Not too many years ago I only used flopp ... / 2009-08-30

Not too many years ago I only used floppies for starting a system installation and in those cases it was always going through the box with floppies in the hopes of finding one that would successfully format, get the data written and keep it there long enough to boot the target system and get the installation running.

This evening I wanted to do a 'quick ubuntu install' on a harddisk in the server we use for demos of the hcc!pcgg netwerkgroep.

It's now finally installing using the third cd-rom drive. The one in the system did not even want to boot from the ubuntu installation cd, the second one worked ok and then moved and bumped into something while in use and started giving read failures on the same place on the cd while the cd verified fine in another system. The third one I found required a scsi controller, but the Adaptec 2940uw I had around is new enough to offer the option 'bootable cd', is now at least getting through the ubuntu cd-rom self test... and the installation worked. Sheesh. Maybe a pxeboot setup at home is a good idea, with at least a pxeboot version of the PLD rescueCD. But that would need a default do-nothing boot option because at least one client system insists on pxebooting even when it is disabled in the setup.