Questions about DSL's USB pendrive installation

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Questions about DSL's USB pendrive installation
started by: RevX

Posted by RevX on June 18 2006,13:29

Hello,

I'm a DSL newbie and I'm trying now DSL 3RC2. Works very well from CD. I want to install it to my USB stick/pendrive. It came with 2 partitions where the first one is about 250MB and the other one 1.44MB. Both are FAT partitions. I don't want to mess up with them. But the USBHDD installation routine (for installing DSL to a USB device) said something about a new partition. I don't want this. Is there a (safe) way to just install DSL to the existing partition without modifying too much (I'd like to use the stick also for data backup in Windows)? How to do so?

And another question: as my PC's bios doesn't support booting from an USB device I need a boot floppy disk. Actually there are two provided: bootfloppy.img and bootfloppy-usb.img. What's the difference between them? Do I need to use the USB version?

Thanks for helping!

Posted by humpty on June 26 2006,17:54

Both usb-zip and usb-hdd will change your pendrive geometry.

If you want to keep your current geometry and partition sizes,
you have to use more advanced techniques with syslinux or
maybe freedos+loadlin.

p.s/ RC queries shouldn't really be posted here.

Posted by RevX on June 30 2006,09:36

I've now tried FreeDos and LoadLin. I've provided linux24 for the image parameter and minirt.gz for the initrd parameter. It seems like it is starting/booting up at first but after some initialisation stuff it stops with a '#' as prompt. I don't know what to do now or why it suddenly stopped processing. There was no obvious error message displayed. Anyone any ideas?

Posted by RevX on July 01 2006,18:43

Addition to my previous post:
That '#' prompt happens when I use Linld (similar to loadlin). If I use loadlin the way it is suggested in < http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Loadlin_Install >
the linux24 and minirt24.gz are loaded up (dot progress) but right after this the screen goes blank and nothing is possible any more (I have to reset the PC). Anyone experienced this too once? Any solution?

Posted by humpty on July 03 2006,03:38

okay, forget about freedos for now. if you can get the knoppix image in the /knoppix/ directory on the first partition of the usb, then try the standard usb-boot floppy and see what happens.

Posted by RevX on July 03 2006,07:16

What is the "standard usb-boot floppy"

Posted by humpty on July 03 2006,22:08

Apps>Tools>Make Boot Floppy> USB BootFloppy

Posted by RevX on July 04 2006,07:29

I see. I didn't want to use that because I also want to use the
boot floppy disk also for Puppy Linux booting... :cool:

Anyway, I've found a solution for my problem. I can start DSL using Linld. The point is, it has to be started inside the isolinux directory (for whatever reason). I did
linld image=linux24 initrd=minirt24.gz
and - voila - DSL was booting.

Thanks for all the offered help.