HOWTO: Lexar 128MB USB Drive Running DSL

Forum: USB booting
Topic: HOWTO: Lexar 128MB USB Drive Running DSL
started by: kronus

Posted by kronus on Jan. 01 2005,09:11

How I got DSL working on my notebook (after a day of playing around with this):

Using: Lexar USB Jumpdrive 128 MB (purple color), WIN XP, WinImage, Daemon Tools

1) Format drive by right clicking on it and using the built in windows formatter. Select FAT.

2) Use winimage to write the bootusb x.x.x.img file
-> - Opening the .img file in WinImage
- Go to 'Disk' and select 'Use Removable Disk E:' ('E:' = USB Key)
- Then go to 'Disk' and 'Write Disk'

3) Exit winimage.

4) Mount the dsl- x.x.x.iso with daemon tools(at least thats what i used) You should see like 4 or 5 files(boot folder, knoppix folder, an .html file, etc....)

5) Go to My Computer and explore to your usb drive.

6) You should now have 2 windows open. One with the contents of your usb drive. A second with the contents of the .iso you just mounted with daemon tools.

7) Drag ALL 4 or 5 files(sorry i can't remember which it was) to the usb drive from the daemon tools mounted window. There should be NO asking if you want to overwrite files because none are duplicates.

8) Restart your computer and choose to boot from usb. On my laptop, I press ESC at the bios memcheck screen(the mostly black one you see when you first start your computer). This gives me a window with 3 boot options(at least for me)
1) Lexar Media USB
2) My hard drive
3) My cd-rom

9) I select the Lexar option and see a black screen saying "syslinux 2.04 blah blah blah....."

10) Then I see a screen that says 'press enter to begin" so i hit enter and Walla! A bunch of pretty green, purple, and blue text springs forth, as well as a cute penguin :laugh:

Posted by ph00dz on Jan. 08 2005,08:00

worked perfectly. best tutorial yet, i think...

Posted by zx9506 on Jan. 11 2005,07:21

I use "bootusb-0.8.img" and "dsl-0.9.2.iso" flow the kronus`s advise,but I always get this message "Accessing DSL Liniux at /dev/sda1... cat No File /KNOPPIX/ect/ld.so.cache".I chage the name "knoppix" file to low case also WHY?

Posted by bwalla on Jan. 13 2005,04:23

Has anyone had any luck booting from a Lexmark JumpDrive 512MB?? I have tried everything you can think of to make sure that DSL is loaded correctly, but everytime I try to boot, it gets to syslinux then says "Boot Failed" in the same line. Has anyone succesfully booted from a jumpdrive 512mb???

Posted by ke4nt1 on Jan. 13 2005,05:20

what is your output of the command ' cfdisk /dev/sda ' ??

Are you booting up from floppy, or bios ??
Do you have options for USBkeyboard enabled and boot set to USB-ZIP ??
Other formattings require the boot to be set to USB-HDD..

73
ke4nt

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Jan. 13 2005,08:23

Quote (Guest @ Jan. 12 2005,22:23)

Perhaps the geometry is not set up properly on your key.

Try reading < this > to learn how to set it up properly.

-J.P.

Posted by eriksays on Jan. 13 2005,20:15

i try using winimage but the "write disk" option is greyed out. is this because it's an unregistered version?

Posted by bob on Jan. 18 2005,01:23

same problem.

Posted by tronik on Jan. 20 2005,17:44

Hi guys. Try this method:
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=3790 >

Posted by kronus on Feb. 01 2005,18:07

Quote (Guest @ Jan. 13 2005,15:15)

i try using winimage but the "write disk" option is greyed out. is this because it's an unregistered version?

I don't have a registered version either. Try following the steps again is all I could recommend without knowing more.

Posted by Brando56894 on Feb. 02 2005,03:20

i think DSL just doesnt like jumpdrive secure 512mb drives because mine doesnt work either ive tried like 3 ways

Posted by logich on Feb. 17 2005,07:11

a translation of this for OS X:

0) insert your usb drive. it will mount automatically.

1) download current bootusb-x.x.x.img and dsl-x.x.x.iso

2) open DiskUtility and get all the info on your drive
2a) erase it and reformat it as "MS-DOS File System"
2b) make sure that you note the "Disk Identifier" in the info screen
2c) unmount the partition on the usb drive.

3) open a terminal
3) cd to the directory where you saved the images
3b) type "sudo if=bootusb-x.x.x.img of=/dev/diskX bs=512 count=1" where diskX is the "Disk Identifier" from step 2.

4) disconnect and reconect the usb drive.

5) double click the iso file to mount it
5a) drag the KNOPPIX folder to your usb drive.

