help booting from USB?
Forum: USB booting
Topic: help booting from USB?
started by: tim_hnk
Posted by tim_hnk on May 18 2005,06:25
i am new to dsl linux and need to know how to put dsl linux on a flash drive so that i am able to boot it from the boot menufrom start up. Anybody with some ideas, or with some experience?
Posted by meo on May 18 2005,11:32
Hi tim_hnk!If you by flash drive refer to a usb-drive (usb-stick) it is quite easy to install and get i up and running. Just download dsl-embedded and unzip it to your usb-drive. If the bios on your computer supports booting from usb just put that option before booting from hd and it should be up and running with just a reboot. If your bios doesn't support that (like my old box) you can boot with a cd. Reboot with a dsl-cd and issue following from the commandline that will appear: dsl fromhd=/dev/sda1 qemu frugal xsetup and then just follow the onscreen prompts about your hardware. Your device might be recognized as something else than /dev/sda1, but usually this is the right option. So hope all works out. If it doesn't just post a note here and we will se what we can do.
Have lots of fun with DSL,
regards meo
Posted by tim_hnk on May 18 2005,16:45
thanks for your help but ut still doesn't work! my computer can boot from usb but it just says that there is a missing operating system, and it should be. any ideas?
Posted by clivesay on May 18 2005,17:20
There is a menu option in DSL for installing to a pendrive. The easiest would be to run that. If you have a larger drive and want DSL bootable and embedded, I recommend grabbing the 5-way script from the mirrors and installing that way. Chris
Posted by lewix on May 19 2005,09:44
Really i only need to download embedded-1.1.zip and unzip to pen-usb (formatted FAT right?) to use this distro as live-usb?(Yes my bios supports boot by usb devices.)
I did this question because on this < link > the author describes another more complicated way to make DSL live on usb drive.
P.S.: to make DSL not live but installed version it is very difficult?
Thanx and sorry for my bad english.
Lewix
Posted by meo on May 19 2005,12:44
Hi tim_hnk!If you don't think it is too complicated you can try it the way I do. Insert the usb-drive and boot from a dsl-cd. Any version of dsl on cd at least since version 0.8 will do it. Then just issue the following commands: dsl fromhd=/dev/sda1 qemu frugal xsetup and I think this will do the trick. As I mentioned my bios doesn't support booting from usb so I have a very limited experience from that. But my dsl-embedded has worked just fine when I have tried it out on another computer (in a computer-store and I asked for permission to change the settings in bios on one of the demo-boxes). So there are different kinds of usb-boot options and when it comes to that I'm not the guy to tell what to do. I hope it works out for you!
Have fun,
meo
Posted by meo on May 19 2005,12:51
Hi Lewix!Yes you can just unzip the dsl-embedded file to a fat32 formatted usb-drive and off you go. Sometimes it seems hard to boot but then you can use a cd to boot from the usb-drive. See the previous post in this thread. That's the way I have to do. It's very easy to install to the harddrive if you wish that. From the live-cd menu go to Apps--> Tools --> Install to Hard Drive and then just follow the prompts.
Have fun Lewix,
Regards meo
Posted by lewix on May 19 2005,14:27
FAT32 also works? Good!!My worry was to use only FAT usb formatted drives.
I didn't believe it was so simple.
I tried (no successfull) to install and use Feather Linux, simple installation but i had to use also syslinux at the end.
Linux on USB drive: great great linux!!
If i was not Visual Studio developer (very good suite no comment) i'd use only linux. Maybe can i learn QT? o KDevelop?
Lewix