usb with toram

Forum: USB booting
Topic: usb with toram
started by: supertom64

Posted by supertom64 on Jan. 04 2005,06:35

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

Posted by supertom64 on Jan. 07 2005,08:03

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

Posted by supertom64 on Jan. 07 2005,12:45

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

Posted by supertom64 on Jan. 08 2005,05:39

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

Posted by phlapjack77 on Jan. 15 2005,19:51

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

Phillip

Posted by subarus on Jan. 28 2005,16:49

Thanks for the instructions. I use toram because I dont like moving parts when using my laptop. booting from cd was troublesome as I need to store dsl cd to watch dvd. With usb toram, I get rw access to pendrive .

thanks again

Posted by phoneboy on Aug. 13 2005,01:38

Makes me wonder why they haven't made this change to the main distribution because I *still* have to do this when installing to usb key and using toram.

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 13 2005,03:21

As far as I can tell the problem is with Windows and not with DSL. Windows is not case-sensitive...if you copy a file with uppercase filename it may convert it to lowercase, which in my opinion is a faulty copy.

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Aug. 13 2005,06:50

Also, this issue was fixed on our end a long while back, I believe. The usb script should see both upper and lower-case knoppix images.

-J.P.

Posted by Aruran on Aug. 19 2005,17:32

Hai...

I have a DSL 0.9.0 version. I burnt it on a CD and then tried to install it onto my USB..I get an error. I used Install into USB option.

Do I have to be online....

thanks