Monday, November 24, 2008

install puppy linux on thumb drive without cdrom

install puppy linux on thumb drive without cdrom

Puppy linux can run as live CD mode and also boot from USB. In order
to make a "linux can be taken anywhere" system, i want to install it
on thumb
drive. The standard method is to download .iso file and burn a
bootable CD. Run the install app when boot up from CD. But the problem
is : i dont
have writable cd. i just want to intstall it on the USB disk.

it is simple:

1. format thumb drive as fat filesystem.
i am not sure if it must be fat16 format. because "no bootable
operating system" error occurred when i use fat32 instead. For linux
the comamnd is
mksys.dos -t fat16 /dev/sdb1 . if you are using windows the following
tools may need.

2. get the .iso file and extract it, and copy all the following files
to thumb drive.

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 2048 2008-11-02 10:22
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1008 2008-10-18 15:03 boot.msg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1268722 2008-11-02 10:22 initrd.gz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 1026 1026 12241 2008-11-01 13:34 isolinux.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 112 2008-11-02 10:22 isolinux.cfg
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 95563776 2008-11-02 10:22 pup_411.sfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1627180 2008-11-02 10:18 vmlinuz

3. change the filename of isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg and delete the
context "pmedia=cd"

4. run syslinux /dev/sdb1 (if this is the thumb drive)

5. reboot with BIOS configured to "boot from USB disk"

the booting is a bit slow, but it will run fast when boot up. because
all the image is load to RAM during bootup stage. linux is running as
mode. so it is fast , but as you known the storage media is USB which
is flash device, so the stored process may waste a lot of time and
it is not allowed to write to flash too frequently. currently i dont
have enough time to focus on how does it optimize the system for the
media. anything to be focused ?
a. udev may need, because it will only create fs and device nod in
RAM, not USB disk.
b. check the block device driver
c. ?
d. how to create log
e. anything speciall for package management

anyway, it is a good and usefull linux distribution.

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