[OT] Run LiveUSB on machine that can't boot from usbkey?

Kam Leo kam.leo at gmail.com
Sat Aug 29 22:11:03 UTC 2009


On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 2:47 PM, jackson byers<byersjab at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have an old laptop that I use for testing new versions of Fedora - however
>> although it will boot of a physical CD containing a LiveCD (say of F12
>> Alpha), it is old enough not to be able to boot off usb devices since the
>> BIOS is not arranged to do so. So a usbkey that contains a LiveCD that works
>> perfectly well on other machines won't play on this particular machine
>> (Fijitsu-Siemens Amilo D 6800)
>
>> Can anyone point me to a reference to work around this by booting off say an
>> altered grub stansa in the HD which then refers to a plugged in usbkey to
>> continue loading the LiveCD files from the usbkey? Or something similar?
>
> Mike,
> maybe my experience with booting from an external usb disk will help.
> I also wasn't
> "able to boot off usb devices since the BIOS is not arranged to do so"
> [either that or I am too dense to properly fiddle with the BIOS].
>
> So, what I did was copy the vmlinuz, initrd.img somewhere
> onto  my internal HDisks, specifically in my case on /dev/sdb1.
> Here is my grub.conf stanza for f10 booting off of the 2nd partition
> of my usbdisk, [label rootusb2]
>
> #24...68 ->  29..78
> title Fedora (2.6.27.29-170.2.78.fc10.i686)usb2new TEST bootf10usb2     vga=795
>        root (hd1,0) #sdb1
>        kernel /bootf10usb2/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-170.2.78.fc10.i686 ro
> root=UUID=8f24a787-132c-4dc8-9126-9d85292e349f quiet vga=795
>        initrd /bootf10usb2/initrd-2.6.27.29-170.2.78.fc10.i686.img
>
>
> I also did this recently with an f11 hdinstall into usb3.
>
> Detail:
> my usb disk is seen as sdc when booted up into my my main f10 on sda1
> but when this bootf10usb2 boots it is seen as sda2, i.e,
> disk order is reordered to    usb=sda, hd1=sdb, hd2=sdc.
>
> from blkid run from my mainf10on sda1:
> /dev/sdc2: LABEL="rootusb2"
> UUID="8f24a787-132c-4dc8-9126-9d85292e349f" TYPE="ext3"
>
>
> However, this does not affect the "root (hd1,0)" for sdb1
> ie that retains nonreorderd syntax,
> even though when booted up f10usb2 sees sdb1 as sdc1.
>
> This solution is not perfect of course.
> I can't just take this external usb as is
> to another computer and have this f10usb2 boot up
> because the kernel, initrd can't be found.
>
> HTH
> Jack

Try UNETBOOTIN, http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/




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