Re: installing debian from USB... IS IT POSSIBLE?
On 27/07/11 20:07, Paul E Condon wrote:
> On 20110727_070255, Dom wrote:
>> On 27/07/11 02:57, Paul E Condon wrote:
>>> On 20110726_190017, Dom wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The Wheezy netinst-cdrom image can certainly be used with a USB
>>>> stick (and a USB hard disk too). I've successfully used this
>>>> method to install a number of test systems recently.
>>>>
>>> I'd like to try this. Can you give some details of what you did?
>>> 1. How did you partition the hard disk? 2. Did you put a file
>>> system on the partition? I'm thinking of using a 100G hard disk
>>> that I already have and I'd like to save most of it for general
>>> backup of system files. Can I do this? Does putting a partition
>>> table on it help save some the left over space?
>>>
>>> 3. What did you us to write the image? dd ? something else?
>>
>> I simply used "dd if=netinst.iso of=/dev/sdX". The image contains
>> a partition table and everything.
>>
>>> 4. Is there something else that I should be asking about?
>>
>> Not that I'm aware of. Just install as normal. Have fun :-)
>>
>> As some of my test systems are very low on memory (32MB), and
>> can't be upgraded, I created a swap partition on the rest of the
>> disk, used Expert mode and activated swap as soon as I could in
>> order to complete the installation. This shouldn't be necessary on
>> a more modern system.
>>
>
> Thanks, Dom
>
> It also works with debian-6.0.1a-i386-businesscard.iso I have looked
> into putting the installer on a USB device several times in the past,
> but have always been put off by the perceived messyness of the
> process, like OP. The only slightly complex issue was putting the USB
> drive into the bios boot order list. This is not a complaint, but an
> indication of just how trivial the process actually is.
>
> Was it always this easy and people writing HOWTOs just didn't know?
> Or was there some feature in the debian-gnu-linux tool set that
> needed a rewrite? Not really important to get an answer, but it would
> be nice if all those out of date HOWTOs could somehow be hidden from
> view, Or tagged with a note pointing to your email in debian lists
> archive.
>
> Thanks again
>
The official Debian howto have always been reliable - the signal to
noise ratio on the larger web is pretty poor (monkey see, monkey copy
and paste), especially when search terms are not tuned .
eg. to search these lists:-
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&tbs=qdr%3Am%2Clr%3Alang_1en&q=usb+install+site%3Alists.debian.org%2Fdebian-user+-dirk&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=
Also the hybrid image originally caused some problems. You'll still find
the occasional older BIOS that need to be set to zip drive to boot the
usb stick.
After installing it's neat to save the installed packages list, config
files, and a copy of /boot/grub on the usb stick. That can be backed up
somewhere for recovery and other purposes.
--
Supreme Court says pornography is anything without artistic merit that
causes sexual thoughts, that's their definition, essentially. No
artistic merit, causes sexual thoughts. Hmm... Sounds like...every
commercial on television, doesn't it? You know, when I see those two
twins on that Doublemint commercial? I'm not thinking of gum. I am
thinking of chewing, so maybe that's the connection they're trying to make.
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