FC2T3: Pendrive installation

[Giuseppe Castagna]

> > What should I specify for bs when copying by dd diskboot.img on my
> > pendrive?
> > 
> > I guess
> > 
> > dd if=bootdisk.img of=/dev/sda1 bs=6291456
> 
> Did you try it without bs?

Yes, ... files are there (checked by mounting the pen), but when I boot
my shining new Thinkpad X40, it checks the usb pen for about 30 seconds
or so (my usb key has a light that indicates it) and then poweroffs and
starts again. As soon as I remove the pendrive (or if I set in the bios
the USB-HDD after the HDD-0 in the boot order) normal boot starts.

Note that, my pendrive always worked under linux and windows. I tried
then to restart from scratch.

I erased all the data from the pen (it took a while)

[beppe at myrte ~]#  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1
dd: writing to `/dev/sda1': No space left on device
511559+0 records in
511558+0 records out

I formatted a new vfat filesystem

[beppe at myrte ~]# mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1
mkfs.vfat 2.8 (28 Feb 2001)

I copied the disk image on it

[beppe at myrte ~]# dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sda1
12288+0 records in
12288+0 records out

this gives me (I automount the pen on /mnt/usbkey)

[beppe at myrte ~]# ls -l /mnt/usbkey/
total 3844
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root          292 Apr 21 11:05 boot.msg
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root         1034 Apr 21 11:05 general.msg
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root      2575298 Apr 21 11:05 initrd.img
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root         9652 Apr 21 11:05 isolinux.bin
-r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root         8104 Apr 21 11:05 ldlinux.sys
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root          788 Apr 21 11:05 options.msg
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root          872 Apr 21 11:05 param.msg
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root          490 Apr 21 11:05 rescue.msg
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root          549 Apr 21 11:05 snake.msg
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root         5692 Apr 21 11:05 splash.lss
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root          524 Apr 21 11:05 syslinux.cfg
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root      1319984 Apr 21 11:05 vmlinuz


What am I doing wrong? I googled for "usb key bootable howto" and
variations without success

---Beppe---