copy the mbr to the partition (dd if=/usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin of=/dev/<partition>) .
# Mount the DVD ISO.
# mkdir -p /mnt/dvd
# mount -o loop,ro -t iso9660 kubuntu-linuxmce-0710-i386-beta-2.iso /mnt/dvd
# Mount the HD partition.
# mkdir -p /mnt/target
# mount -t vfat /dev/<partition> /mnt/target
# Copy the DVD files to the HD partition.
# cp -r /mnt/dvd/* /mnt/target/
# mv /mnt/target/isolinux/* /mnt/target/
# mv /mnt/target/isolinux.cfg /mnt/target/syslinux.cfg
# rm -rf /mnt/target/isolinux*
# Unmount the ISO and partition.
# umount /mnt/dvd; umount /mnt/target
# Install the bootloader.
# syslinux /dev/<partition>
That all seems to make sense. I ran it against /dev/sda3 (a newly created 6.4GB partition). But when I do it, the system just boots into LMCE 0704 (from sda1). Which is a mystery, because fdisk shows the drive's partition table flags sda3 as bootable, but not sda1.
Also, when 0710 comes up, there's some networking problems. (ifconfig -a) shows eth0 configured as the outside LAN segment, but the old eth1 is gone, and eth2 exists but is not up. And the DHCPd fails to start, running (/etc/init.d/dhcpd3-server) fails with a "Fail" message (but no details).
What's wrong with this picture?
