Flash Drive

[Joe Cooper]

Gary P wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jason L Tibbitts III" 
> <tibbs at math.uh.edu>
> To: "Discussion list about Kickstart" <kickstart-list at redhat.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 7:32 PM
> Subject: Re: Flash Drive
> 
> 
>>>>>>> "GP" == Gary P <list at akwebhosting.net> writes:
>>
>>
>> GP> when i run your script, heres what i get
>>
>> That wasn't really a script, it was just some information on how you
>> might go about making your own diskboot.img if you wanted to do it by
>> hand.  I included it without knowing the complete nature of your
>> problem or your experience level.
>>
>> You should just take the distro-provided diskboot.img and put it on
>> the drive.  Nothing more.  Get into the details if you want to hack
>> further.
>>
>> - J<
>>
>>
> yah after i sent that, i figured that much out
> 
> now i am stuck (again) when i run dd if=/home/diskboot.img of=/dev/sda 
> bs=1M count=512
> 496+0 records in
> 496+0 records out
> 
> it just sits there, i can see the light on the flash card blinking but 
> this has been going on for about 20-30 minutes now....

That isn't the command that has been recommended to you.  You've added 
"bs=1M count=512"...this is going to corrupt the filesystem.  I don't 
know if it will prevent booting, but it isn't what you want to do.

Use the command that was recommended:

dd if=/home/diskboot.img of=/dev/sda

Nothing more.  This is not the time for improvising.  (BTW-Make sure 
your earlier dd in the opposite direction hasn't overwritten your 
diskboot.img.  That would also lead to brokenness of some degree.)

If that doesn't boot, then your systems won't boot from this particular 
USB device.  That is stage one in your troubleshooting adventure. 
You're trying to tackle too many things at once.  Getting a bigger image 
is for after you know these servers will boot from the device you want 
to boot from, and the command you've given is not the way to accomplish it.

Another aside...I use PXE booting when I have a slew of servers to 
install.  No messing about with physical media...but you do have to 
setup a few things on a local server.