installing Fedora 10 from USB Disk On Key

[Mike Cloaked]

Mike Cloaked wrote:
> 
> 
> On certain netbooks the advertised method of making a Live usbkey may not
> work - eg in my Samsung NC-10 that did not work when I first got it - and
> it does not have a DVD drive at all!  So I ended up making a live usbkey
> using Unetbootin (google for it), and that worked fine.
> 
> 

If you do want to use Unetbootin the basic method I used for the Samsung
NC-10 was:
since I only had XP running on the system, as purchased, I used UNetbootin
running in XP to create a bootable
usbkey containing PartedMagic 3.4 since I wanted to partition the drive
before installing Fedora on it for added safety in case the install went
wrong.
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin

The PartedMagic iso is available from http://partedmagic.com/

So booting PartedMagic from the bootable usbkey that resulted allowed me to
create two ext3 partitions (one to be used for root /) and a swap partition
but also leave the original XP c: drive and shrink the d: drive to
accommodate the linux ext3 partitions.  There is also a hidden recovery
partition which I did not touch.  The intention was to use manual disk
partitioning during F10 install to control where Fedora 10 would install and
also to control how the non-root partition would be mounted.

In this case I decided to use the Gnome LiveCD iso for Fedora 10 as the
install media but to make a bootable usbkey for this using Unetbootin a
second time and generate a second bootable Live  usbkey.

I still don't know why the method of making a bootable Live usbkey detailed
in the Fedora wiki did not allow the system to boot from the key in this
case. However the bootable key made using Unetbootin worked just fine which
was why I took this method to install.

I suppose it would have been just as easy to make a bootable usbkey copy of
the DVD iso instead of the LiveCD iso although it would have been a little
tighter on disk space since the iso would have to be copied onto the c:
drive in windows to use with Unetbootin. It could have been done on another
machine entirely of course if you have one available.

No doubt other people will post their favourite method for achieving an
install when no optical drive is available but these one or other of the
methods outlined should get you going.

Of course starting with an install to hard drive from a LiveCD image means
that more applications will likely need to be installed after the new system
is running and more work will need to be done to optimise the system later
compared to a DVD install unless the system runs a basic desktop only and
minimal server functions are needed.
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