Search Members Help

» Welcome Guest
[ Log In :: Register ]

Mini-ITX Boards Sale, Fanless BareBones Mini-ITX, Bootable 1G DSL USBs, 533MHz Fanless PC <-- SALE $200 each!
Get The Official Damn Small Linux Book. DSL Market , Great VPS hosting provided by Tektonic
 

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

reply to topic new topic new poll
Topic: Transcend 256 mb pendrive not booting< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
kishfellow Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 2
Joined: Aug. 2005
Posted: Aug. 30 2005,10:52 QUOTE

I have installed DSL in the pendrive(256mb transcend) I used the correct geometry and downloaded usbboot.img from LQ forums.

I did this from knoppix . . . (hd install)
I formatted the drive with mkdosfs.
I logged in as root and created a directory dsl in /mnt
I mounted usbboot.img to /mnt/dsl copied /mnt/dsl/* to /mnt/sda1
Then I umounted the dsl folder and mounted dsl image(1.0.1) in /mnt/dsl and copied /mnt/dsl/knoppix to /mnt/sda1
I unmounted the dsl folder, deleted it.
Now I "cd" into /mnt/sda1 . Everything was fine.
I unmounted the pen-drive and restarted the pc. I set primary boot  to usb-hdd once, usb-fdd once and usb-zip/mo once.
Nothing worked ...  DSL did not boot off pendrive.
Legacy and other support for pendrive is enabled.
Iam using a VIA P4M266 board.(original board)
Back to top
Profile PM 
kishfellow Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 2
Joined: Aug. 2005
Posted: Aug. 31 2005,15:16 QUOTE

I reformatted the pendrive in windowsxp and used flashboot trial to make it bootable.(in knoppix I used syslinux.)And installed DSL to hd ... Still the same result. Not booting. :(
Back to top
Profile PM 
p0tp Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 3
Joined: Aug. 2005
Posted: Aug. 31 2005,17:32 QUOTE

Sounds to me like you've got mbr (master boot record) problems.

In my experience, i.e. entirely trial-and-error, I have had the best luck formatting the USB drive under linux using cfdisk.  First, I use fdisk to completely wipe out everything on the USB stick, then cfdisk to create a single FAT16 partition (hex value 06 from the available values in cfdisk).  IIRC, cfdisk also has an option to "make bootable", which I use.  Write the changes made in cfdisk and exit.

Then, I apply the 'mkdosfs' command to the new partition.  This may be redundant and pointless, but I'm just repeating what has worked for me.

After mkdosfs, I unzip a copy of dsl-embedded.xxxx.zip directly onto the USB drive.  You should end up with several files (boot.msg, dsl-linux.sh, dsl-windows.bat, readme.txt, ec.) and 2 directories (KNOPPIX, qemu) sitting right at the root of the USB drive.

Finally, I apply syslinux to the USB drive:  
syslinux  -s /dev/sda1 (where sda1 is the pendrive device).

That's the super-short and simplified version, because it sounds like you probably have half a clue already.  If you'd like more detailed instructions for the install, let me know and I'll be happy to provide them.

Back to my original point again, it sounds like your primary issue might be getting the mbr set up right in the first place.  fdisk, sfdisk, and cfdisk are your friends!
Back to top
Profile PM 
2 replies since Aug. 30 2005,10:52 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

 
reply to topic new topic new poll
Quick Reply: Transcend 256 mb pendrive not booting

Do you wish to enable your signature for this post?
Do you wish to enable emoticons for this post?
Track this topic
View All Emoticons
View iB Code