[NTLUG:Discuss] Installing Linux on USB Disks?
Stan Gatchel
sgatchel at psltech.com
Tue Mar 20 13:43:49 CDT 2007
Chris,
Good info all 'round. I would be interested seeing you writeup when it's
finished.
Thanks
Stan
Chris Albertson wrote:
> Stan,
>
> I've just gone through an exercise of getting Debian to install on a
> Compact Flash card, so I could run it on an embedded device. (Single
> Board PC) I'm in the process of writing up how I got it to work. When I
> finish, I can get you a copy if you'd like. I think it might help answer
> some of these questions.
> The first thing that's going to be a deal breaker or maker for you is if
> your bios can boot to the USB drive. If you don't get that option,
> you're going to be out of luck before you even get started.
> If you can boot from USB in bios, then it's really just a problem of
> getting the image onto the USB drive. I don't use grub, so I can't speak
> too much to that. I use lilo.
> Here is pretty much the steps I took to get debian on a CF card:
>
> 1. Build base filesystem to a local directory (Using debootstrap)
> 2. Prepare CF Card for the goods (Partition,make partition bootable,
> mkfs.ext2)
> 3. Copy the base filesystem into the CF card
> 4. Mount --bind proc, sys, and dev into the CF card
> 5. CHROOT into the CF card
> 6. Install the Kernel Image (apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.x.x.x)
> 7. Alter fstab, network, hostname, resolv.conf files (Root in your
> fstab would probably point to /dev/sda1 since it's a usb mass
> storage device)
> 8. Put LILO into the MBR of the card (You could just use grub here
> if you're comfortable with that)
> 9. exit chroot
> 10. Unmount proc, sys and dev from the flash card
> 11. unmount the card
> 12. Finished
>
> As I said, I'm in the process of detailing all these steps so they make
> more sense...
>
> I know the USB boot drive is becoming a popular item now. You "may" be
> able to google this subject and find some pre-built images that you can
> just burn onto the USB drive. I could not find anything that met my
> needs/desires, so I had to build from scratch.
>
> Chris
>
> Stan Gatchel wrote:
>
>> I found this interesting article about preloading Linux on USB disks. I
>> was just wondering, if I bought a blank USB disk and tried to install
>> Linux, would it work? Has anyone done this? Does it show in Grub? What
>> happens when the disk is unmounted? What happens if you mount it on a
>> different machine? What hardware similarities are required for it to run?
>>
>> Maybe this is a way to test new distributions.. just partition a USB
>> disk? Can it be that easy? ;-)
>>
>> http://people.ofset.org/~ckhung/a/c073.en.php
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Stan
>>
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>>
>
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