<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
Martin wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4ADDC60A.8010800@ml1.co.uk" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Tony Shaw wrote:
[---]
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">up and died so we need a way of installing Linux on to it with out using
a cd/dvd. The laptop has both usb ports and an sd card slot, the bios
says that it should be able to boot from a flashdrive. Thanks for any
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
You can certainly boot Linux from a USB memory stick if your BIOS
supports booting from USB.
For Mandriva, they now cleverly contrive a 'hybrid' iso that can be
burnt to a CD/DVD and also the same image can be "dd"-ed directly onto a
USB memory stick (or even any hdd).
Try:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.mandriva.com/en/download/free">http://www.mandriva.com/en/download/free</a>
Download whichever iso and then:
dd if=whatever_mandriva.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=1M
where "X" is whatever letter is assigned to your USB drive, for example
/dev/sdb
You want the entire device so don't worry about any of the partition
numbers (such as /dev/sdX1, /dev/sdX2, etc). The bs=1M is important to
get a good write speed onto your memory stick.
Note that you can't do that trick with all "iso"s. The dd will work, but
you need the iso format to be right which is what Mandriva has contrived.
That may well work on a sd/mmc flashdrive, again if your BIOS supports that.
Do any of the other distros offer hybrid "iso"s now?
Good luck,
Martin
</pre>
</blockquote>
Thanks for the help, I am going to try my Mandriva Move 2009.0 iso file
first just to see it it works & then if it does I can then go on to
try and install Mandriva 2009.0 its self via an 8gb flash drive.<br>
<br>
Tony Shaw<br>
</body>
</html>