6) Double click the bootusb-x.x.x.img to mount it
6a) select all the files and drag them to the usb disk.

7) eject the usb drive and have fun!

Posted by Dersursine on Feb. 20 2005,07:06

Quote (Guest @ Jan. 13 2005,15:15)

i try using winimage but the "write disk" option is greyed out. is this because it's an unregistered version?

I was getting the same issue at first.

Reread the instructions and note the file extensions, winimage is for the .img, this is not the .iso that you mount in daemon tools and copy to your key drive.

I hope this helps

--
Dersursine

PS- The .img is located at < ftp://ibiblio.org/pub....0.8.img >

Posted by Tekno on Feb. 23 2005,02:25

help, when i try to download the DSL files, my computer keeps telling me that it has to close because the save has timed out. WTF!?!?!?

Posted by bubba on Feb. 24 2005,21:35

did you format your 512mb drive using FAT instead of FAT32?

Posted by guest1 on Feb. 25 2005,04:45

Quote (Guest @ Feb. 17 2005,02:11)

command should be "sudo [B]dd..."

also, i think you need to unmount the disk in disk utility before running command

Posted by tronik on Feb. 25 2005,06:21

If you're having problems with any method, try an alternate method...Check the 'HOWTO' forum for more..
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=3790 > - < Another USB Howto >

This thread should really be in there anyway.

Posted by Newbie on Mar. 06 2005,22:13

I tried to create bootable usb via linux, but something
goes wrong.
mkfs.msdos /dev/sda1 OK
cat usb-boo*.iso > /dev/sda1 OK
reobot OK but needs kernel
At the moment I have no more room in the usb-pen
only 1 MB free... how I can modify the right size?
Thanks in advantage for the help
Newbie

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 07 2005,02:31

Shouldn't it be

cat usb-boo*.iso > /dev/sda

instead of /dev/sda1?

Posted by Tekno on Mar. 07 2005,20:01

First of all, what files should i be seeing when i try to download DSL?
Next, when i try to download the files to my computer, not my thumbdrive, I get the "timed out" message.
Finally, if i try to enable "read only" on my thumbdrive, will it screw up DSL during a boot?

Posted by Zambini on Mar. 19 2005,23:59

I'm Using a sandisk 128 mb usb flash drive, and when i go to bios theres "Generic Storage Device" and "Maxtor Hard Drive" (which is my external hard drive) so i selected generic storage and it doesnt do anything it just stays on a blank screen with the blinking cursor in the upper left corner for ever

Posted by Physhie on Mar. 24 2005,07:08

Knowing absolutely nothing about linux. (just started learning). I followed the OPs instructions and i made my MP3 player (sd card reader) boot my laptop up. Worked perfectly without any issues.

Great instructions!

Posted by ayergo on Mar. 30 2005,20:58

Worked great, many thanks. Someone should put this guide somewhere easy to find.

Posted by qu1nn on April 22 2005,06:21

If I get the error message "img file not supported by drive" in winimage when trying to write the 0.8.0.img to the mbr of my 1gb lexar flash drive, does that mean that dsl won't work on this thumb drive?

Posted by Dish on Mar. 22 2006,18:05

I know that this is sort of a dumb question, but I don't want to start off screwing up (there will be plenty of time for that later :;):

) The bootusb file that I downloaded was called bootfloppy-usb.img. Is this the right file? because I didn't see a bootusbx.x.x.img anywhere in the download directories.

Thanks!

PS. I'm using the OS X instal instructions on page 3, second comment. And I figure if I screw up, I can always reformat the drive and start over.

Posted by darkhand on Mar. 22 2006,23:07

Quote (zx9506 @ Jan. 11 2005,02:21)

I'm having the same problem on several different computers and flash drives. I've tried versions 2.2b and 2.3rc2.

The boot process seems to work every time, but the system seems unable to see the KNOPPIX archive file where the OS is contained.

I'll get to the point where the OS itself should start to load, and get approximately this:

Code Sample

Accessing DSL Linux at /dev/sda1...cat: No file /knoppix/etc/ld.so.cache.

Setting paths... /linuxrc: /knoppix/bin/rm: not found.

egrep: not found
sed: not found
rm: not found
awk: not found
awk: not found

FAT: bogus logical sector size 0

Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:03

To my newbish eyes, it seems to be running a startup script, but without access to the KNOPPIX archive it's unable to get anything done.

I'm going to try an older version later tonight and see what happens.

Posted by TheBlueFrog on Aug. 26 2006,02:25

I haven't been sucessful so far in getting this to work. I get to the part where it tries to create the ramdisk, and there are a bunch of error messages that say something like not found.

None of the links to other posts with alternate methods seem to work. Any ideas?