* T o n g mlist4suntong@yahoo.com [20081003 08:13]:

How can I put the .iso image on usb so that the usb boots with the latest devel release, grml-medium-devel_2008.09.28.iso for example?

The wiki http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=usb & grml2usb uses windoze FAT16 filesystem, but I hope I can put it into (and boot from) native Linux filesystems, using grub if possible.

Basically the same as when you are using grml2usb. But if you don't want to use FAT16 and therefore can not use syslinux you've to setup a boot manager like grub. A basic sample configuration to get an idea what to do is available in /boot/grub/menu.lst on the grml ISOs.

We've had this issue already once: http://www.mail-archive.com/grml@mur.at/msg01068.html

Forwarded the feature request to our BTS:

http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue542

regards, -mika-

T o n g wrote:

Hi,

How can I put the .iso image on usb so that the usb boots with the latest devel release, grml-medium-devel_2008.09.28.iso for example?

The wiki http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=usb & grml2usb uses windoze FAT16 filesystem, but I hope I can put it into (and boot from) native Linux filesystems, using grub if possible.

thanks

hi I have successfully set up grml on various usb sticks on various computers. However, I encountered difficulties because of low quality BIOSes.

1) First , I found the following website very usefull:

"http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Bootable_USB_Key"

2) Second, the BIOS problem. A good BIOS should present you the option "Boot from USB-HDD" (boot from USB harddisk). This option allows you to set up FAT16 on the stick and it will boot. However, low quality BIOS (like those found on popular MINI-ITX boards) only present the following options: USB-FDD (this is floppy) USB-CDROM and USB-ZIP. In

In this case , you have to use USB-ZIP, but this *usually* does not work with FAT, because ZIP is a very different filesystem. In this case , you have to format with :

mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz 0 128 32 # for a stick with < 2GB

The details of this command are given on the link above. Note, that in the grml wiki, the mkdiskimage command is given as follows :

mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz *1* 128 32 (note the "1" instead of "0" above )

This did not work for me, but I was too lazy to figure out why. In any case , the upper version with "0" as the third parameter worked fine for me in all cases.

(Concerning the *usually* that I mentioned above. There has been a test case where I was able to boot from a FAT Stick with the USB-ZIP option. I am sorry, but I did not recorded what exactly I did, but as far as I remember , the stick has been formatted with mkdiskimage and later on with fat, so I am not sure if this is a bootsector thing. What I am sure is, that in "most" cases, I was not able to boot from USB stick with a fat volume, when my BIOS did not offer the USB-HDD option on boot)

Concerning the ZIP filesystem, I was not able to create several partitions on the stick, the mkdiskimage command creates a single partitition, that I could not read with fdisk or cdisk. (So I was not able to resize, etc). Again, this might be very well due to my ignorance).

Concerning the boot loader, I successfully installed GRUB but I also used the syslinux approach from the link above.

Hope, that helps since grml on stick is great ! Peter