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Currently I have Siemens Industrial Linux version 2.4.36. It runs on an old system which gets installed via floppy disk & MODs.

To install this Linux, I have to insert floppy disk which contains the Linux boot information & kernel setup. After inserting floppy, and after some processing, it asks for the MODs to insert. The MODs contains some folders & those folder contains a lots of `.rpm packages. Sample is like this\

gcc-2.95.3-5.i386.rpm
gdb-5.0-2.i386.rpm
ltrace-0.3.10-4.i386.rpm
python-1.5.2-11.i386.rpm
tkinter-1.5.2-11.i386.rpm
..
..

There are 2-3 MODs present. After inserting floppy disks, it asks to insert MODs. After inserting MODs, the booting & installation process gets completed.

Now what I want is that instead of installing this Linux, I want to boot & install Linux through USB since floppy disks are a very old technology & are very rarely available.

It is best to use USB. Currently I boot other latest Linux like CentOS & Ubuntu using unetbootin. These Linux comes with a single build bundle, but Linux I above mentioned divided onto floppy disks & MODs. How can create a single bundle to boot from USB ?

The Siemens Industrial Linux contains some preinstalled specific softwares used to run machines which I specifically don't know how many.

So is it either possible to run my system through any latest Linux like CentOS instead of that old one ?

Thanks

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I do not know how Siemens MODs work, or what role they play in installation. In theory, since you can boot from USB, you should be able to boot into a live distribution containing an installer. I have done this with Fedora, RHEL, Mint, SUSE, and Mageia, so just take your pick.

  1. Download the Live installer ISO of your choice.
  2. Copy the ISO, bit for bit, to a USB drive: # dd if=/path/to/iso of=/dev/sdx bs=2M (where sdx is the device path to your USB drive)
  3. Wait for it to copy..........
  4. Boot from this USB drive and install.

I am assuming that during the install process, you can select MODs or change them out as needed?

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  • As I saw & mentioned the data in the MODs, it just contains the basic softwares to install to the Linux since floppy doesn't have enough space to carry all these rpm packages with kernel in it. So, while installing OS, it ask for MODs to install other softwares also. I would like to remove the floppy & MOD based installation with USB installation.But as I mentioned, the problem is that the whole OS with its packages is divided into floppy & the MODs. I still don't understand how to overcome this problem ? Commented Sep 14, 2015 at 3:40
  • It might be that the install process from USB just won't ask for MODs because it will have all the info it needs to do the install. It might be worth a try, if the machine is useless otherwise. Alternately. you could just run off the USB drive; I've run a server off an SD card before. Commented Sep 14, 2015 at 4:05
  • Why it wont ask for MODs ? If I put data of floppy in USB & boot through it, then it will certainly ask for the MODs since MODs contains the other part of the System!! Commented Sep 14, 2015 at 5:44

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