USB Boot
Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: USB Boot
started by: pasan
Posted by pasan on Sep. 04 2004,18:00
Hi. I'm kind of new to DSL, the only other other version I have used is 0.5. I'm using 0.8 right now. I created a bootable floppy using bootusb-0.8.img hoping I could boot my rather old motherboard (gigabyte 7zxe / athlon 1.2ghz / 256mb pc133) on DSL via my 128mb usb flash drive. The floppy part went smooth enough, but then it searched the usb drive for for files withing the path /KNOPPIX/ I'd really apreciate it if someone could could walk me through the necessary steps required to get this working (I'm sure it is something trivial, but being a n00b doesn't help any :< )Thanks in advance.
Posted by ke4nt1 on Sep. 04 2004,19:13
See if this helps...1. plug in your usb key BEFORE you start your computer
2. Boot your DSL from Live CD if you can....
( or start your HDInstalled DSL, but place your CD in the drive after booting )
3. Mount both your usb key and your cdrom using the "mount" tool in your slit
( dock app near the bottom of your toolbar , click arrows to find your drive,
sda/sda1 or cdrom/cdrom1 , and click on the "screw" shape button to mount them )
4. Type "sudo su" in a shell to get to the root user
5. Type "emelfm" , look for your USBkey in /mnt/sda or /mnt/sda1 and your cd in /mnt/cdrom or /mnt/cdrom1
and copy ALL the files and directories from your cdrom to your USB key..
Be patient here, as it takes some time for the buffer to completely write to the USBkey
I'll even use the mount tool to umount the USBkey to make sure!
It won't umount successfully until the writes are completed )
5. Insert your floppy disk made from bootusb-0.8.img into your computer, and reboot it.
6. Now the boot floppy should be able to find the files it needs on your USB key.
And while your not trying to make a "bootable" usb key, why not have it
bootable anyway? Grab the frugal_usb.tar.gz from the "current" section
of the repository ( where you got the dsl-0.8.0.iso from ) , install it
like any other extension, open a root shell, and run "frugal_usb.sh"
This will easily install BOTH the needed files AND a bootable filesytem.
Then , when your at another box that WILL boot from a USBkey, just
plug it in, set the bios to boot from USB-ZIP , and your off and running.
Doing it this way will STILL work with your bootusb floppy..
It's a real cool deal.. I redid my USBkey recently, and I've got ALL the
extensions, mp3's, personal files, streams, bookmarks, etc. on my key.
It boots up with my fav theme, skins, mailbox, allready-to-go... schwweet!
73
ke4nt