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T o n g wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:gc4d4u$174$1@ger.gmane.org" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Hi,
How can I put the .iso image on usb so that the usb boots with the latest
devel release, grml-medium-devel_2008.09.28.iso for example?
The wiki <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=usb">http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=usb</a> & grml2usb uses windoze
FAT16 filesystem, but I hope I can put it into (and boot from) native
Linux filesystems, using grub if possible.
thanks
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
hi<br>
I have successfully set up grml on various usb sticks on various
computers. However, I encountered difficulties because of low quality
BIOSes.<br>
<br>
1) First , I found the following website very usefull:<br>
<br>
"<a href="http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Bootable_USB_Key">http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Bootable_USB_Key</a>"<br>
<br>
2) Second, the BIOS problem. <br>
A good BIOS should present you the option "Boot from USB-HDD" (boot
from USB harddisk). This option allows you to set up FAT16 on the stick
and it will boot.<br>
However, low quality BIOS (like those found on popular MINI-ITX boards)
only present the following options:<br>
USB-FDD (this is floppy) USB-CDROM and USB-ZIP. In <br>
<br>
In this case , you have to use USB-ZIP, but this *usually* does
not work with FAT, because ZIP is a very different filesystem. In this
case , you have to format with :<br>
<pre>mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz 0 128 32 # for a stick with < 2GB
</pre>
The details of this command are given on the link above. Note, that in
the grml wiki, the mkdiskimage command is given as follows :<br>
<pre>mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz <b>1</b> 128 32 (note the "1" instead of "0" above )
</pre>
<br>
This did not work for me, but I was too lazy to figure out why. In any
case , the upper version with "0" as the third parameter worked fine
for me in all cases.<br>
<br>
(Concerning the *usually* that I mentioned above. There has been a test
case where I was able to boot from a FAT Stick with the USB-ZIP option.
I am sorry, but I did not recorded what exactly I did, but as far as I
remember , the stick has been formatted with mkdiskimage and later on
with fat, so I am not sure if this is a bootsector thing. What I am
sure is, that in "most" cases, I was not able to boot from USB stick
with a fat volume, when my BIOS did not offer the USB-HDD option on
boot)<br>
<br>
Concerning the ZIP filesystem, I was not able to create several
partitions on the stick, the mkdiskimage command creates a single
partitition, that I could not read with fdisk or cdisk. (So I was not
able to resize, etc). Again, this might be very well due to my
ignorance).<br>
<br>
Concerning the boot loader, I successfully installed GRUB but I also
used the syslinux approach from the link above.<br>
<br>
Hope, that helps since grml on stick is great ! <br>
Peter<br>
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