HOW TO: Installation to Hard Drive

[mukarram ()]

I have been wanting to install PelicanHPC to my hard drive rather than boot from CD, so here is a guide. Please note that this just does the same thing as the CD does when running PelicanHPC (such as, you cannot save stuff unless you mount a file system, etc), so far, although I am working on better things and will post updates as I go along. Just figuring this out took me a long time

1. Get the PelicanHPC image from its website, or if its already burnt on a CD, get it out of there with your favorite CD burning program.

2. Create a partition on your computer using GParted - I did it by getting a GParted Live CD, booting my computer from it, and resizing an existing partition, and then formatted the new partition as EXT3

3. Next, go back to your regular old linux distribution, and download "Universal Netboot Installer" - http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

4. Double click the downloaded file, it may ask you for root password, and then: Select the "Diskimage" option, and browse or enter the location of your PelicanHPC iso as you created in step 1, and also, check the "Show all drives" box, and then select the partition you created in step 2 (be very careful here). I have attached a screenshot at the end.

5. Press OK and wait for it to finish

6. Now, open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst for editing as root

7. Append this at the end (OF COURSE, DON'T FORGET TO CHANGE THE SDA11 TO WHATEVER YOUR PARTITION, AS WELL AS THE (HD0,10) TO WHATEVER YOUR PARTITION IS WHERE YOU DID ALL THE PREVIOUS STEPS OF INSTALLATION):
title pelican (on /dev/sda11)
root (hd0,10)
kernel (hd0,10)/ubnkern boot=live ramdisk_size=200000 hostname=pelican union=aufs root=/dev/sda11
initrd (hd0,10)/ubninit
savedefault
boot

8. Done, now reboot, and select "pelican" from the boot menu.

Please note that since I am quite new to linux, I figured this out after lots of trials and errors, formatting one of my computers hard drive, breaking another's grub, and other hurdles, so if anyone can look over this technique and verify it, I'll be glad. This works well for me now.

Boring legal blurb : DISCLAIMER: Do this at your own risk! I have tried many arcane how-to guides for cool stuff, but ended up formatting my data when trying a few of them, and of course, blamed myself (unlike those people who hold the authors responsible for their inexperience, when its just plain their fault), and agreeably learnt a lot along the way. So just have fun, and refer any questions or comments to me as usual.

Good luck

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mukarram Ahmad
Mukarram Ahmad's Homepage
Email me at: [e-mail]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[mukarram]

Here is the screenshot i was talking about:

[Michael Creel]

That's pretty neat. This kind of work might open up some interesting possibilities. I'll be paying attention to see what you do with this.

[Shagbag]

Thanks very much for this guide.  It was simple to follow and it worked for me save for the following:

1.  For a USB stick/pendrive install, the USB stick must be formated W95 FAT32.  I believe it's because the bootloader used is Peter Anvin's syslinux which only works on FAT32 file systems.

Once I discovered the above and formated my USB stick as W95 FAT32, I had no problems installing PelicanHPC to my USB stick using unetbootin.

[Bernhard Helmes]

A beautifull day,

i tried to put PelicanHPC on an usb-stick.
Thanks for the instructions. The procedure goes fine.
I tried to boot from the usb-stick with several computers. I succeded in booting from a computer without sata-disk.
But when i tried to boot from a computer with sata-harddisk, i got an error. Can't find the bootimage :-(
I think on the bootmaster of the usb-stick is written that the bootimage is found under sda1, but this is always used for the satadisk.
If i am right, you can only use the usb stick for a computer without satadisk.
Actually i would prefer a general solution. Any ideas ?

Nice greetings from www.beablue.de
Bernhard

[kadeck]

Hi Mukaram,

Thanks for the how-to. I am so happy to find your post. I have not tried yet (will try during the weekend), but it looks a neat method. I wonder how did your figure out the grub configuration (sorry I am new to linux).

cheers
-kadeck-

[Misiek]

OK, It is working fine but... Pelican is still running from ramdisk. Is there posibility to make standard instalation? If the instalation is standard, tehre is posibility to install software, and shutdown machine without lossing everything...

I know that this is not necessary for computation etc. but it is more... comfortable?

I will test OSCAR soon, but it is more heavier (sub)system than Pelican - but it is running inside Debian or Fedora or SuSe... so he is comfortable in long-term use.

Best regards,