CD app to USB thumbdrive

you'd just replace /dev/hdc with /dev/sda1/folder/desired

the flash drive should show up as sd# , you'd just have to find out if theres any other sata drives in the pc and if so, adjust the letter for the flash drive accordingly.

I think we are making this harder than it should be.

I downloaded a copy of puppy and did a quick comparison.

The first step is to copy all the files from the cd to the stick. Here is where they have broken with tradition and used an isolinux folder,(maybe they are on root.. Borrowed xp machine and I have never used magiciso before.. little unsure.. it says it's a folder, but no little + unlike the compaq and rr-whatsit dirs.) but that shouldn't matter.. we can work inside it and see. If it does matter we can always put those files on the root of the stick.

from the slax page


Looks easy enough... but we have an isolinux.bin file.. so I would be tempted to change it's name to isolinux.bak to get it out of the way before the next step. Don't think we need the boot.cat file either so try the same trick.



And that should do it. good luck.

(now I confused myself too. If I had a usb bootable machine I would try it out to verify it will work that way.. I know what I'm getting at, even if nobody else understands me... suppose I should now take the iso I have on my stick home to my lovely debian box and check it out properly.. I forgot how nasty xp is to work with. )

Janrocks,

Would be interested to know if you tried it on your debian box, and if it worked....

If so, I'll certainly try it on this end, although there will be plenty of questions from me....as I said, I'm a linux moron to say the least.

Thanks!

Well I've made a drive like I tried to explain earlier.

I can't boot my debian heap from it... no boot from usb or zip option in bios..

Only machine I have access to test with is an amd dual core, twin graphics and the whole shebang.. I have no idea if this software will boot that, but it's worth a go tomorrow when I have access to it.

You guys know how far I've got with this project. Maybe it would help to show you how I got this far.

Again, I know nothing about linux; I got these instructions from a co-worker of mine:

-----------------------------------------

1) Format your drive as FAT (I tried both FAT16 and FAT32. For this
application it doesn't appear to make any difference.)

2) Extract your iso so that your directory structure looks like
extractediso.jpg (can't figure out how to post the pic, but it shows the compaq folder, isolinux folder, and system file.)

3) Copy the system file to the root of your usb drive.

4) Copy the compaq folder to the root of your usb drive.

5) Copy all the files inside the isolinux folder to the root of your
usb drive.

6) Rename the file called isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg.

7) Download and save the syslinux.exe somewhere onto your PC.

Go out to a command prompt, navigate to where you saved the
syslinux.exe file and run the command syslinux -ma <usbdriveletter:>

When you're done, the root of your USB drive should look like
filelist.jpg (this pic shows the compaq folder, and the following files:
boot.cat
initrd.img
isolinux.bin
ldlinux.sys
packrd.sh
sample.msg
syslinux.cfg
system
unpackrd.sh
vmlinuz)

---------------------------------------

He tried it on a non-HP machine and thought that was why he was getting the error, but when I tried it on an HP machine, I got the same error. When I emailed him that I was getting the same error, he responded:

---------------------------------------

I think I know what's wrong. When this utility boots (anything
linux-based boots this way) it loads in stages roughly like this:

1) Load boot files
2) Load memory manager
3) Allocate memory for a RAM disk
4) Unzip operating system to RAM disk (that's what it's doing when you
see it loading a file called vmlinuz with all the dots scrolling across
the screen)
5) Plug-and-play all the hardware.

Once it flashes "ready" on the screen, the OS is loaded and all the
detectable devices have been detected. So it's working so far as making
the drive bootable and getting into linux.

When it goes to "Loading Drivers..." and hangs, that's when it's
kicking off the linux scripts to load the test modules and GUI parts of
the HP diagnostic program. There's some mapping information in these
files that tell the program to look to the CD-ROM drive for the files
that it needs. Since those files are present on CD but on our USB
drives, it hangs and then pops up the error that we're getting.

We'll mess with it some more next week. There might be a way to
redirect the program to look for the files on the USB drive instead of a
CD.

---------------------------------------

Haven't heard anything since.

I really appreciate all the time taken to get this to work. It isn't just anybody that would take the time to do this for someone they don't even know.

I sent an email to a supposedly linux guru in our server group. Told him what I was trying to do. He said he would help, but haven't heard from him since.

Thanks again.

I'm working on a very similar idea. We use the same software for testing systems, but we use a PXE setup for imaging/testing. We have most of our tools running across the network except for this one.

What I've done is expanded the initrd.img and mounted it with the loopback adapter. I then changed the fstab to mount an .iso of the disk from our server. I still get the same error message as boutcrazy.

I think once his issue gets solved, mine won't be far behind. But, if anyone has any ideas, I'm open to trying them.

Thanks.

Still working on it.. Attempt 2 gave a similar error so looking now for the files that load the GUI .

Progress is slow because I only have one shot a day at booting the stick.

edit
attempt 3 also a fail (sorry.. I can't post any fail logs because it's not possible from a machine with only ntfs drives in it, and as it's not mine I can't do too much messing with it) Next move is to try a variant on this method http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/inde ... lash_Drive

edit 3/11

Sorry.. got totally buried in a heap of work. Haven't forgotten about the project, just lacking time to visit friend who has usb bootable hardware.