HowTo Install Fedora 10/11/12 DVD from a 4GB USB stick - Page 2

chengbao · #16 24th December 2008, 12:03 AM

My question is I want to make a multiple boot net installation USB drive, which can boot and start network installation for several linux distributions. ie. FC10-i686, FC10-x64, RHEL5-i686, RHEL5-x64 etc.

So, the solution here does not suit me, because it is single boot, and it is using live-ISO, which is much bigger than netISO to fit on USB drive w/ multiple ISOs.

I tried format the USB drive with HP USB tools, then use grubinst on the USB, then use WINGRUB to install grub on it. I extracted all files from FC10-i686-netinstall ISO to USB drive, edit MENU.LST as

title Fedora Core 10 i386
kernel /boot/Fedora-10-i386/syslinux/vmlinuz
initrd /boot/Fedora-10-i386/syslinux/initrd.img

During the boot, when I select menu item of Fedora Core 10 i386, Grub tried to read my floppy drive instead of the USB drive itself. then report vmlinuz cannot be found.

Any one can help me here? Thank you.

sideways · #17 27th December 2008, 12:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chengbao

So, the solution here does not suit me, because it is single boot, and it is using live-ISO, which is much bigger than netISO to fit on USB drive w/ multiple ISOs.
.

No it does not use live-ISO.

It uses boot.iso, which is ~100mb and will fit on a tiny usb disk

LinuxGlobe · #18 27th December 2008, 10:02 PM

How can you install from a usb stick on a Intel Mac? I like to pass on the information to people I know who also have a Mac...

Markus McLaughlin
linuxglobe.wordpress.com
Hudson, MA, USA

Soshin · #19 7th January 2009, 12:03 AM

I have the following question.
I've got an 8 GB USB-Stick, and would need to know if there is any realistic chance to have a fedora installation with only the bare necessities, which would mean for me: a video player like vlc which is able to play as many different video formats as possible I'd need no other programs.
As I would need the stick to tranport a maximum of about 2 GB I'd get about 6 MB of usasble space.
Is it reasonably possible to get it work, or should I take a 16 GB stick?

sideways · #20 7th January 2009, 01:23 AM

The last two posters need to use google, there's a fedora spin named 'omega' which is aimed at multimedia.

Macs either support usb boots or they don't.

sideways · #21 7th January 2009, 06:23 PM

Feeling more helpful today

, so

Soshin:

You should be able to fit a reasonable install into 2GB. You'll probably not want to use a swap partition on the stick. If you don't want to experiment with package selection yourself then the easiest method is to install from a livecd, the F10 i686 Gnome LiveCD uses 2.1gb of disk space in a 3GB partition and a vlc install from rpmfusion will bring in another 45mb of rpm packages. You can then remove quite a few language packs in the install, since the LiveCD has to cater for an international audience and includes support for many asian languages for example which requires over 100mb of rpms. To see which rpm packages are using most space type

Code:

rpm -qa --qf "%10{SIZE}\t%{NAME}\n" | sort -n

The Omega LiveCD already includes the media players and codecs you can try installing that, boot it up and type 'df -hT /' to see how much space the install will require.

But if space is a prime requirement then Fedora is not the best solution, you should install something like slax which only takes ~200mb and has the excellent mplayer with codes peinstalled.

LinuxGlobe:

I posted a link above to apple support site where they mention that usb booting became possible with th G4 series od Macs, so for older models I think you're out of luck. If yours does support usb boot then just transfer the ppc image to a usb disk either by shrinking it to less than 4gb using isomaster as described for x86_64 dvd in post #2, or use a usb disk larger than 4gb and format it with ext2/3 so that the 4.3GB ppc dvd image will fit (fat32 will only allow files up to 4gb)

storlied · #22 17th January 2009, 03:25 AM

I don't get it, I've taken the full dvd install image and used liveusbcreator to put it onto the usb (instead of the live cd iso) and it doesn't boot.

StephenH · #23 17th January 2009, 03:40 AM

Have you checked out this page? https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_t...d_use_Live_USB

Please look at the troubleshooting section.

I had a problem with creating a bootable USB stick until I tried first with another distribution (Pupeee) which set the USB stick up for booting. I wasn't happy with Pupeee, so I wiped it and overwrote the installation with Fedora. It worked for me. If all else fails, you could try that method.

sideways · #24 17th January 2009, 02:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by storlied

I don't get it, I've taken the full dvd install image and used liveusbcreator to put it onto the usb (instead of the live cd iso) and it doesn't boot.

That doesn't work, it didn't work in F9 either. The liveusb tools are really supposed to be for the livecd only, it's just a useful trick that it happens to transfer boot.iso as well.

So you have to transfer the boot.iso image with liveusbcreator (if F10 isn't in the drop down list just use F9, it doesn't matter) and then manually copy the dvd image to the stick. You also need to create a directory called 'images' on the usbstick and copy install.img to it (which is on the dvd in the images directory)

see post #1

sanjay_ankur · #25 31st January 2009, 11:28 AM

hi,

I get a message saying that the partition is not marked as bootable. How do I do that?

Code:

[root@Ankur ~]# livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr /mnt/iso/images/boot.iso /dev/sdb1
Verifying image...
/mnt/iso/images/boot.iso:   cb50284232b298cbe96f3df7078e51af
Fragment sums: ce3178fad52df3d187ed9d6c5411c70dd9842c58d52c161f6f2d21a74d3e
Fragment count: 20
Checking: 100.0%

The media check is complete, the result is: PASS.

It is OK to use this media.
Partition isn't marked bootable!
You can mark the partition as bootable with 
    # /sbin/parted /dev/sdb
    (parted) toggle N boot
    (parted) quit
Cleaning up to exit...

regards,

Ankur

sideways · #26 31st January 2009, 04:27 PM

hmm, I mistakenly thought that was automatic in F10 livecd-tools

You can follow the instructions given using parted instead, ie type (as root)

Code:

parted /dev/sdb -s 'toggle 1 boot'

sanjay_ankur · #27 31st January 2009, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sideways

hmm, I mistakenly thought that was automatic in F10 livecd-tools

You can follow the instructions given using parted instead, ie type (as root)

Code:

parted /dev/sdb -s 'toggle 1 boot'

hi,

so finally this is what my usb disk looks like..

1. the iso
2. images/install.img

there isnt any boot file.. so its not booting..

regards,

Ankur

sideways · #28 31st January 2009, 08:46 PM

You now need to rerun the livecd-iso-to-disk command, it failed first time because of the "not bootable" error.

nyjetshead · #29 1st February 2009, 12:01 AM

I'm looking for a bootloader CD that can boot the stick for machines without USB boot capabilities.
Anyone have a boot from CD solution for this?

richjoh · #30 14th February 2009, 10:04 PM

Correction: OK I get it now... those are 2 commands below. one to mount the iso the other is a livecd commmand. My bad...no response needed.

My attempts to run the original cmd posted fails. I'm running Fedora 10 command prompt and follow the original instructions. The command response is the --reset-mbr is an unrecognized option??? How do I fix this in order to get a bootable usb Fedora 10. I have another PC that I need to do an install.

Sideways post also mentions to "unmount the disk first"... Which disk? The usb, the dvd, the iso...

PHP Code:


			
[root@localhost ~]# mount -o loop /media/PATRIOT/Fedora/Fedora-10-i386-DVD /mnt/iso livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr /mnt/iso/images/boot.iso /dev/sdd1
mount: unrecognized option '--reset-mbr'