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[seth AT swoolley.homeip.net]

for what it's worth, one of my servers uses a usb compact flash drive for its 
boot partition.

I found I had to use "root=/dev/sdf1 ro rootwait" since the usb drive would 
take some time to detect and if I didn't use rootwait, it would declare VFS 
not found 
before it had a chance to detect that device.

Seth

On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 08:02:56PM +0100, Robert Figura wrote:
> 
> I have a barebone system here with no cdrom or floppy. I just asked on
> irc wether we support this and got some answers (thanks justin).
> 
> Now follows a summary of my problems and solutions:
> 
> - first partitioned the usb key, copied the cdrom's files onto it and
>   made it bootable
> 
> I used unetbootin to do this which saved me finding out about the
> correct grub install procedure yet (see below) but i don't think it did
> more for me.
> 
> - the kernel didn't have the module ehci-hcd.ko
>   - that module is on cdrom so i just needed to insert them into the
>     /boot/initrd.gz
>   - unzip, mount -o loop somewhere, add module file, umount, zip again
>   - note that if you edit or copy stuff the resulting initrd.gz may be
>     too large. in that case dd if=/dev/zero of=initrd.new bs=1M count=14,
>     mke2fs initrd.new, mount loop, copy, umount, zip and use that file.
> - then we need to grub-install properly. after cd'ing to the usb device do:
>   - grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=. /dev/sdb
>   - note that /dev/sdb is the usb key.
> - umount the sdb and boot it!
> - press c for grub commandline and type
>   - kernel /boot/linux root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=14000 rw init=/bin/sh
>   - initrd /boot/initrd.gz
>   - boot
> - now load the module, make some device nodes and mount the cdrom
>   - /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd
>   - mknod /dev/hda b 3 0
>   - mknod /dev/hda1 b 3 1
>   - mknod /dev/hda2 b 3 2
>   - mknod /dev/sda b 8 0
>   - mknod /dev/sda1 b 8 1
>   - note: sda is the usb on the new system, hda the harddisk
> - i would have loved to use /sbin/smgl.init but that script insists on
>   mounting the cdrom as -t iso9660 which isn't true for my usb
>   - mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/cdrom
> - so we're copying stuff manually
>   - mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/floppy  # this dir already exists. root would
>                                    have been a better name tho
>   - cd /mnt/floppy
>   - export 
> "PATH=/mnt/cdrom/sbin:/mnt/cdrom/usr/sbin:/mnt/cdrom/bin:/mnt/cdrom/usr/bin:$PATH"
>   - tar xjvf ../cdrom/system.tar.bz2
>   - mount /mnt/floppy -o remount,ro
>   - sync
>   - <ctrl>-<alt>-<del>
>   - note that i had some problems to properly mount / ro so if you can
>     use the sys-request key to umount and sync before rebooting
> - after that i could boot from usb into hd (in grub 'c' mode):
>   - kernel /boot/linux root=/dev/hda2 ro
>   - note that the mountall.sh ran into problems and i had to 'i'gnore
>     them
> 
> Looks like netconf isn't very useful anymore... wth.
> 
> I hope this will help folks hacking.
> 
> Justin: No worry, i'll be on irc today or next day and i didn't forget
> to file bugs (just haven't done so yet).
> 
> Faithfully, Your
>   - Robert Figura
> 
> -- 
> /* mandlsig.c 0.42 (c) by Robert Figura */
> I=1702;float O,o,i;main(l){for(;I--;putchar("oO .,\nt>neo.ckgel-t\
> agidif@<ra urig FrtbeRo"[I%74?I>837&874>I?I^833:l%5:5]))for(O=o=l=
> 0;O*O+o*o<(16^l++);o=2*O*o+I/74/11.-1,O=i)i=O*O-o*o+I%74*.04-2.2;}
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-- 
                         Seth Alan Woolley

Pacific Green Party of Oregon State Secretary   Sr Software Engineer
Parliamentarian, State Coordinating Committee   deCarta, RMQ RME RMF

3403 NE Stanton St   gnupg.org key 84317E6A =   http://swoolley.org/
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