[syslinux] Linux on a USB Drive

[Gustavo Guillermo Pérez]

El Sábado, 27 de Mayo de 2006 09:44, Ben Everard escribió:
> Hi,
>
> I saw a post you made on a forum quite some time ago
> about booting linux off a USB drive with compatible
> bios via ISOlinux.  I'm currently trying to do the
> same thing and keep running into problems with my
> initrd.  This is probably caused by the fact that I
> don't really know what I'm doing!  I was wondering if
> you found any useful info on the net you could point
> me in the direction of.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
You can analize my initrd that do what you want at:

http://www.compunauta.com/forums/linux/instalarlinux/gentoo_live_en.html

This version of Gentoo Live DVD, allows you to do that, and plus reasemble the 
main ISO with your packages, in a few weeks may be we are going to release a 
fully XGL supported version, I use to carrie my home files and system on my 
20GB Hard Drive to everywhere :D.

If you don't want the system, just download the small boot iso (about 35MB) to 
get the name of the drivers, the proper order, and the retries and wait time 
before to guess there is no USB Hard Drive.

If the BIOS is supporting to boot from USB, probably the Drive will being 
setle before loading initrd (when bios init code finish), but if not, you 
should wait when loading the drivers, cause the drive needs to setle before 
scanning, mounting or doing I/O over them, if you just load the drivers and 
try to mount, you are too likely to have a race condition.

Using ISOLinux hardcoded for GFXBoot, but the config and initrd should be the 
same.

:)
-- 
Gustavo Guillermo Pérez
Compunauta uLinux
www.compunauta.com