I apologize in advance if this not allowed but I am going to ask more than one question.
I am currently interested in making a server from an old box. This box has no cd rom drive and a broken floppy drive, but it does have a 10 gig hard drive. I am going to hook the hd to my other comp, reformat, and install phlak(www.phlak.org). My first question is how do I install the phlak.iso on my hard drive without a cd rom drive? Would it be as simple as extracting the iso's files onto the hd? I have VMware if that could help at all.

My second question is this. As I mentioned earlier I am making this old box into a server(web, ftp, wingate). I do not have a static IP address. Can I still upload and download files from it within my network?
from the net?
It will be networked to my other computer via router.

I appreciate any help or suggestions you can offer

"I do not have a static IP address. Can I still upload and download files from it within my network?"

Yes


"from the net?"

Yes. I would suggest hooking it to a dns name and having it update everytime the ip changes.

this is what my shell I am on does. He uses a home line that resets the IP every 24h. The system is always accessable through the name.

The only problem is if you are connected when the ip switches, it will interrupt the transfer.

"It will be networked to my other computer via router."

Well if they are both beind the router, and you want a server you need to port foward incoming connections for the ports your using. Depending on certain things you could also dmz it but I would just port foward it.

I really wouldn't use phlack as a server (I see your reasoning though). Install freebsd, or a linux distro like debian and customize the install just to run what you need.

With servers you don't want a GUI or any of those other extras. It will run best when you use just what you need.

since its an old box i suggest gentoo, or maybe one of the bsd's. But gentoo would run fine on that box and to install software its a piece of cake just like debian.

Why not scrouge around for an old cd rom drive? None of your friends have a beater you can have?

surely you could just temporarily put the cdrom from your main computer into the other one to install phlack, then put it back when done

under windows you have "daemon tools", which can load an iso, so you can use it as a virtual cdrom-drive.

(Maybe I'm missing the essention of your question, in that case sorry (I'm not english)).