Virtual PC + SUSE 9.2 FTP Install = Learning Curve

As I am sure we all know, Virtual PC 2004 is sent from God.

I decided today that I was going to get a Virtual PC set up with SUSE 9.2 in order to push myself to look into the Mono Project a little more.  I figured this should be doable (I was right) and that it should be doable quickly (I was wrong).

A little inspection of the Novell site (http://www.novell.com/linux/suse) quickly dug up the appropriate location to download the FTP based installer in a nice little 64mb iso. Sweet.  Mount that as the CD drive for my VPC and it boots. Even Better.  Run the install and hit a brick wall.

Short story, several hours later I discover how to tell this FTP installer to actually do an FTP install instead of a DVD install and then hammer my head against ftp.suse.com for a while, getting "File Not Found" errors until I discover an article here posted by crouse about how to do an FTP install. technically for 9.1, but it got me up and running.

So I'm writing this as the initial FTP kernel is downloading and once I can select my packages I'm off to sleep.  Tommorow if I have the time I'll post my own article addressing everything learned from this in order to save some other poor developer the heart-ache later.