Re: Installing RHEL with a memory stick

[Rick Stevens <rstevens vitalstream com>]

On Fri, 2006-10-06 at 15:07 -0600, karlp ourldsfamily com wrote:
> On Mon, October 2, 2006 12:21 pm, Rick Stevens wrote:
> > On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 23:19 -0600, karlp ourldsfamily com wrote:
> >> On Mon, September 18, 2006 7:29 pm, Rick Stevens wrote:
> >> > On Mon, 2006-09-18 at 16:20 -0700, Waldher, Travis R wrote:
> >> >> Any advice on getting RHEL using a memory stick?
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> I?ve been googling and have come up with nada.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> (the computer doesn?t have CDROM)
> >> >
> >> > Well, yeah.  You need to download the first CD ISO image and mount
> >> > it.  E.g.
> >> >
> >> >     # mkdir -p /mnt/work
> >> >     # mount -t iso9660 -o loop /path/to/iso/image /mnt/work
> >> >
> >> > On it, you'll find an images/diskboot.img file.  Copy that to your
> >> > pen drive using dd.  If the pen drive shows up as /dev/sda, then
> >> >
> >> >     # dd if=/mnt/work/images/diskboot.img of=/dev/sda bs=2K
> >> >
> >> > Then boot from the pen drive, assuming your BIOS supports it.  If not,
> >> > and you have a floppy drive, then download SmartBootManager
> >> >
> >> > 	http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4185
> >> >
> >> > and put it on a floppy.  Boot from floppy, specify next boot from the
> >> > pen drive and voila!  From there, you can do net, diskimage, http or ftp
> >> > install (all the standard install stuff is there).
> >>
> >> I've been interested in this since finding and using (credit card CD)
> >> BBC-LNX
> >> and DSL for some maintenance issues on some PCs. (I have DSL running on our
> >> WillCall PC; cool).
> >>
> >> I bought a Everex StepNote laptop and installed FC5 on hda2 (WinXP is on
> >> hda1). It works great. If I boot with a 512MB thumb drive, it says Operating
> >> System Missing. I followed the above prompt, and it just hangs now. I had to
> >> dd of=/dev/sda1, however, not just sda because it didn't even recognize the
> >> thumb drive on boot and went straight to GRUB.
> >>
> >> So, any hints? I've tried both distros with no luck on both a 128MB and
> >> 512MB
> >> thumb drive.
> >
> > Then the BIOS doesn't support booting from USB.  The diskboot.img file
> > is a full image file and should go into /dev/sda--NOT a partition on the
> > drive.  I quote from the README:
> 
> Actually, it does. I just wasn't doing it right. I was trying to install and
> boot DSL v3.01 and figured (wrongly) that using USB-HDD install would/should
> work. I found that USB-ZIP install works marvelously... To verify that the PC
> would boot from USB I did what you said and got the fedora core 5 install
> screen (I would like a little distro on the flash drive of FC5 but DSL is very
> nice, too).

Ah!  Congratulations!  See, a little perseverance works wonders!

> > "The diskboot.img file is a VFAT filesystem image that can be written to
> > a USB pendrive or other bootable media larger than a floppy.  Note that
> > booting via USB is dependent on your BIOS supporting this.  It should
> > be written to the device using dd."
> >
> > Note the word "device", and not "partition".  I know, I've done this
> > a bunch of times, but the machine's BIOS MUST support booting from USB.
> > You may have to play with the BIOS' USB settings to make this work, but
> > it DOES work.
> 
> I had to set the BIOS as USB-ZIP boot on the PC I've got working. One other PC
> a friend has didn't have a setting for USB boot, but it booted fine on it,
> too. That was cool. He may try Linux now.

Good!  YAC (yet another convert)!

> > For example, on my HP laptop, you must hit F10, go to the "Advanced"
> > settings, down to "Boot Order", expand the "Hard Disk" list, and switch
> > the priority from "HD, USB" to "USB, HD".  I just confirmed this using
> > a Memorex TravelDrive 128MB pen drive and the bootdisk.img file from
> > FC5.  Now, if I have a USB drive, it boots off that.  If not, it boots
> > from hard disk as normal.
> 
> So, short story made longer by this geezer + 1 person (that's a 51 year old),
> I got it to work and can boot fine.

Well done.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens vitalstream com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     If you can't beat your computer at chess...try kickboxing!     -
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