James Pifer wrote:
I have a 512 meg usb flash drive install with damn small linux and I can
boot off it. I have a couple machines with four hard drives and no
CDROM. I will be rebuilding one so it currently has no OS.
I'd really like to be able to boot the FC5 setup from the usb drive.
(and preferably multiple FC setups, like FC6 when it arrives, so I can
kick off a network install on PCs that do not have CDROMs)
Anyway, I've been searching for a SIMPLE howto to set my usb drive up
with the FC5 setup. Something like I used for the damn small linux
install. It used windows and admittedly it was extremely easy. I've
found a lot of sites on running linux off the usb drive, but I just want
to use it to start the setup.
Or, is there any way for me to add right onto the usb boot drive that
already is working with DSL?
Thanks,
James
Here is what I do:
Option 1: I have a dvd player in an external USB enclosure.
Option 2: I have an old 16MB thumb drive.
In both cases I copy just the boot.iso image to them -- about 7MB.
For the jump drive:
Plug it in to a working system
If it mounts, use df -h to identify mount device and unmount it
If it doesn't mount, use dmesg to identify the device.
If the jump drive is /dev/sda then:
# dd if=boot.iso of=/dev/sda
With a larger jump drive, I might be tempted to use the rescue image
instead.
With a 4GB jump drive I could use the DVD image ... hmmm... I might try
that. :)
Copy the contents of the DVD or all 5 CDs to a location your web server
can see (on a different system than the ones to be installed,
obviously). I use:
/var/www/html/ks/FC5
Whenever I want to do an install, I pop in the jump drive, or plug in
the external DVD player and boot up the boot image.
Because it is just a boot image, it defaults to askmethod and a screen
will appear asking for the source -- I choose http and give it the IP
address of my web server '192,168,1,2' and location '/ks/FC5', for example.
This assumes a network and a DCHP server. No worries.
I also use a cgi script to automate anaconda, but that is another topic.
Good luck!
