[SATLUG] Linux on CD

[Borries Demeler]

Thanks to all of you trying to help and sending suggestions. I finally got it
figured out. I successfully booted both DSL and SLAX from my 512 USB stick.
However, the instructions were not quite complete to get it to work. Here is
what I found works for DSL (assuming your USB device registers on /dev/sda):

First, make a W95 FAT32 (LBA) on your USB stick, and make it active (bootable).
That's type "c".

fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 506 MB, 506986496 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 61 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          61      489951    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Next, format the partition for vfat:

mkfs.msdos /dev/sda1

mount the drive:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

go into the image and extract the DSL zip file:

cd /mnt
unzip ~/dsl-embedded.zip

unmount the drive:
cd 
umount /mnt

run syslinux:
syslinux /dev/sda1

Reboot.

This however does not work for SLAX. For that, you need to create a syslinux.cfg
file and tell it where to find the boot image. The strangest thing was that syslinux
was unable to deal with a kernel path like boot/linux, it tried to convert it to a 
8.3 name like this: boot/lin.ux, or course this was not there. So I copied everything
from /boot/* to /. and edited the syslinux.cfg file to look for everything in /

To copy the iso image, I do:

mkdir ~/iso
mount slax-5.1.8.1.iso iso -o loop
cd iso/
cp -a * /mnt/.
umount /mnt

The run:

 syslinux /dev/sda1

remount the usb stick and edit the syslinux.cfg file as indicated above.

Note: this was using syslinux from a slack 10.2 install.

Here is my final syslinx.conf file for slax:

display splash.cfg
default slax
prompt 1
timeout 40
F1 splash.txt
F2 splash2.txt
F3 splash.cfg

label slax
kernel linux
append vga=769 changes=slaxsave.dat max_loop=255 initrd=initrd.gz init=linuxrc load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 ramdisk_s
ize=4444 root=/dev/ram0 rw

label linux
kernel linux
append vga=769 changes=slaxsave.dat max_loop=255 initrd=initrd.gz init=linuxrc load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 ramdisk_s
ize=4444 root=/dev/ram0 rw

label memtest
kernel memtest

This setup worked fine. Here is the final mount table:

df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                  1435288    194676   1240612  14% /
/dev/sda1               489688    201248    288440  42% /mnt/sda1_removable

(I got 2 gb ram on my laptop, so the tmpfs is pretty generous).

Thanks again to everyone for getting me close!

-b.


> > Syslinux[1] may help with that - at least the version used by [2]Debian. The
> > second URL is a mini-HOWTO for a 256MB version that works for small .iso
> > images, with longer instructions that may help with larger ones.  --Don
> >
> > [1] http://syslinux.zytor.com/index.php
> > [2]
> > http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apas02.html#howto-getting-images-usb
> 
> I have used the syslinux method for putting BackTrack 2.0 (Slax-based
> security distro) onto a USB drive.  As I recall, the process went
> something like this:
> 
> 1.  Format USB disk as FAT16
> 2.  Under Linux or Windows, use syslinux to make it bootable.
> 3.  Copy entire contents of bootable live CD onto USB disk
> 4.  Rename the isolinux.cfg file to syslinux.cfg
> 5.  Make sure whatever box you are booting on has "USB Boot" or some
> variation turned on in the bios.
> 
> The advantage to doing it this way are that you can also use the disk
> for storage, and access your files from just about any OS, including
> OSX, Linux or Windows.
> 
> Supposedly with Slax you can actually save all filesystem changes and
> have them come back at the next boot, but I was not able to get it to
> work despite tinkering with it for several hours.
> -- 
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