Installing Arch without a CD Drive Or Bootable USB

Hello I have a "legacy" PC that I would like to install Arch on. I would like to know if it is possible to "Mount" the .iso over my home network that is assigned through static IPs and an ethernet switch.
Then after this would I then be able to share my connection that an XP box on my network is receiving through a Wireless NIC? I looked into network bridging but I have hit a lot of dead ends and sort of gave up on it.
The first question is not all that vital I could just put a CD Drive in it but I want to do it out of curiosity and a little project. The second is sort of Vital as I could then send intranet to my other PC's and install Arch. Thanks for all your help and my previous experience with Arch has been nothing short of amazing.

I used PXE to load arch onto an old toshiba portege, worked a charm and it's not as long winded or difficult as it looks
Good Luck.

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With grub, you can actually specify where the config is located. So you can put the grub config for UEFI in the same path as grub.efi, then the bios grub could still be in /boot/grub like usual. Personally, I would use something else though, as I am not the biggest fan of grub.
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Installing Arch on external hard drive

Hi guys,
I'm trying to install Arch on an external hard drive, and making it bootable. However, I can't install grub on it. The grub installation failed during setup, and when I run grub-install, I get:
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: This GPT partition label has no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible!.
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
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/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Attempting to install GRUB to a partitionless disk or to a partition. This is a BAD idea..
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Well I tried installing GRUB onto MBR first, but it didn't work. That's when I tried to put it onto a partition, but that didn't work either, same message.
fdisk -l /dev/sdb:
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
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/dev/sdb1 ext4 142.58GB
/dev/sdb3 ext4 3.91GB (that's the Arch / partition)
/dev/sdb2 ntfs 151GB

Installing arch without usb or cd

Hey all,
I'm trying to install arch using only my hd, is this possible?
So far I made a small partition, put the install media on there using dd and tried to boot it using grub(v2).
I however, don't know anything about grub, and I didn't get it to boot, so how do I go about this?
Thanks a lot for your time!

In answer to the thread title (without regards to your post) Two techniques come to mind. Remove the drive, put it on another system, install Arch to the drive on that other system, and move the drive back. The other solution is to use a PXE environment (assuming your system can boot from a network), and set up a DHCP server and a TFTP server on another computer and boot as a thin client.
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Last edited by sailor (2009-03-17 00:47:31)

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ANOKNUSA wrote:As with any Linux distribution, Arch will be installed to whatever disk you choose to install it to. Frankly, though, if your data is at all valuable to you, you shouldn't put it at risk until you're able to make a backup.
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Installing Arch without a CD Drive Or Bootable USB

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