Re: Creating a bootable USB key

[Mathieu Malaterre <mathieu.malaterre@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 7:40 PM, James Stuckey <jhstuckey@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to use a usb key as installation media. I followed the
> instructions given here earlier but Unetbootin but did not produce a
> bootable stick. When trying to boot with that stick I get an error that says
> "No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found". I tried running it again
> but that didn't work either. There seems to be lots of *notes* about
> creating bootable usb sticks scattered around various places, but none of
> the ones I have read give complete information. Is anyone who knows how this
> is done willing to write instructions?
>
> I'm not subscribed to the debian-user list. Please reply to my e-mail
> address.
>

I used the simple solution you were previously suggested:

http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/ch04s03.html#ftn.id318505

It did work pretty well for me. The tricky part is to understand that
zcat should be applied on the whole filesystem, not the first
partition:

zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdX

which is not:

zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdX1

HTH
-- 
Mathieu