[syslinux] How to make a bootable USB flash drive manually?

[Martin T]

Gene Cumm, Paul Bolle and Gert Hulselmans thank you for replies!

At first I would like to boot from .iso. As I use SYSLINUX 3.63,
according to this
document(http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/SYSLINUX#INITRD_initrd_file),
"INITRD" statement does not work(just to be sure I tried this and
indeed initrd.gz did not load). However, it shouldn't harm if location
of initrd.gz is specified using initrd=initrd.gz under APPEND.

I tried with following:

root at martin-desktop:~# cat /media/ubuntu/syslinux.cfg
DEFAULT ubuntu

LABEL ubuntu
LINUX vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=initrd.gz boot=casper
iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu-8.04.4-desktop-i386.iso
root at martin-desktop:~#

..and it loaded to Ubuntu! Basically problem is solved now. However, I
tried to simplify configuration of syslinux.cfg and ended up with
this:

root at martin-desktop:~# cat /media/ubuntu/syslinux.cfg
DEFAULT vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=initrd.gz boot=casper
iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu-8.04.4-desktop-i386.iso
root at martin-desktop:~#

This works as well. As I understand, DEFAULT points to executable
kernel image(vmlinuz) and APPEND adds parameters to kernel: "initrd="
points to initial ramdisk and "iso-scan/filename=" teaches Ubuntu
distribution, that it should load from .iso image. Am I correct, that
booting from .iso image needs to be supported by distribution boot
scripts? In other words "iso-scan/filename=" might not always work? In
addition, what does "boot=casper" do?

regards,
Martin

2011/1/29 Gert Hulselmans <gerth at zytor.com>:
> Martin T wrote:
>> 10) create /media/syslinux.cfg file
>>
>> root at martin-desktop:~# printf "default vmlinuz\nappend
>> initrd=initrd.gz\n" > /media/syslinux.cfg
>> root at martin-desktop:~#
>>
> Your syslinux.cfg file is wrong when you want to do boot from the ISO.
>
> Use this:
> ========================================
> DEFAULT ubuntu
>
> LABEL ubuntu
> LINUX /vmlinuz
> INITRD /initrd.gz
> APPEND boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu-8.04.4-desktop-i386.iso
> ========================================
>
> - Gert Hulselmans
>
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