Hello all,
One of the machines (a Dell Optiplex 320) in my heterogeneous collection
won't boot using grub, so I could not install using the downloadable
i486 iso. Instead I used the iso + syslinux to make a bootable usb
stick.
(1) Put the iso somewhere you have read access (I used t2-trunk/iso).
(2) Insert a usb stick and wait for it to settle (few seconds at most).
You can check that it has been detected using dmsg, which will also
identify its device name (e.g. /dev/sdb)
(3) If you don't have dosfstools installed, install the package now. If
you have important data on the stick, make a backup now because the
next step will erase them.
(4) mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sdb1. If the stick is < 4GB use -F 16.
(5) The mkdosfs command will create a FAT32 filesystem on the stick, hence the
warning at step 3.
(6) If you don't already have it, install syslinux.
(7) Install a syslinux master boot record: dd if=/usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin
of=/dev/sdb
(8) Mount the iso: mount -t iso9660 -o loop,ro t2-8.0-minimal-i486.iso
/mnt/cdrom
(9) Mount the usb stick: mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/stick
(10) Copy everything from the iso to the usb stick: cp -r /mnt/cdrom/*
/mnt/stick
(11) You can delete unwanted files from the stick at this point. This
is what mine contained after doing so:
2nd_stage.tar 8.0-trunk-generic-x86-i686-cross-linux
boot.catalog index.txt
2nd_stage_small.tar boot
disk1.txt ldlinux.sys
(12) You can unmount the iso at this point: umount /mnt/cdrom
(13) On the stick, create a file syslinux.cfg. Here are the contents of
the one I made:
default T2
timeout 150
prompt 1
say Booting T2 Linux (I hope!)
label T2
kernel /boot/vmlinuz_2.6.34.1-dist
append initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.34.1-dist.img
(14) Unmount the stick: umount /mnt/stick
(15) Install the bootloader: syslinux /dev/sdb1
(16) If you modify syslinux.cfg, rerun step 15.
(17) Try booting a machine using the stick. Obviously the machine must
be capable of booting from usb and you may need to mess with the
boot menu to enable usb booting.
(18) On my system the device for loading the second stage (the usb
stick) was not found and I had to enter /dev/sdb1 in response to the
prompt: "Enter number or device file name (default=1)". Some moaning
and griping about not being able to find an ext4 or ext2 filesystem on
the device then followed, but I _was_ offered a list of second stage tar
files to choose. Having chosen, I got a prompt and was able to install
as normal using stone.
I hope this helps someone else. My knowledge of the boot process, boot
loaders etc is non-existant. I cobbled together this method based on
instructions from the following places:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml
http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/SYSLINUX#Linux
and, of course, by looking inside misc/archive/iso2stick.sh.
If there are T2 (and linux booting) experts out there who can point out
the deficiencies in these instructions, please do so. I am willing to
contribute these instructions to the T2 documentation, if someone will
tell me how I may do so.
Cheers,
Roger
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