[Gllug] Re: Bootable pen drives again

[Christopher Currie]

On  Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:42:01 +0100 (CET)
 salsaman at xs4all.nl wrote:

> You might want to check this out:
>
> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mandriva-Flash-Available-41825.shtml
>
> "Mandriva Flash is a pre-installed Mandriva Linux distribution on a simple
> 2GB USB flash drive."
>
> Gabriel.

Many thanks. Spot on. It looks impressive, but at 79 Euros it should be. 
Though they charge 44 euros for the download version of Mandriva Discovery, 
so the stick is not all that more.

But ' take it everywhere and make any desktop your own!' seems a bit much, 
given the problems with BIOS and USB booting that have been discussed here.

>    3. Re: USB memory stick appears as two devices

On  Mon, 12 Feb 2007 01:50:46 +0000 (GMT)
damion.yates at gmail.com wrote:

>
> I have found support for booting from USB devices to be extremely
> variable.  Only in computers from the past few years has it been
> something you could start to rely upon, despite how long USB has been
> around for.
>
> I have come across loads of laptops and PCs that simply will not
> accept a lilo/grub/syslinux boot sector on my old 256MB UMS (USB Mass
> Storage device).  However if I stick a usb-floppy or usb-cdrom drive
> with boot media they boot fine. 

Had that too.

> A device which presents itself as two logical devices, one 1.4MB the
> other the rest of the advertised 1GB or, a device with 650MB and
> whatever the rest, is likely to be doing so, to be much more likely to
> work on legacy hardware (legacy as in just a few years ago, P4 etc...
> ie not that old).
>
> My aging Slackware install doesn't search for more than one disk on a
> hotplug event, so I only recently noted that a 1GB UMS I had,
> contained a 1.4MB second device* although this doesn't appear like a
> floppy in anything but size, even the BIOS, if not in auto mode thinks
> it's just a tiny 1.4MB harddrive.  I'd like to know what lsusb -v
> shows, against the device you have, also if the BIOS sees it like an
> actual cdrom.  This goes for anyone reading this who has a USB device
> like a physical usb floppy drive.

For a single U3 stick on my SuSE 10.1 box, P4, AMI bios,  lsusb -v
shows only one device (apart from other USB devices that I can identify):

Bus 005 Device 008: ID 08ec:0016 M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x08ec M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers
  idProduct          0x0016
  bcdDevice            2.00
  iManufacturer           1
  iProduct                2
  iSerial                 3
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength           32
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0
    bmAttributes         0x80
      (Bus Powered)
    MaxPower               94mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           2
      bInterfaceClass         8 Mass Storage
      bInterfaceSubClass      6 SCSI
      bInterfaceProtocol     80 Bulk (Zip)
      iInterface              0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0200  1x 512 bytes
        bInterval               0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x02  EP 2 OUT
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0200  1x 512 bytes
        bInterval               0
can't get device qualifier: Operation not permitted
can't get debug descriptor: Operation not permitted
cannot read device status, Operation not permitted (1)


whereas it comes up as two devices in Media: (i) a 'mounted CD-ROM' U3 system, 
\dev\sr1, 4MB, (ii) 'Mounted Removable Medium', CleverStuff, \dev\sdc1, 994.7 
MB. Still weirder, the ownership of \dev\sdc1 is attributed to me, and of 
\dev\sr1 to my wife, though she's never used it!
>
> I've Cc'ed Christopher Currie because, he has been experimenting with
> bootable USB distibutions and may be interested in using a UMS that
> acts exactly like a cdrom and so could work with any cdrom based
> install as long as the files are copied to the right place.  

Thanks.

Christopher Currie
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