Differences between revisions 5 and 6

How to boot DyneBolic from USB

The following instructions explain how to make a usb storage device (like usb stick) bootable with grub and install dyne:bolic on it so that you can run it from USB, without harddisk or CD.

If you are looking for instructions about ["Nesting"], on how to save your personal data on a USB stick, then this is not the right place. This page documents on how to put the WHOLE SYSTEM on the usb stick.

The WHOLE SYSTEM requires a USB stick of at least zzzzzz MB. If your USB stick is smaller than that, try ["Nesting"] instead.

little briefing:

the boot system consists of a bootloader, in our case grub
the bootloader loads a kernel, in our case linux
the kernel loads a ramdisk, in our case dyne:II initrd.gz
the ramdisk will look for a dyne/ dock

we keep both kernel and ramdisk in a dock and install grub

do the following operations from a running dyne:II DHORUBA 2.3 (i will assume the usb stick is recognized as /dev/sda)

Contrary to the following suggestions, it is probably not advised to use the EXT3 journaled filesystem on a flash/USB device. Journaling writes to the disk more often than necessary, which wears out the USB device more quickly. Use a non-journaled filesystem such as EXT2 (Linux only) or FAT32 (if you want to make your usb device readable outside of Linux). Read up on journaled vs non-journaled file systems and make an informed decision in your case.

partition the usb stick as a unique EXT3 journaled partition (or FAT32 to read the drive in windows):

Start the partition tool:
- ```
cfdisk /dev/sda
```
  - With cfdisk:
  - delete all partitions
  - create a new primary at maximum size
  - put the type to 83 (Linux)
  - write everything and quit
Format your drive:
- ```
mke2fs -j /dev/sda1 
```
Mount the drive:
- ```
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb 
```
Install grub:
- ```
grubconfig
```
  - (select the last item in the list and proceed)
Copy the dyne/ dock directory from the CD
- ```
rsync -Pr /mnt/cd1/dyne /mnt/usb/
```
  - (rsync is better than cp and we have a progressbar)

Your USB device is ready!

inside the boot/grub/menu.lst there are the default options to boot, they should work alltough some times they might need (hd0,0) to be changed to (hd1,0) depending on how the computer sees the usb...

-  ⇤ ← Revision 5 as of 2007-03-16 08:53:59 → 
  Size: 2413
  Editor: anonymous
  Comment: Added information that journaled filesystems are probably not good choices for USB devices; reformatted instruction list.
+   ← Revision 6 as of 2007-03-16 17:05:09 → ⇥
  Size: 2379
  Editor: anonymous
  Comment: Cleaned up ext3 warning phrasing
-Deletions are marked like this.
+Additions are marked like this.
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-Contrary to the following suggestions, it is probably not advised to use the EXT3 journaled filesystem on a flash/USB device.  The journaling results in more disk access than necessary, and results in wearing out the USB device more quickly.  It is preferrable to use a non-journaled filesystem such as EXT2 (Linux only) or FAT32 (if you want to make your usb device readable outside of Linux).  Read up on journaled vs non-journaled file systems and make an informed decision in your case.
+Contrary to the following suggestions, it is probably not advised to use the EXT3 journaled filesystem on a flash/USB device.  Journaling writes to the disk more often than necessary, which wears out the USB device more quickly.  Use a non-journaled filesystem such as EXT2 (Linux only) or FAT32 (if you want to make your usb device readable outside of Linux).  Read up on journaled vs non-journaled file systems and make an informed decision in your case.