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Sorry it took me so long to get back on this...
I was successful in getting my 128M Lexar jump drive to boot damn small
linux. It is nice to have nothing mechanical in a system and a fairly
substantial linux system running.
Here is what you need to do...
1. download the CD ISO image from the DSL website or a mirror.
start at: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org
2. Burn a CD. This can be done from windows or linux with a writer that
will create a CD from an iso image.
3. Boot the CD. You may need to alter you bios boot settings so it sees
the CD as a boot device and before the hard drive.
4. In the tools menu of DSL there is a selection to make a bootable USB
image.
This is where it gets tricky. This is a rather lame script that
connects to a download site and gets the script and boot image. You
must have an Internet connection for this to work. In addition if it
fails there is no warning and the script will not run again. This is
because it creates a zero length copy of the file when it failed and
then on the next run it thinks it has a file and applies it to tar,
which then fails.
The files it needs are frugal_usb.tar.gz and bootusb-0.8.img
To run the script directly so you can see errors do this:
cd /ramdisk/home/dsl
/usr/sbin/dsl-ubinstall
This will run the script and you can see what is happenning. I had to
run the script manually and delete the zero length file when it failed.
After all that I could still not get it to boot. I got a weird syslinux
error.
Frustrated this is where I left it for awhile.
Tonight I downloaded syslinux.zip > syslinux.exe and ran it in WinXP
command window to install the system on the ramdisk (jump drive). It took
the command without error. The command is shown as:
syslinux -s x: - where x: is the drive letter when of the USB device.
Available at: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/
Upon reboot the system booted DSL from the jump drive. Obviously your
system has to be able to boot from USB. On my Intel P4 MB it is an option.
The only problem is that when it is set and a bootable USB device
installed you get not option for other boots. The USB takes precedence.
BE REAL CAREFUL!!! when executing commands to a USB drive if you have SCSI
hard drives installed. The USB drive is mounted as a SCSI drive, Normally
/dev/sda1 I have two SCSI drives in my system which are /dev/sda1 and
/dev/sdb1. In my case the USB drive became /dev/sdc1. If I had written
to /dev/sda1 I would have blown up my WinXp boot drive.
Doug
On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Bob Schwier wrote:
> Tell me about Damn Small Linux.
> Sounds like something I could use.
> Thanks.
> bs
>
>
> On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Doug Crompton wrote:
>
> > Has anyone done USB key booting of Damn Small Linux or a derivative? I
> > have a CD boot, latest version DSL, that works fine but I am having
> > trouble finding (clear) info on the USB boot. There is a 'copy to USB
> > device' in the tools menu of DSL but it does not seems to work.
> >
> > The USB device is there - mountable and the PC bios does look there for
> > boot files, so that is not the issue. It is getting the proper code on the
> > USB device
> >
> > Doug
> >
> > ****************************
> > * Doug Crompton *
> > * Richboro, PA 18954 *
> > * 215-431-6307 *
> > * *
> > * doug@crompton.com *
> > * wa3dsp@wa3dsp.ampr.org *
> > * http://www.crompton.com *
> > ****************************
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________________________________________________
> > Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
> > Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
> > General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
> >
>
****************************
* Doug Crompton *
* Richboro, PA 18954 *
* 215-431-6307 *
* *
* doug@crompton.com *
* wa3dsp@wa3dsp.ampr.org *
* http://www.crompton.com *
****************************
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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