Bug#988472: Bug#604839: [installation-guide] Planned overhaul of chapter 4.3 "Preparing Files for USB Memory Stick Booting"

[Brian Potkin <claremont102@gmail.com>]

On Sat 02 Oct 2021 at 19:48:41 +0200, Holger Wansing wrote:

[...]

> I had some understanding issues, mostly in chapter
> "Manually copying files to the USB stick — the flexible way"

I have never really understood what is so special about syslinux and
mbr.bin in the context of using hd-media. GRUB should always be at
hand on a Linux machine. This is my flexible way:

1. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb count=100
   (Could be omitted).

2. cfdisk /dev/sdb (FAT).

3. mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1
   dosfslabel /dev/sdb1 LABEL.
   (Download dosfstools).

4. mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
   grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sdb

5. cp vmlinuz /mnt/boot
   cp initrd.gz /mnt/boot

6. cp <installation_ISO> /mnt

7. # An example grub.cfg.
   menuentry 'Debian 11.0.0' {
   linux /boot/vmlinuz shared/ask_device=manual     \
                       shared/enter_device=/dev/disk/by-label/LABEL
   initrd /boot/initrd.gz
   }

8. cp grub.cfg /mnt/boot/grub

9. Boot.

More detail at https://wiki.debian.org/Installation+Archive+USBStick.
To declare an interest - I wrote that page.

Regards,

Brian.