bootable usb

Rick Stevens rstevens at vitalstream.com
Thu May 18 19:13:32 UTC 2006


On Thu, 2006-05-18 at 14:35 -0400, Mark Hammerton wrote:
> I have created a custom iso RHEL 4 that i will be using to install on
> a number of servers, however none of tem have cd rom drives, I would
> like to put it the iso on a 2gb and install from there.  2gb is more
> than enough for me. Also i have created the kickstart file for this. 
> 
> I want to ask for help in putting the iso on to the 2gb stick and
> ensuring that stick is bootable.
> 
> I know the servers that i plan on installing on can boot from usb

Are you certain the ISO image is bootable?  Remember, you need to
specify a bootable, "El Torito" image as part of the mkisofs command
(see the "-b" "-hard-disk-boot" and "-no-emul-boot" options for
mkisofs).

If the image IS bootable, then verify what device your system uses
for the USB stick.  Plug it in and check the output of dmesg to see
what device is used.  If your system is IDE based, the stick will
probably show up as /dev/sda.  Now, you need to copy the ISO image to
the stick using "dd".  Note that you must write the image to the RAW
stick device--not a partition on it ("/dev/sda" NOT "/dev/sda1").

The "dd" command will look like:

	# dd if=name-of-ISO-image of=/dev/sda bs=512

When that completes, you should write-protect the stick if you can (some
have a write-protect tab on them) before using it.  Then try to boot
from it and see if it works.

> my LAN is your LAN 

Now that just INVITES hack attempts!  :-)

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     If Bill Gates got a dime for every time Windows crashes...     -
-              ...oh, wait.  He does.  THAT explains it!             -
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