Debian 9 netinstall

[starche]

Currently running debain 8.8 and I want to clean install debian 9.

Installation using CD/DVD is not an option for me coz my DVD can read, but cannot write. My wife's laptop is newer one thus do not have CD/DVD drive.

Installation using USB stick is not an option neither. My motherboard is older one which has such option as boot from USB stick, but it's not really works. I tried that many tmes and different ways including reflashing BIOS, but it's not working period.

So really the only option left is to install from HDD. What I did:
- download netboot.tar.gz
- pulled initrd.gz and linux (which I remaned into vmlinuz) from it
- copied those 2 files into /boot/newinstall
- modified grub.cfg with the following:

Code: Select all

menuentry 'New Install' {
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
linux /boot/newinstall/vmlinuz
initrd /boot/newinstall/initrd.gz
}

- saved and rebooted.

Such menu emtry indeed appears in grub, however when I'm selecting it, I'm getting the error message:

Code: Select all

error: no such partition.
error: you need to load the kernel first.

OK, I checked in /dev and sure enough – there's no such device as hd0, but there's sda1, where my root directory is and where the /boot is as well.

I chech in grub hd0 to sda and here's what I've got:

Code: Select all

error: disk 'sda.msdos1' not found.
error: you need to load the kernel first.

I know that installation from HDD worl, in fact i installed debian 8 that way. I do remember there's a trick I did to make it work, I just changed something and got it work. But now I cannot figure out what exactly I did.

Could you please point me in the direction what I have to do to make it work. I know how to use Google, but whatever I doesn't help me.

Thank you.

[TonyT]

If your laptop bios has a "boot usb" option then you should be able to use it. How did you create the bootable usb?