USB Boot Drive to run FC5 setup

Phil Meyer pmeyer at themeyerfarm.com
Tue Oct 17 20:36:54 UTC 2006


James Pifer wrote:
> I have a 512 meg usb flash drive install with damn small linux and I can
> boot off it. I have a couple machines with four hard drives and no
> CDROM. I will be rebuilding one so it currently has no OS.  
>
> I'd really like to be able to boot the FC5 setup from the usb drive.
> (and preferably multiple FC setups, like FC6 when it arrives, so I can
> kick off a network install on PCs that do not have CDROMs)
>
> Anyway, I've been searching for a SIMPLE howto to set my usb drive up
> with the FC5 setup. Something like I used for the damn small linux
> install. It used windows and admittedly it was extremely easy. I've
> found a lot of sites on running linux off the usb drive, but I just want
> to use it to start the setup.
>
> Or, is there any way for me to add right onto the usb boot drive that
> already is working with DSL?
>
> Thanks,
> James
>
>   
Here is what I do:

Option 1:   I have a dvd player in an external USB enclosure.
Option 2:   I have an old 16MB thumb drive.

In both cases I copy just the boot.iso image to them -- about 7MB.

For the jump drive:
    Plug it in to a working system
    If it mounts, use df -h to identify mount device and unmount it
    If it doesn't mount, use dmesg to identify the device.
    If the jump drive is /dev/sda then:
       # dd if=boot.iso of=/dev/sda

With a larger jump drive, I might be tempted to use the rescue image 
instead.
With a 4GB jump drive I could use the DVD image ... hmmm... I might try 
that. :)

Copy the contents of the DVD or all 5 CDs to a location your web server 
can see (on a different system than the ones to be installed, 
obviously).  I use:
/var/www/html/ks/FC5

Whenever I want to do an install, I pop in the jump drive, or plug in 
the external DVD player and boot up the boot image.

Because it is just a boot image, it defaults to askmethod and a screen 
will appear asking for the source -- I choose http and give it the IP 
address of my web server '192,168,1,2' and location '/ks/FC5', for example.

This assumes a network and a DCHP server.  No worries.

I also use a cgi script to automate anaconda, but that is another topic.

Good luck!




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