USB booting :: usb with toram

hi,
im rather new to dsl and tried to find the answer myself but didn´t find one yet.
i installed dsl 0.9.1 with syslinux to an 128 MB USB Stick which works fine so far.
trying to use the toram option failed after copying with the error message "remount cdrom failed" then it boots on the USB Stick.
looking what went wrong i found that the vfat partition shows KNOPPIX as knoppix and the "if foo /$KNOPPIX_DIR/KNOPPIX_NAME command seems to fail.
i have tried than [Kk][Nn] etc. which seems to accept now the "if" statment but than still the /dev/sda1 is mounted on /cdrom and i can´t restore the backup.tar.gz file because dsl tries to look at /cdrom2. (/dev/shm is also mounted on cdrom)
i have allready tried to use the mount command with the -o
shortname=[lower|win95|winnt|mixed] and posix option but this don´t work at the ash.
can anyone give me a hint or has a running usb stick with toram option?
thx in advance
TOM

Hi,

i had just a look at the syslinux site and found
http://syslinux.zytor.com/extlinux.php
i will give it a try to boot the usb stick with ext2/ext3 filesystem and the extlinux bootloader.
maybe this is also interesting for the frugal script because the only thing that must change is the minirt24.gz (maybe also the minirt24.gz could be the same with a boot2=usb parameter at the extlinux options and a modified linuxrc)

cu
TOM

ok just setup the usb stick with ext2 and tried to boot with extlinux which unfortunately don´t like to boot. (the pc just hang after accessing the usb stick)

second try with the boot-usb floppy and changing the rclinux file to mount the usb stick to a ext fs.
I used dsl toram and everything works perfect.
i guess that the strange behavior with usb and toram is about the lowercase filename while copying to cdrom2.
so there are maybe 2 solutions.
a) rename /knoppix/knoppix to /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX after copying to cdrom2
b) get the extlinux working (i guess that either the geo of the usb stick is not ok for extlinux or the pc don´t like the ext2 filesystem)
does sb have a hint?
thx
TOM

I found a solution now for booting off USB and use toram.
As i expected the vfat lowercase is the problem, because after copying to the ramdisk the name is case sensitive.
So after some trial and errors I´ve got the solution with changing in the minirt24.gz "KNOPPIX_NAME=KNOPPIX to KNOPPIX_NAME=knoppix" which works fine now including unmounting the usb stick from /cdrom and recovering the backup.tar.gz from /dev/sda1 (/mnt/sda1) (now the usb stick).

(I have also tried to use at the bootpromt "dsl toram knoppix_name=knoppix" which didn´t work?!?)

just a little howto:

to change the value boot the usb stick normal (without toram).

copy the minirt24.gz to /opt (evtl. make a backup to minirt24.gz.old)
at /opt
"gunzip minirt24.gz"
and
"mount -o loop minirt24 /mnt/test"
"cd /mnt/test"
and edit the linuxrc file
in the linuxrc file have a search for
"KNOPPIX_NAME=KNOPPIX" #(almost near at the beginning)
and replace it with
"KNOPPIX_NAME=knoppix"
"cd /opt"
and
umount /ramdisk/opt/minirt24
than
gzip -9 minirt24
copy now the minirt24.gz back and overwrite the old minirt24.gz

so i hope this works for others too, but maybe it would be a better solutions to implement the mount option "shortname=mixed,posix" at the ash.
(which i am sorry not be able to do) and
i will have a look at the linuxrc file if i can change the value
KNOPPIX_NAME only if the toram option is given at the boot promt.

cu
TOM

i had the exact same problems you wrote about, and i followed your suggestions exactly, and now toram works for me. thanks.

Phillip

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