I've recently created LiveUSB sticks from the Gentoo LiveDVD
and LiveCD. (I'm trying to put Gentoo on an OQO.) It was
pretty easy -- I was able to use ext3 even -- and I thought
I'd share how I did that with everyone.
The three steps are:
. Format the stick.
. Put the Gentoo stuff on there.
. Slap on the boot loader and configure it.
Prepare The Stick
-----------------
For the DVD, you need a big stick -- for the CD, not so much.
Let's say the stick is at `/dev/sda`. Using fdisk, create one
partition on it, marking it bootable. (That part is explained
all over the place.) When that is over, run
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
and then put the master boot record on the device:
cat /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sda
Copy The Gentoo Material
------------------------
Mount the ISO of your choice -- say it's at `/media/iso` --
along with `/dev/sda1` at `/media/usb`. All you have to do is:
cp -pPR /media/iso/* /media/usb
Setup The Bootloader
--------------------
This is where my process differs from the tutorials for
Gentoo. I lifted the idea from the Pentoo distribution (now
defunct). You install the `extlinux` loader _to the directory_
where the bootable stuff -- so it's okay to leave it all in
isolinux.
cd /media
cp usb/isolinux/isolinux.cfg usb/isolinux/extlinux.conf
extlinux -i usb/isolinux
There will be a `extlinux.sys` file in there along side the
configuration file after you install.
That's it. I wanted to go with ext3 so I could have links and
a large filesystem -- FAT16 won't take more than 2GB -- and
I'm glad this was so easy with Gentoo 2007.0! It's too bad
the tutorials out there don't make it clear the progress that
has been made in the last year. USB booting is great -- I will
likely exploit the ease of 'remastering' my image to good
effect when installing on my OQO -- and I hope this email
helps others out there who are interested in the topic.
--
_jsn
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