Frugal install to hde CF card

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Frugal install to hde CF card
started by: dslfool

Posted by dslfool on Mar. 18 2005,00:44

This isn't really USB, but it is about booting from flash memory...

I've searched the board on this issue but still have a couple of questions:

Toshiba notebook, 128MB RAM, no HD, 256MB CF card in a PC Card adapter (shows up as hde1), booting DSL 1.0rc1 from CD.

I noticed when this notebook had a working hard drive that LILO offered my (then 32MB) CF card as a boot option. The hard drive has since died and I've purchased a 256MB card. I'd like, if possible, to do a frugal install to the CF card in the PC Card slot and boot from the card.

1) Since the frugal_instal.sh script wants an hda drive to install to, can I reassign hde1 to hda1 when I'm booting from a live CD, or would the read-only nature of the live CD get in the way?

2) If this is possible, how to do? Do I edit /etc/fstab, and, if so, do I change /dev/hde or /mnt/hde? Or am I way off base (which is par for the course for me)? :-)

Thanks!

Posted by roberts on Mar. 18 2005,01:33

Using a PC Card i.e., a pcmcia style device would require extra modules to boot from. I did make a pcmcia boot floppy image way back when, 0.7.x. But then I had to boot from floppy then it would finish booting from pc card. I gave up on that approach. I now use and recommend CF-IDE 2.5" 44 pin adapater. It fits in where the notebook hard was. This way it appears as hda and all is well. I have setup three notebook computers with CF this way. As no spinning parts the battery seems to last longer too.

Posted by dslfool on Mar. 18 2005,01:54

Thanks, Robert - I had intended on getting a CF-to-IDE adapter, but hadn't done it yet. Time to head to the DSL store...