chroot installation on live system + podcast of Jeff Waugh

[David Hart]

On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 10:08:49AM -0800, Chris Dawson wrote:
> Is it possible to install Ubuntu onto a live running system.  I know
> that Gentoo permits something like this
> (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml, #6: Installing Gentoo
> from an existing Linux distribution).  Can the same be done with
> Ubuntu?   I have an old SuSE 6.3 system that I would like to upgrade. 
> It does not have a floppy drive, nor does it have a CD ROM, but I do
> have root access!  Can I install Ubuntu on this?  I've searched around
> but haven't found much in the way of something like this.  Any
> suggestions?

Check out the installation from hard disk.

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/breezy/main/installer-i386/current/doc/manual/en/ch04s04.html

I've done it a few times like this.  You put a kernel and initrd on your
hard disk and use the current boot loader to boot them.  I've only used
grub to do this (it's quite convenient as you can edit the line
manually at boot time) but it should work with lilo as well (if you edit
lilo.conf (have I got that right) before hand).

If you want a really scary installation, I know of someone who,
from a Debian system, (this is on a remote colocated server over
ssh), installed Gentoo under a chroot, and configured it.  Then he
rsyncd the chroot directory to / and rebooted.  Amazingly, it worked.
I'd've never of thought of it!

If you were feeling brave/reckless you could use debootstrap to acheive
the same effect.
 
-- 
David Hart <ubuntu at tonix.org>