Jetchisel's CyberCabin: Upgrade without DVD drive

For one reason or another you do not have a working DVD drive but you have the DVD.iso at hand and your BIOS does not support booting from external devices such as usb then this might save you some pain :

The idea is 2 computer's that can communicate at each other, the first is the source or repository which will host the .iso file and the second is your SuSE box that you want to upgrade You need to have a working network at least between 2 computers. This howto will show you how to do it between 2 openSuSE box with in your lan. The SuSE box that is going to be your installation source will use the http protocol.

Repository side:

       1. Install lamp server on the source machine.

zypper in -t pattern lamp_server

        2. Start apache2 and optionally the service.

          rcapache2 restart && chkconfig apache2 on

         3. Congifure firewall.

Edit the file /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2/ and add apache2.

        FW_CONFIGURATIONS_EXT="apache2"

          After that restart your firewall ass root:

rcSuSEfirewall2 restart


           The gui way using yast2

Allowed Services

Service to Allow

Add HTTP Server

         This should open the port for your web server. lamp_server should
         work-out-of-the-box upon the default installation you do not need
       to edit any files or configure anything.

   Check it with your browser type in http://localhost

Check your user's directory: http://localhost/~username

         Where localhost from the local machine should work or replace it with an ip address
       you can change the user name with yours. DO NOT omit the "~" (tilde)in front of
         the user name eg http://192.168.0.119/~jetchisel

4. mount the .iso to your ~/public_html directory as root and since it
is an iso file you need to add the "-o loop" option.

         Replace the path with yours and the user name with your user name.
         the public_html is under your home directory. After mounting the iso file
         again check it with your browser: http://localhost/~username

         That's it were done with the server configuration.

         Client side:

        1. Download the script from this site.
            http://www.suse.de/~lnussel/setupgrubfornfsinstall.html
            Make it executable by: chmod +x setupgrubfornfsinstall
            Run the scrip as root t by : ./setupgrubfornfsinstall


   Installation should start immediately

Specify the url manually.

         Fill in the repo starting with the "http" protocol. This repo is from the
         address of your server. Replace the localhost with an ip or hostname.
192.168.0.119/~jetchisel

It should pull and configure the needed files. It will create an entry inside your menu.lst

After that reboot and you should see the a new entry during grub prompt
ie. installation 192.168.0.119/~jetchisel

Select the entry and boot from it.

:End of this howto:

        In this next HOWTO you can install directly from the internet via openSUSE.org.
        Assuming you dont have the DVD.iso but you have a fast enough internet bandwith.
        You only need to do this on the SuSE box that you want to upgrade.

     1. Download the script form this site.
http://www.suse.de/~lnussel/setupgrubfornfsinstall.html

            Make it executable by: chmod +x setupgrubfornfsinstall
            Run the scrip as root t by : ./setupgrubfornfsinstall

Installation should start immediately.