a little twist on usb install
Forum: USB booting
Topic: a little twist on usb install
started by: v_lestat
Posted by v_lestat on May 27 2005,20:19
ok my system see's my PNY 256meg thumb drive as a hard drive.i have no option to change this either.
so i thought ok well if the bios is reporting it as a USB removable hard drive then i'll tell DSL to install it to a hard drive then choose sda1 as the device.
well it works.
it works all the way up until lilo tries to install then it bombs
1)
why are you guys using lilo. it might be more versatile but you know its junk compared to grub. i have NEVER had lilo work on ANY linux distro i have ever installed to a hard drive. Lilo never loads properly onto the boot drive.
why arent you using grub. ?
2)
It goes thru the entire install and everything goes fine but lilo says its installing and then it says sda1 is already mounted or you have to many mounted file systems.
it then says
FATAL: /boot/linux24 is not a valid file or location.
disk scan skipped
lilo install successful.
i tell it to reboot and it says missing operating system.
how can i tell lilo to install properly
or how cna i use grub during the install process.
grub has never failed me. not one single time. lilo has never ever worked for me so it doesnt suprise me that it wont work now.
anyone have any thoughts ?
p.s.
why are there no options during the install to tell it how big of an install you want to use ?
like 1 gig 2 gig 3 gig 500 meg you know.
why does it have to take up the entire drive or partition if you have a hard drive with only 1 partition ?
Posted by Rapidweather on May 28 2005,00:04
Just a thought here. I'm thinking that your motherboard does not consider your pny drive as a bootable drive, although it is recognized as a "drive". That might be why lilo won't work.
I have always booted multiple linux installs with loadlin. Here is a link to the
loadlin page:
< Hans Lermen's Loadlin page >
What I considered fun before the LiveCD linux's came along was to partition a big drive (80 GB), and install ALL of my linux distro's on it, SuSE, Redhat, Mandrake, Debian, some in several versions, early and late. Then, set up a nice swap area for them, then use loadlin to select which one boots, via a msdos menu sorta like this one:
< MSDOS Menu page >
Of course you will have to make linux.bat files for each one, according to lermen's instructions, but this setup beats both lilo, GRUB, and System Commander, too. I have used them all.
You can, however, install all of your linux distros, using boot floppies to get into them, THEN install System Commander, and hope it detects all of them, and builds a menu for you. I got it to work once, but the loadlin/MSDOS menu idea works perfectly. Sorry I do not have all the details, but like so much of what we do in Linux, it is a learning experience.
Thomas Edison once said:
"Now I know 999 things that won't work as a lightbulb filament material"
Posted by Guest on May 28 2005,00:09
Loadlin install is in the DSL Documentation Pages.
Posted by v_lestat on May 28 2005,00:44
no the thumb drive IS bootable.i can boot to the thumb drive when i choose Install to pendrive then use the hd script.
plus if you go into the bios and look at the hard drive boot priority it see's a 40gig (which i have FC3 64bit on) and it sees my 2 Raptors(raid) then it also see's my thumb drive.
now when you boot you can hit F11 to choose your boot device. one of those is 'Hard drive" when you hit that (when the menu opens) it again shows the 40gig, it shows the RAID and it shows the thumb drive.
so even at a bios level it see's the thumb drive as a hard drive.
it WILL format as Ext2 or 3.
it will go thru the entire loading process without fail. although it does kill after a while for some reason sometimes. not sure why. :\
it's always lilo. when it tries to load it always gives the same error.
and i also unhooked those other hard drives and booted off the live cd so lilo wouldnt get confused the only things it saw were the cdrom floppy and the thumb drive.
id really like to get this going. with dsl NOT being a compressed mounted image it could run so much better.
i am typing this right now from my Xbox xdsl loopback install. which is like a thumbdrive hd install.
you choose the partition and it basically uncompresses alot of things but not everything then mounts it. sort of a frugal or hd install.
anyways.. anyone have any type of ideas even booting from a floppy would be cool
speaking of floppies.
what would i need to do to alter a boot floppy to show it where to find the knoppix install.
right now if i boot to the cd and say boot previous hd install and tell it /dev/sda or sda1 it says cant find knoppix image. which would be correct it shouldnt be looking for an image it should be looking for raw files... shouldn't it ?
Posted by ke4nt1 on May 28 2005,01:55
grab the grub.dsl from the repository..It works great..
73
ke4nt
Posted by v_lestat on May 28 2005,05:13
i did but i have never used grub before, except during linux install and a few times afterwards to adjust it,,dsl grub is like raw grub as in just download it and install it , its not used the same.when i ran it from a command line it wanted command perameters and i looked thru them and i have no idea what to do.
what im wondering is there a way to tell the installer to use grub instead of lilo or how to use grub after lilo fails
Posted by v_lestat on May 28 2005,22:10
my limited linux knowledge has pretty much got me to giving up on installing to usb as a hard drive. so :\there has to be a way its just not working.
lilo keeps failing even though it says its successfully installed.
the only reason i know of is that its mounting the thumb drive as a hard drive and calling it that in the lilo config.
there for when it boots its looking for hda or something and not sda
ill mess around with lilo a bit more to see if i cant change the config line to sda0,1 or something but i dont think its gunna work
im just not a fan of compressed image mounting. it restricts things so much.
Posted by SaidinUnleashed on May 29 2005,00:21
Wait...You did a hd install to a usb flashdrive?
You know that your flashdrive will die after just a few hours of use, right?
-J.P
Posted by v_lestat on May 29 2005,03:12
lol no thats not true.flash drive read/write has a life span much longer than that.
not to mention i do dsl toram alot
basically its more or less a proof of concept incase i wanted ot install it to a usb hard drive. as a hard drive install not a pendrive install.
it cant be done simply because its looking for hda or hdc or hd something.. and its on sda or sdb or similar so it cant...
adjusting the lilo config i havent gotten around to do yet so...
if they die THAT quickly then a pendrive instlal would kill it just as fast.
when mounting an image unless you do "toram" its still constantly accessing the pendrive which is no more different than accessing raw files on the pen drive.
pendrives life span is alot longer than nyou believe. if yours dies quickly then i guarentee you that it was a fualty pendrive.