Re: Bootable USB images (Re: using d-i to install kfreebsd-i386 from usb)

[Ferenc Wagner <wferi@niif.hu>]

Aurelien Jarno <aurelien@aurel32.net> writes:

> On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 03:12:37PM +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 09:39:11PM +0100, Aurelien Jarno wrote:
>>> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:37:28PM +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 01:48:10PM +0000, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
>>>>> The standard (I have Ecma 119 (= ISO 9660), SUSP, RRIP and El Torito here
>>>>> as PDFs, they’re “freeware”) however specifies that the first 32 KiB of
>>>>> an ISO 9660 filesystem image are empty and available for, for example,
>>>>> bootloaders.
>>>> 
>>>> I found this a very interesting observation.  In fact I just implemented
>>>> support in GRUB to build USB-capable CD images, using this approach.  You
>>>> just need to dd them:
>>>> 
>>>>   $ dd if=mini.iso of=/dev/sdb
>>>> 
>>>> You will need 1.98~20091221-1 (which I just uploaded to sid), plus attached
>>>> patch.
>>>> 
>>>> This takes advantage of the new infrastructure for bootable image generation
>>>> (grub-mkrescue), which abstracts the architecture-specific GRUB setup so that
>>>> you only need to worry about your grub.cfg and not about image building.
>>> 
>>> I have tried that, but it doesn't work. It works fine when used on a
>>> CD-ROM, but not when used on an hard-drive. The grub menu is shown
>>> correctly, but when selecting the install entry, it freezes on 
>>> "Loading ...". When trying to boot using commands, it also freezes after
>>> entering "kfreebsd /boot/kernel/kfreebsd.gz".
>> 
>> Could you put that image somewhere?  I'll have a look.
>
> It is available on http://temp.aurel32.net/mini.iso . I tried it with
> qemu (-cdrom and -hda).

In case it's not widely known, let me quote isolinux.doc:

Starting in version 3.72, ISOLINUX supports a "hybrid mode" which can
be booted from either CD-ROM or from a device which BIOS considers a
hard disk or ZIP disk, e.g. a USB key or similar.

It would probably be a worthwhile additional feature for the Debian
Installer.
-- 
Cheers,
Feri.