Noncompatible USB-stick problem...

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Noncompatible USB-stick problem...
started by: anaconda

---

Posted by anaconda on Mar. 07 2006,16:03

I can't install DSL to my 64MB USB-Stick
(had no problems with my 512MB SanDisk)

As a matter of fact DSL can't even mount my 64MB Stick at all!! So that is probably the problem.

It works just fine with windows and knoppix can find it too, but it behaves a bit strangely. Knoppix always reqognizes it as /dev/sda and NOT dev/sda1. Could that be the problem?

Shouldn't it be possible to mount dev/sda in DSL?
mount /dev/sda /mnt/usb

And is it possible to install DSL to sda and not sda1? I understand that SDA should be the machine(stick) and SDA1 the first partition SDA2 the second etc..

I could try to install DSL to my 64MB-stick by copying all the files from my other USB-Stick, but how do I  make it bootable?

And how is it possible that knoppix regognizes the USB-Stick and DSL dosn't? Isn't DSL based in knoppix?

---

Posted by anaconda on Mar. 15 2006,12:44

Wow!
Got my old 64MB USB-stick working
Had to change the geometry of the stick.. found instructions from here:

< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki....endrive >

The USB stick had: 1009 Cylinders  2 Heads  62 Sectors

I tried to change the geometry according the instructions, but couldn't get the numbers to match with 32 Sectors, so I made it
977 Cyls 4 Heads 32 Sectors (a bit smaller)
And now it Works just fine  GREAT

Strange, that it worked in windows and knoppix. the partition table was weird with overlapping partitions !

here is what "sfdisk -l" showed:
root@box:/home/dsl# sfdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 1009 cylinders, 2 heads, 62 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 63488 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

  Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   ? 15078801+ 16439200- 1360400-  84344761   69  Unknown
               start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (68,13,10)
               end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (288,115,43)
/dev/sda2   ? 13721931+ 28801620- 15079690- 934940732+  73  Unknown
               start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (371,114,37)
               end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (366,32,33)
/dev/sda3   ?     20+     20-      0          0   74  Unknown
/dev/sda4          0  27702527  27702528  1717556736    0  Empty
               start: (c,h,s) expected (0,0,1) found (0,0,0)
               end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (0,0,0)

---