[Wylug-help] Linux Distro on Bootable USB Stick

[Adam Greenwood]

Jason Lander wrote:

>
> Dave,
>
>> As soon as I thought of this, I realised that I don't know a generic way
>> of specifying a USB-based kernel and root file system at a bootmanager
>> prompt (LILO or Grub).
>
>
> I'm not sure about identifying the kernel and initrd to be loaded - 
> although that should be on the bootable media anyway.
>
> One possibility would be to label the USB root filesystem using 
> e2label and pass the label at the bootprompt. I think the syntax is
>
>   root=LABEL=USB-ROOTFS   (or whatever you've used)
>
> The kernel should be able to search all the available ext2/3 
> filesystems until it finds one with that label.
>
> - Jason

One thing to remember is that before you even get to the point of 
getting GRUB to load a kernel and initrd, you have to load GRUB, so 
unless it's already on the box you need either:

 - A BIOS that can boot from a USB device (and a borrowed machine where 
you can play with the BIOS).
 - A floppy or (more likely) CD to get things started

I can't see off the top of my head how you'll get rid of the dependency 
on having a media that the BIOS knows how to boot from to load GRUB to 
start with, so you'll probably end up with a CD/USB device pair, that 
would be fairly straightforward, a tweaked knoppix would do it.

The only other alternative I can think of is a WAN network boot + USB, 
cute but not that practical and would probably mean poking about in the 
BIOS on the machine you're borrowing. CD + USB would mean you had 
writeable storage and probably don't need to modify anything on the machine

Cheers,

Adam

PS Dave, I owe you an update on what I'm up to, very short version is I 
still havn't escaped from where I was working, I'm contracting for them 
until xmas but will be in touch soon anyway.