Re: Installing Debian from a memory stick
On Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 02:45:13AM +0000, andy wrote:
> Hi all
>
> A few weeks' back I asked for some ideas re: installing Debian on a
> laptop with a dodgy CD-R/W. I was wondering if I could do so using a USB
> memory stick and if anyone has tried this. My primary concern is in
> whether or not the BIOS will recognise the USB stick at boot, and how I
> might encourage it to do so, or - alternatively - get to the boot stage
> and then do the rest with a memory stick. If this involves using
> floppies to get into a boot routine, which of the files are best for
> loading onto floppies for this purpose?
>
I ran into a similar problem whereby my computer that had both USB and
cd burner died. All I had functioning was a 486 with floppy and zip
drive (and CD reader), and my new amd box with the burner, zip, and USB.
The new box needed Etch, the 486 is running Sarge
I downloaded hd-media/boot.img.gz, a zipped image of a 256 MB USB stick,
and transfered that to the zip disk. I booted up a rescue CD (I think a
RIP linux CD), fired up mc, copied the boot.img.gz over to the live-cd
ram disk, unzipped, then loop mounted the boot.img, stuck in my 4 GB USB
stick and did a manual setup per the manual and copied the files from
the image over to the USB.
Then I downloaded the netinst.iso to the 486 (plus as always the
md5sums), split it to fit on zip disks and sneakerneted them over to the
new box, catted them together, verified md5 sums, and transfered the iso
to the USB stick. So now I had everything I needed on the USB. Boot it
up and it worked.
The manual makes it clear that what you boot with doesn't have to be
what you install from. I would suggest that the hd-media/boot.img.gz is
a small enough download that you go ahead and make it and try it. If
the box won't boot USB, you can still use USB to hold the netinst.iso
file to get the base system from. You would then follow the floppy-boot
method from the manual.
As for encouraging the computer to boot from USB, put a bootable USB in
a slot and turn on and go to the bios. If there isn't a bootable USB in
a slot, the BIOS may not give you the option of booting from USB. If
you still don't have that option, then it probably won't work.
Another option if you have any way to put files on the hard drive and
especially if you can partition the drive, you put the hd-media files on
the hard drive and use a grub-disk floppy to boot those. That's in the
manual too.
In any event, go with Etch.
Let us know how it goes.
Doug.
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