Re: Looking for an usb bootable installer and/or iso image

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

Joel Lopes Da Silva wrote:

>  I tend to want to use those installs on Macs
> [...]
> Unfortunately, last I checked, only the mini.iso images for Debian
> GNU/kFreeBSD were "isohybrid" images.

isohybrid usually boots from USB stick by offering an MBR to PC-BIOS.
Macs will probably not have PC-BIOS as firmware.
They rather want HFS filesystems, or HFS+, or boot equipment for EFI
which in case of an USB stick would probably be a FAT partition with
some files.


Steve McIntyre is currently developing EFI boot support for Debian
architecture amd64 (GNU/Linux):
  http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/efi-development/upload4/

If this would work for your purposes, one would have to apply its
production process to Debian kfreebsd.


HFS+ can be added to an ISO image as small partition. The image
would then be treated with SYSLINUX program isohybrid (option --mac)
  http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/11285.html?view=349461&posted=1#cmt349461

It is also possible to create a hybrid ISO 9660/HFS+ filesystem by
program xorriso (command -hfsplus et.al.).

ISO9660/HFS hybrid filesystems can be produced by genisoimage (option
-hfs).

Certain files in an HFS(+) filesystem need to be marked specially
("blessed") so that the boot firmware uses them at startup.
(Maybe one can ask GRUB2 development mailing list for advise on
 this.)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas