Re: Installing Debian on USB sticks.

2011-02-10 Thread Jimmy Johnson 

Andrei Popescu wrote:

I've been playing a lot with USB installs lately. At the installing grub 
step you have to be careful to select the corect device, especially if 
you don't want to touch the laptop's HDD. And you might want to put /tmp 
on tmpfs. Other that that it's just a normal install.


Regards,
Andrei



Running the command 'cat /proc/partitions' will show you a list of 
partitions and devices just look for the device with the size of your 
USB drive.

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Jimmy Johnson

SimplyMEPIS Beta-2 - KDE 4.5.3 at sda9
Registered Linux User #380263


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Re: Installing Debian on USB sticks.

2011-02-09 Thread Brian 
On Tue 08 Feb 2011 at 20:29:21 +, James Allsopp wrote:

 Hi,
 Recently I placed the netinst i386 debian installer on an old USB stick
 using:
 zcat boot.img.gz  /dev/sdc

And then copied myselected.iso to the stick? You can save yourself some
work with

   cat myselected.iso  /dev/sdc

 and I've installed one machine using it. However yesterday I was trying
 to install debian itself on a USB stick and the installer found it could
 connect to a couple of the mirrors but that it couldn't find a correct
 version. Could this be due to the transition from lenny to squeeze?

A mirror problem, possibly. Trying again now would give an indication.
 
 I'm also wondering if this is the correct procedure for installing a
 working debian installation on USB stick. A problem I ran into yesterday
 was that I installed grub onto the MBR and overwrote the MBR on my
 laptop's HD. Fixed it now but would like to know how to get around that
 and install it to the USB stick.

Installing to a USB stick is no different from installing to any other
device. GRUB tells you where it installing itself. Just verify it is the
same device you partitioned.


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Installing Debian on USB sticks.

2011-02-08 Thread James Allsopp 
Hi,
Recently I placed the netinst i386 debian installer on an old USB stick
using:
zcat boot.img.gz  /dev/sdc

and I've installed one machine using it. However yesterday I was trying
to install debian itself on a USB stick and the installer found it could
connect to a couple of the mirrors but that it couldn't find a correct
version. Could this be due to the transition from lenny to squeeze?

I'm also wondering if this is the correct procedure for installing a
working debian installation on USB stick. A problem I ran into yesterday
was that I installed grub onto the MBR and overwrote the MBR on my
laptop's HD. Fixed it now but would like to know how to get around that
and install it to the USB stick.

My eventual goal is to have a USB debian install that my gf can use on
computers (i386 or newer architecture) at work, as they don't give out
install privileges.

Thanks for any advice.
Jim


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Re: Installing Debian on USB sticks.

2011-02-08 Thread Andrei Popescu 
On Ma, 08 feb 11, 20:29:21, James Allsopp wrote:
 Hi,
 Recently I placed the netinst i386 debian installer on an old USB stick
 using:
 zcat boot.img.gz  /dev/sdc
 
 and I've installed one machine using it. However yesterday I was trying
 to install debian itself on a USB stick and the installer found it could
 connect to a couple of the mirrors but that it couldn't find a correct
 version. Could this be due to the transition from lenny to squeeze?
 
Maybe. What installer are you using?

 I'm also wondering if this is the correct procedure for installing a
 working debian installation on USB stick. A problem I ran into yesterday
 was that I installed grub onto the MBR and overwrote the MBR on my
 laptop's HD. Fixed it now but would like to know how to get around that
 and install it to the USB stick.

I've been playing a lot with USB installs lately. At the installing grub 
step you have to be careful to select the corect device, especially if 
you don't want to touch the laptop's HDD. And you might want to put /tmp 
on tmpfs. Other that that it's just a normal install.

Regards,
Andrei
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Re: Installing Debian on USB sticks.

2011-02-08 Thread Bob 

On 02/09/2011 04:29 AM, James Allsopp wrote:

Hi,
Recently I placed the netinst i386 debian installer on an old USB stick
using:
zcat boot.img.gz  /dev/sdc

and I've installed one machine using it. However yesterday I was trying
to install debian itself on a USB stick and the installer found it could
connect to a couple of the mirrors but that it couldn't find a correct
version. Could this be due to the transition from lenny to squeeze?

I'm also wondering if this is the correct procedure for installing a
working debian installation on USB stick. A problem I ran into yesterday
was that I installed grub onto the MBR and overwrote the MBR on my
laptop's HD. Fixed it now but would like to know how to get around that
and install it to the USB stick.

My eventual goal is to have a USB debian install that my gf can use on
computers (i386 or newer architecture) at work, as they don't give out
install privileges.

Thanks for any advice.
Jim


The easiest / safest / most fool proof way is to perform the install on 
a machine with no harddrive, I don't do this because I have a bunch of 
install images ready to be pushed onto any drive or device


I take the image (from a non booted single partition system) with 
something like this

###

 img_dir=/mnt/smb_docs
 src_drv=/dev/sdX
 src_part_no=n

# identify partition label  UUID
 ls -la /dev/disk/by-uuid/
 e2label ${src_drv}${src_part_no}
# set image file name in the form of
# description, architecture, drive, boot loader, date, partition label, uuid
img_file_name=debian_squeeze_dsktp_686_sda1_GRUB2_11_02_03_DebianSqueezeX86_8000-4000-4000-4000-1200

# Mount source install
 echo ${src_drv}${src_part_no}
 echo ${img_dir}/img/${img_file_name}
 umount ${src_drv}${src_part_no}
 mkdir -p ${img_dir}/img/
 mkdir -p /mnt/src
 mount ${src_drv}${src_part_no} /mnt/src
 cd /mnt
# delete swap file (not usually installed on my images anyway)
#  some other host specific files
 rm -f /mnt/src/var/swap
 rm -f /mnt/src/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
 rm -f /mnt/src/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules
 rm -f /mnt/src/var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift

# Take the image
 ls ${img_dir}/img/${img_file_name}.tar.gz
 nice -n 19 tar czvf ${img_dir}/img/${img_file_name}.tar.gz ./src
 ls -la ${img_dir}/img/${img_file_name}.tar.gz

# I back up the boot sector  partition table for safety
 dd if=${src_drv} of=${img_dir}/img/mbr/mbr_${img_file_name}_446.ddimg 
bs=446 count=1
 dd if=${src_drv} of=${img_dir}/img/mbr/mbr_${img_file_name}_512.ddimg 
bs=512 count=1


# unmount  spin down drive (particularly if you're hot swapping)
 umount ${src_drv}*
 umount ${src_drv}*
 hdparm -y ${src_drv}
 hdparm -Y ${src_drv}
 hdparm -C ${src_drv}

###
I install the image like this
###


img_dir=/mnt/smb_docs
img_file_name=debian_squeeze_dsktp_686_sda1_GRUB2_11_02_03_DebianSqueezeX86_8000-4000-4000-4000-1200

 dst_drv=/dev/sdX
 part_no=n

 # for flash drives ideally leave the manufacturer partition table
 # it's probably aligned correctly so just change the ID to 83
 #  set the bootable flag
fdisk -cu ${dst_drv}

# format the partition (on Flash you probably want ext2 instead)
mkfs.ext4 -v ${dst_drv}${part_no} -L DebianSqueezeX86
tune2fs ${dst_drv}${part_no} -U 8000-4000-4000-4000-1200

# mount destination as ./src as that's the path in my .tar files
 mkdir -p /mnt/src
 mount ${dst_drv}${part_no} /mnt/src
 cd /mnt
 ls -la ${img_dir}/img/${img_file_name}.tar.gz
 nice -n 19 tar xzvf ${img_dir}/img/${img_file_name}.tar.gz
 rm -f /mnt/src/var/swap
 rm -f /mnt/src/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
 rm -f /mnt/src/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules
 rm -f /mnt/src/var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
# on a portable system this keeps network connections @ eth0  wlan0
 chmod -c 644 /lib/udev/write_*

# fix the /boot/grub/device.map and fstab on new drive
# so they point to the new drive
 ls -la /dev/disk/by-uuid/
 ls -la /dev/disk/by-id/
 cat /mnt/src/boot/grub/device.map
 vim /mnt/src/boot/grub/device.map
 vim /mnt/src/etc/fstab

# install grub, on first boot you may have to manually enter
# correct uuid then as root run update-grub2

 grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/src ${dst_drv}

 umount ${dst_drv}*
 umount ${dst_drv}*
 hdparm -y ${dst_drv}
 hdparm -Y ${dst_drv}
 hdparm -C ${dst_drv}

Your done.
This way I have a fully functioning install with all my preferences up 
and running in minutes, it's great for an experimental upgrade to sid or 
to push a web-server install onto a laptop while I play musical hardware.



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