booting from USB device via floppy

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: booting from USB device via floppy
started by: porte64

Posted by porte64 on Nov. 25 2003,11:30

Many users of the tiny wonder DSL probably have USB
storage mass devices but own a motherboard which
does not support booting directly from USB devices.

Hence my question: is it possible to place some
bootstrap code on the floppy so that control
is passed to the USB device when booting ?

Idea: insert a floppy and USB disk, boot the machine
and get DSL running without user interaction !!!

Is this currently possible ?
How do you feel about this ?

Best regards
Paul

Posted by Ravi on Nov. 26 2003,08:09

i have precisely the same querry.
i tried using a dos floppy to boot and detect the usb drive, then used loadlin to boot the image from the usb drive (128mb).
i used puppy linux.
the kernel uncompresses but runs out of space!

Posted by Gilbert Ashley on Nov. 27 2003,13:48

Try the boot disk from RUNT linux. Kernel 2.4.22 and by default boots /dev/sda1. I have put together a small distro based on ZipSlack 9.1 which runs uncompressed from any FAT partition using the umsdos file system. My BIOS won't boot a USB drive, so to run from my 256MB FLASH disk I use a boot floppy based on the RUNT boot.img. I also run this distro from hard disk though, using loadlin, or lilo. It's great for beginners, because it requires no partitoning, installs easily(just unzip it on any FAT partition), and wherever you run it from it's 100% compliant linux- no hacks, no workarounds, and is easily configurable and extendable any way you want. This distro includes fluxbox, windowmaker, opera7.22, rox-filer, wmcpuload, asmem, yawmppp(which lets you go online with one click. A huge collection of goodies- all fits in a 80MB zip file. Unzips to about 215MB including space reserved for /root. This can be cut down alot but all packages are intact.

Posted by porte64 on Nov. 28 2003,15:42

Thanks: RUNT should work. It was design precisely
to meet that need. :laugh:

Here's their homepage:
< http://www.ncsu.edu/resnet/runt/ >

It is to run a linux kernel aware of USB/SCSI devices
and pass automatically control to them.

Can anyone try to boot the lastest flonix (2.4) that way ?

Paul

Posted by Aeros_Saga on Dec. 29 2003,05:39

Alright, I've been trying to boot DSL from my usb storage device. I am using the runt boot image, as I have had the most success with it. Currently during boot it recognizes my storage device, sees the kernel, mounts the filesystem, and then I get this:
VFS: Mounted root umsdos filesystem
Trying to move old root to /initrd...Failed
Unmounting old root
Trying to free ramdisk memory...ok
Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed
Warning: unable to open initial console
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init=option to kernel

My bootline in syslinux is as follows:
boot: usb root=/dev/sda1 rw -s

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to correct this issue? Any help is much appreciated

Regards,

Aeros

Posted by woverin on Jan. 02 2004,17:36

You guys can use boot disk from flonix linux which is based on DSL.
< http://linuxdocs.tuxfamily.org/flonix/index.php?page=download >

burn it with win rawrite

Download Flonix linux usb edition
Extract all files to usb thumb drive. Then replace Knoppix folder from DSL.
It worked fine for me.

Posted by Aeros_Saga on Jan. 03 2004,22:19

Thanks, I'll try flonix then. I'll post results here for everyone.

Regards,

Aeros

Posted by Aeros_Saga on Jan. 06 2004,23:51

Works like a charm with flonix, thanks for the suggestion.

Regards,

Aeros

Posted by RiKoRn on Feb. 02 2004,21:25

Owkee, I've been trying to boot DSL from my usb device. I am using the runt (3.2) boot image, during boot it recognizes my storage device, and then something goed wrong :P

VFS: Mounted root umsdos filesystem
Trying to move old root to /initrd...Failed
Unmounting old root
Trying to free ramdisk memory...ok
Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed
Warning: unable to open initial console
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init=option to kernel

and B.T.W. < http://linuxdocs.tuxfamily.org/flonix/index.php?page=download > is dead so can't use that one. :angry:

so can somebody help me???

Regards,

RiKoRn

Posted by WorteL ZijN iS FijN on Feb. 24 2004,00:54

Hellowm

I was also searching for a distro that runs from an usb-stick. DSL is a great distro so I searched for tzo days for the flonix boot-floppy. Now I ve found it but I have to try it by my self. Dont know if it works..
< http://www.geocities.com/ilinty74/ >

check the tail of the page..
good luck

Posted by rivethead on Feb. 24 2004,06:59

Tried the aformentioned one it doesn't work. I have been trying to get DSL to work using the flonix usb boot floppy. Apparently i must have the wrong boot floppy.. it will stop loading saying it could not find the flonix compressed file. Anyone have a working boot disk they could image? I'm really new to linux and so I haven't figured out he nuances to getting the miniboot extracted and edited properly myself.

Posted by Modrak on Feb. 24 2004,21:03

If you have the CD, rawrite (dd) the boot.img to floppy and try it out

Posted by TyphoonMentat on Feb. 24 2004,21:07

That won't work - the boot.img from CD doesn't have any USB modules and hence can't load a filesystem from a USB pendrive.

Posted by WorteL ZijN i Fijn on Feb. 26 2004,13:14

Quote (Guest @ Feb. 24 2004,01:59)

I 've tried by myself without troubles. I run Flonnix and DSL from my memory-stick.
But watch out: you need 3 floppy's. Read the tail of the page I 've posted. The first floppy must be written with rawrite (boot.img or something) and on the others you have to copy vmlinuz and syconfig (as i can remember)

It go's fine, but my own modifyed flonnix wont run. I 've folowed the knoppix remastering howto. I can create my knoppix-file but when I want to run it, it go's really wrong..
Is there a good howto to modify usb-knoppix versions?

(/me still a newbie)

Posted by hasty on Feb. 26 2004,20:10

Rob over on Feather linux has posted a nice remastering page which might help.

< http://featherlinux.berlios.de/remastering.html. >

Posted by WorteL ZijN iS FijN on Feb. 27 2004,03:48

thx!

I've tried it more then ten times by following the howto from the official website.. I let you know if it works now.. I want to build a version with icewm as desktop and apache- (with php-module) and mysql-server. I think it will be best if i start with flonix.

Posted by hasty on Feb. 27 2004,19:00

>>I let you know if it works now..

Please do. The forums inevitably show up more problems than solutions , so successes add to the knowledge base ™

Fortunately I seem to have bog standard equipment & simple needs so I don't need to tinker too much :laugh: