Ubuntu :: Utility To Netboot Instead Of Booting With A Usb Stick?
Jul 30, 2010
I have a bootable usb stick with a Linux utility on it. After poking around for a bit I figured out the boot order:
isolinux.bin <--reads isolinux.cfg
loads the kernel: SA.1
loads initrd: SA.2
then depending on the options you select it boots one of two .iso files I want this utility to netboot instead of booting with a usb stick; is there a way I can package isolinux.bin, isolinux.cfg, the kernel and initramfs, iso's and all the other files on the root of the usb stick into one iso that can be tftp'd to the host which would then boot something that would extract the iso to ramdisk and start booting so that isolinux would run as if all the files were locally stored on CD/usb stick?
How would I go installing Fedora to a USB stick and then booting from it?Does my BIOS have to support booting from a USB stick? because I don't think I have an option for that.So can someone explain to me how installing to and booting from a USB stick works?
I have a problem booting anything from USB stick on my IBM Thinkpad T42. It used to run normally, I could even install Windows or Linux from it, but now it stopped working. This particular concern is about booting freshly installed Xubuntu version 9.04 off a Kingston 4GB flash stick. I've installed Xubuntu using usb-create program directly from a booted live cd. Installation went fine and all the options in BIOS are setup correctly (I think). In boot menu in BIOS the stick is recognized correctly and + appears in front of it. Stick is selected as primary boot device. BIOS usb support is also enabled.
Now when I power on the computer, it reads something from the stick and stops right after displaying: SYSLINUX 3.63 Debian-2008=07=15 EBIOS ... etc... Then nothing happens and the text stays on like this.
-I could use a hand in installing opensuse on my 2009 Intel Macbook
-I need to use a USB stick for the install, my optical drive doesn't work.
-I am trying to reformat my macbook to run 64-bit opensuse 11.3 instead of Apple's proprietary operating system, OS X
-So I started here: Chapter1.Installation with YaST
-And in this article, under section 1.1. Choosing the Installation Media, i found this sub-section: Booting the LiveCD from an USB Stick.
-So i followed those steps to create a bootable USB stick in Terminal, and i got an error in Terminal and was unable to go any further;
-this was the error in Terminal: dd: bs: illegal numeric value
Would anyone know what the error means, and what i should have typed instead? Is it because my USB stick is generic instead of being a specific type like a U3 stick?
I am trying something: I would like to access to some data stored on a usb stick while I am booting to the kernel using the "init=/bin/sh" parameters.Is that possible ?My USB stick is detected when I do 'cat /var/log/messages.log | grep sdb". I had to "modprobe usb-storage".Quote:localhot kernel : sdb: sdb1localhost kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable diskBut I still can't get it mounted.Quote:mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist"
I'm trying to set up a netbook with Ubuntu for my computer-challenged Mother. I downloaded the image file to the download section of the new netbook, created a USB stick to boot from and then restarted the computer, pressing F2 in order to change the boot order. Using the "+" key I was able to put [Removable Dev.] on top: "1st Boot Device", but, and here's the thing, it is disabled: "A devince enclosed in the parenthesis has been disab led in the corresponding type menu." I do not understand this, nor do I know what to do
I work with many different PCs with Windows XP and Windows 7 deployed, and I'm trying to consolidate my stacks of CDs into a single USB drive. I'd like to be able to boot off it and have a choice of a few options: A persistent Linux install for troubleshooting, the Win7 install CD, and the WinXP install CD.
I'm aware that most USB sticks can't be partitioned, but after much trial and error I've found one that can have its removable bit flipped, be treated as a USB hard drive and partitioned. I can set up 4 primary partitions and an initial test with a boot cd image on the first partition seems to work on 3 of my 4 home PCs... on (only) one of them though, Grub gives a 'Missing MBR-helper' error. All my systems, even the one not booting correctly, see the partitions as valid in both Linux and Windows, and I've successfully retrieved data from all of them. My guess is that it's a BIOS quirk on that particular machine, but it puts the whole idea in jeopardy... if it doesn't work on one of my own PCs, who's to say it will work on other PCs?
I'd like to salvage the partition idea if I can, maybe someone has run into this before... But if it's just not feasible, I read that Grub can boot image files under certain circumstances... I'm wondering if it's possible to have Grub (or any other bootloader) run the Win7 and WinXP CDs as image files? That way they could all sit on a single partition on the USB stick.
I haven't yet tried any other bootloaders, for all I know I could try something else and get things going.
Here's the idea -- be able to boot slackware 13.1 DVD from a USB stick, but without using anything like an initrd or loading the contents of the slackware install all into memory first. So the USB stick is behaving like a hard drive (but with one disadvantage, just don't take the usb stick out while you're using it!). It has the advantage of saving on memory though .
In the above thread I had this idea working ok but only with slackware 13 and earlier. In fact I still have the CF card with it on, and it works fine. Only snag is it won't work with the newer 13.1.
Right now, I'm trying to use qemu for the following (not what I wrote above!). The idea is to use qemu to install a minimum slackware 13.1 to the USB stick, set it up and then boot from the USB stick itself (so I'm using the USB stick as the storage medium as opposed to say a hard drive image file).
So let's say (this is what I'm doing) I boot slackware 13.1 (32 bit) and make two partitions;
Code:
I then do a minimal installation of slackware (just "A" and jed from "AP"). Lilo is not installed as later I'll be using GRUB2 to try to boot.
I'm using a slackware package, grub-1.97-beta4-i486-1.tgz for slackware 13.1/GRUB2.
I then boot off the slackware 13.1 DVD but at the boot screen I choose to boot from /dev/sda2 which is the linux install I created earlier. Success, it boots ok and I can get into the slackware 13.1 install on the USB disk (which is /dev/sda2).
I then label the ext3 partition by using e2label;
Code:
And also change /etc/fstab;
Code:
Now I need some sort of bootloader to put onto the USB stick so I don't need the DVD any more. To do this, I'm trying to use GRUB2.
But here's the problem!
When I install slackware onto the USB stick using qemu, that partition is /dev/sda2. It's the first usb/storage medium that slackware detects so it gets the name sdaX. (X=1, fat partition, X=2 EXT3 linux).
But here's the problem. Suppose I take the USB stick over to another PC with a hard drive already inside it. Slackware would see the hard drive installed in that PC as (say) /dev/sda1 and the USB stick would then become the second drive, so /dev/sdbX (X=1, fat partition, X=2 EXT3 linux).
If I specify a specific device (lets say /dev/sda2) then it won't work in another system because if I take the example above, another PC with a hard drive installed in it the USB stick becomes /dev/sdb2 and the GRUB2 boot program would be expecting /dev/sda2 which won't work. What I need to do is to somehow find the install, the root on the USB stick automatically without having to specify it manually.
So here's what I've tried with grub (First thing I did was to install grub with grub-install /dev/sda).
Code:
Snag is it dosen't work :-( I get this booting from the USB stick:
Code:
If I try this:
Code:
I get a very similar result ....
Code:
So what I'm wondering is .... if the "search" line in grub is doing the searching for the root GRUB2 needs to use to boot from - how can I tell the next line, "linux /boot/vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.33.4-smp root=...." where to boot from? I can't use /dev/sda2 or /dev/sdb2 because if I try the usb stick in a different PC the stick will be a different device name. Trying to use LABEL= or /dev/disk/by-label/USB/ also dosen't work .
I am getting a "No devices matches MBR identifier 0x8c71ad6e!" message along with a reboot in 120 seconds message. This occurs after kernel load and at the start of openSUSE boot.
I have checksum checked both images after download. I have attempted the install on CD and USB stick with both images and the result is always the same.
I've included a screen image on my site: No Devices Matches MBR Identifier | Badzilla
I probably have not done any serious programming for 20 years, not counting a little HTML.
I stumbled onto an old FREESPIRE disk my bro sent me several years back -- and tried installing it on a Sony Vaio PCG FRV 28 I had crashed a few years back. The Sony bios is still aboard, but old enough to not have USB "booting" as part of the boot menu. I don't even know if one can easily hack into the BIOS on an old sony Vaio but changing the BIOS would solve lot of problems.
Does anyone have any ideas or certain knowledge on rewriting or modifying the Master Boot Code or an idea on making my USB [with Ubuntu or any other Linux implementation visible] and bootable to the bios on powerup?
cpuid utility is not compiled with U9.04 and the utility is not available as a package with synaptic - other distributions have it available as rpm . url
I have been trying to install Ubuntu by network booting, I used tftp in Windows in another pc, and the target boots successfully but fails to download from any archive mirror, I'm not sure what goes wrong.
Well, I'm trying to do is, my friend's HP-mini fails to boot to Windows, and BIOS also gives error-messages, the thing is that my friend has important data on his netbook, it has only one drive, no cd-rom, and it doesn't support USB-booting, so I was thinking if I get to access an Ubuntu, I will be able to backup his data and install Windows, I would use anything that would let me copy files.
after the third time downloading the netbook and installing to sd and or usb i decided to check the md5 but where is the md5 the new download pages bites.. wheres all the mirrors/ the new desighn is a good at waisting space //wheres the md5? bring back ftp style downloads?
I tried to build a HP DL380 today, and the drive wasn't detected. Suspecting hardware issues, I tried it on a 360, same issue. We built these machines before with no problems I used the 8.10 install on our PXE server, and it worked fine. I suspect it's related to the upcoming 8.04.4 release, perhaps a new kernel has been inserted and has missed the cciss driver? Booting using 8.04, and running find /|grep cciss, doesn't find anything. I can't remember the last hp 8.04 build I did, but it was in the last month or so. Doing it with 8.10 finds the driver. (this is the 32 bit install)
I have just installed ubuntu 10.04 via a netboot install.When my system reboots I only have the command line - no gui. Could someone kindly inform me what command I need to run in order to get a GUI
I am very interested in using CentOS as a server for diskless PXE booting and was wondering if this was a possibility. I have a working DHCP/TFTP/HTTP system set up and going and I can get my client machine to boot a linux image without any problems. Ideally I would like the diskless machines to be able to immediately load an image through PXE and store their own filesystems on the server through the use of NFS.I heard about system-config-netboot and got very excited because it sounded like something that would help me set up a diskless system. However, after doing some research I have heard from many that it is generally buggy and unlikely to work. When I tried using it I got the error: "The diskless directory must be NFS exported and contain a boot sub-directory"Even though my diskless directory WAS nfs exported and most definitely contained a boot sub-directory. Does anyone have any advice on using this tool, or using CentOS as a server for diskless clients?
I am trying to boot up Vista Home Premium from USB since my internal (bootable) CD-RW drive has failed and I cannot boot up Vista from CD.
I have Ubuntu running in the Windows partition and all my windows files are in there so I don't want to do a full installation of Ubuntu (yet).
I formatted an 8GB USB stick into two partitions
I then copied over to /dev/sdb1 all files from a Vista CD using an external CD-RW drive (which is not recognised as bootable on USB port).
In my Dell BIOS settings I changed the boot sequence to be bootable from USB disk first.
then I tried to reboot Vista installation in the USB stick.
But I get this message ..."this is not a bootable disk .. insert a bootable floppy"
So I could not boot up the Vista installation files.
When the boot flag is "on" in a GParted created partition does this make the partition DOS bootable for Vista installation?
My question is - What utility in Ubuntu 10.10 can create a DOS bootable partition on a USB stick? It seems that the MBR might have been overwritten when I installed Grub 2.0.
I can Grub dual boot between Windows and Ubuntu but I can't get very far with Windows .. stalls in safe mode.
So a Vista repair is called for. I would prefer not to reinstall Vista afresh at this stage.
There is a thread here explaining how to repair Vista bootloader
[url]
But it assumes that I am able to boot from CD-RW drive.
I am attempting a netboot installation and I aw following the documentation found here My problem is that given my dhcpd.conf I am met with the errors listed below. I have checked to make sure that none of the conditions that the error warns about possible causes are currently in effect on my system.
I am trying to use netboot functionality available in GRUB(legacy). I just compiled GRUB with --enable-diskless and --enable-rtl8139 options and installed in USB flash drive. I am getting the grub prompt when tried to boot from that USB. But not getting boot command..what i need to do to enable boot command??
i was writing a .img file to my usb stick with ImageWriter, but it didn't seem to do anything so i clicked the close gtk button and pulled the stick out of my pc. now my pc gives my an when i try to open the stick. is there any way to fix this. I can use win xp pro, win xp media center, win 7 starter, ubuntu 9.10 and ubuntu 10.04
I'm about to ditch Freenas as my NAS software and make it an Ubuntu server box. The mainboard is an Asus AT3ION-T dual core Atom board. Freenas runs happily from USB stick. I have no optical device to install Ubuntu from and would like to install Ubuntu Server to a USB stick.
When I start bluej and try to open files from my memory stick the memory stick is not available. Is there any way that I can open files directly in bluej from my memory stick.
i decided to install ubuntu in my PC,i downloaded the .ISO image and i installed it in my USB. After trying it and all that i observed that i really liked it and i decided to formally install it to my computer in the hard drive. When i reached the partition thing,i selected to dual boot with Vista and select between each them in every startup,when i clicked FORWARD it gave me an error which i did not read(because,again im a noob) so i clicked cancel.
Today i wanted to go through the process again and now really install it,so again i went to the time zone part and i clicked forward but then,instead of taking me straight to the partition phase,it appeard a window saying "The installer has detected that the following disks have mounted partitions: /dev/sda ...." I clicked yes,to unmount this partitions so it took me to the partition thing,once there i selected the option to install Ubuntu with Vista and select between them i neach startup,then i clicked forward and went to the username/computer name process,once i finished i continued to the next part,the installation,but i selected to import all of my WIndows VIsta default user data,after that i clicked forward and went to the installation process,i went down stairs to eat soemthing while it finishes,i came back and it was finished,it asked me to reboot so i clicked in Restart Now.
When it tried to boot,appeared an error saying: Error: no such devide found: #################### Grub load(or something like that) grub rescue: and it was a command line,since there i havent been able to boot into vista or Ubuntu,im really scared because is the first thing related to OS installing ive done,so i booted my USB and ran the trial and right now im trying to find out what to do from that trial version. I just went to the INSTALL UBUNTU 10.04 LTS application under the System>Administration Menu and found out that in the partition phase the Install and allow to select between both systems in eahc startup option,i dont know what to do,i foudn out that my HD has still all its data(MUsic/Videos/Folders/Programs/ect.)its just that i cannot boot from it. Also in GParted it appears as /dev/sda1/ and a warning icon besides it,also when i go into information, thers this warning there [URL]
I am in a situation to boot fedora 15 live cd in to command line mode, not graphical mode, for some testing purpose. how to change argument during booting mode
I've been searching the forums for any posts that cover my problem, but most of the booting problems I've found are different from mine.Anywho, the situation:ell laptop, 2 partitions, first is Windows XP, second is Ubuntu Karmic.Whenever I turn on my computer the first loading screen that shows up (is this the BIOS? Excuse my little knowledge of this stuff), before GRUB loads, is really slow. It takes about a minute to load.However, whenever I restart from my XP partition, it suddenly loads fast! And this does not happen when restarting from my Ubuntu partition or anything
I am using a linux kernel 2.6.36 using mips architecture. I have succesfully booted the machine through Flash memory, but it is not booting through nfs. It is getting stuck at the stage where the image starts loading. In short the vmlinux.img file is being copied properly to nfsroot but the image is not loading.
In recent versions of Ubuntu, it is possible to click on the top right corner to choose to shut, down, log out, etc as opposed to having buttons that need to be clicked on followed by other buttons. Ubuntu's current utility works by clicking on the top right corner which shows a list without opening a new mini-window or anything allowing me to select however it is that I want to change the state of my computer if it wasn't obvious as to what I am referring to.
I have ubuntu 9.10 installed on one partition and wanted to make 2 other partition. One to be able to put all my video files on that partition and another one for my home folder. What is the best way and utility to use? Is gparted the way to go on the live CD (or usb stick in my case) and then do the partitions that way?
Total size of HD is 320gb. how much room is needed for the OS , 4gb?? How much for the home folder, 16gb? I know the biggest partition is going to be the last one for my video files which I think should be 300 gb. Or should I just do two partition and leave my home folder and videos in the same partitions? [URL]
I'm working on setting up a new NAS. I installed Karmic desktop on a 160 GB HD using the default settings.
Now I've added three 1TB drives and want to make them a RAID-5 array with LVM on that, and 1 ext4 partition. I want to use LVM so I can add drives and expand the array later.
So far I've been using Disk Utility (Palimpsest Disk Utility) and it's been great! A wonderful addition to Karmic! I got the RAID-5 array setup with no problems using disk utility. So now I have a 2000 GB raid-5 array setup in Disk Utility and I need to get LVM setup.
Problem is: I don't see any sign of LVM in Disk Utility. I've been googling all night and I can't find any documentation for setting up LVM in Disk Utility, just people saying that it's supported.
I tried installing the lvm2 package, rebooting, and then looking around again. No luck.
So, what am I missing? Should there be LVM options in Disk Utility? Where is it? Is there a better/easier way to configure lvm?
