Re: Different ways of creating a USB-install stick

2010/5/12 James Stuckey <jhstuckey@gmail.com>

2010/4/26 Γιώργος Πάλλας <gpall@ccf.auth.gr>

James Stuckey wrote:

Hello,

I'm curious as to the different ways one can create a USB install stick, for the purpose of installing Debian.

It is possible to do it by
a) acquiring (where?) a boot.img.gz file, and then doing "zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdc". Then load a netboot iso to the disc.
b) making a FAT/FAT32 partition on the stick, and then doing "syslinux /dev/sdXX", copying vmlinuz and initrd.gz to the stick
c) using Unetbootin with an .iso file

I like the way Unetbootin allows one to use a larger .iso (dvd, or full cd iso). The downside of a) and b) is that you can only use the smaller netboot .isos, and if I wanted to load a few more files onto the disc for use I wouldn't have the room to do so.

Does anyone know another method? I'm particularly interested in knowing the way to do what Unetbootin does manually, so that I could load a cd/dvd iso onto the stick after making it boot-able.

Regards,
James

About c), I know that ubuntu can work that way, but has failed in the past with debian, because the debian installer believes it runs from a cd and tries to find the packages to be installed from the host's cdrom. I dont know if something has changed recently.

Giorgos

Does anyone know where debian keeps the boot.img.gz files necessary for creating the stick?