What?

OK. Here's my situation. I have a laptop with a broken CDROM Drive, no floppy and a BIOS which does not support bootable USB. The only way to install was to load the HD with the installer and run from there. So:

1. Remove the HD load it into a USB HD caddy and mount it on a working system (at this stage it can be either Windows or Linux depending on what Disk Partitioning tools you have - you'll need one that supports EXT3)


2. Repartition the drive with a big EXT3 partition, a small (2Gb) EXT3 partition and a swap partition (2Gb)


3. Download or create from an existing CD, an ISO for your distribution - I wanted Ubuntu Desktop 8.10 Intrepid Ibex


4. Download, install and run UNetBootin


5. Point UNetBootin to your small EXT3 partition and your ISO and let it do it's thing.


6. Unmount the drive, install it back to the new machine and boot it


7. The UNetbootin menu appears, select "Default" and let it boot. For my Distro, it booted into Ubunto Desktop Live mounted at /cdrom which gives you an "Install" icon on the Desktop.


8. This is the key bit to allow the installer to work, start a Terminal window and run

   sudo umount -l -r -f /dev/sda2

   (where sda2 was the device mounted as cdrom)


9. Click "install" on the Desktop and run through the prompts. If you didn't umount the device at /cdrom, the partition manager will be disabled so cancel the install and unmount it.


10. When prompted reboot


11. The newly installed Distro should now start via Grub. On mine, it didn't. Grub didn't have a menu item for my OS. To fix this, I visited http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p15.htm#Second_method_configfile_boot which helped me use the Grub CLI to finally boot then fix the grub installation. One problem was a missing vmlinuz symlink. Rather than trying to fix that, I used the full path to the original file for the Distro's kernel version (Ubuntu 8.10 installs /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic on my system). Once you got grub to boot manually, edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and enable updatedefaultentry. Save & exit then run sudo update-grub. Thant should sort you out.

On 11 January, the government launched the Home Access Grant scheme to provide grants to low income families to buy computer and/or internet packages. Families with children in state-maintained schools in England, in school years three to nine, who are entitled to free school meals or are in receipt of one of a number of qualifying benefits, will be able to apply for the grant. Carers and foster parents for 'looked after children' in school years one to thirteen are also likely to be eligible to apply for the grant. Families can call the Home Access Grant helpline on 0333 200 1004 to get an application form.

More information about the scheme is available on the Home Access website at www.homeaccess.org.uk