[CentOS] Building an install disk on a USB key, solved

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

Bowie wrote:
> m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> Bowie wrote:
>>> m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>>> Bowie wrote:
>>>>> m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Ok, there's been discussion, including, I think, on the wiki web
>>>>>> page, that syslinux is not correct. At any rate, after enough
>>>>>> experimentation, I have a working install on a USB key. The
>>>>>> procedure is:
<snip>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Following these instructions, what iso do I use for the
>>>>> livecd-iso-to-disk step?
>>>>>
>>>> I used the full, one DVD .iso.
>>>>
>>> That doesn't work for me.
>>>
>>>     # livecd-iso-to-disk /home/bowieb/CentOS-5.5-i386-bin-DVD.iso
>>> /dev/sda1
>>>     Verifying image...
>>>     /home/bowieb/CentOS-5.5-i386-bin-DVD.iso:
>>> 97c0b2ed5d08f0e24e1e516362059032
>>>     Fragment sums:
>>> 67686679ec95a9255099cbed11cc51d998abee91a1f91fc7a2361554e54e
>>>     Fragment count: 20
>>>     Percent complete: 100.0%   Fragment[20/20] -> OK
>>>     100.0
>>>     The supported flag value is 0
>>>     The media check is complete, the result is: PASS.
>>>
>>>     It is OK to install from this media.
>>>     Unable to fit live image + overlay on available space on USB stick
>>>     Size of live image: 3991
>>>     Overlay size:
>>>     Available space: 13
>>>     Cleaning up to exit...
>>>
>>> The DVD iso is 4GB and the DOS partition is only 10M (per your
>>> instructions).  Shouldn't the boot.iso or something else go here?
>>
>> Not sure what's going on there. liveCD-iso-to-disk dd's (or whatever) a
>> bootable vfat (or is it fat?) filesystem, and *only* enough to boot the
>> installer. The full DVD .iso goes in the other partition, which you've
>> mkfs'd, just as a .iso.
>>
> Maybe I'm using the wrong script.  I have livecd-iso-to-disk from the
> livecd-tools-014-8 package.  Is liveCD-iso-to-disk a different script?

Odd. I don't understand that... you *did* make the filesystem type b,
right, and bootable with fdisk? And then format it vfat?

Btw, dunno if you missed it, but here's a full script to do this:

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $# < 2 ]]; then
   echo "usage: $0 <devname> <path/to/install.iso>"
   echo "  Example: $0 sdb /scratch/CentOS-5.4-bin-DVD.iso"
   echo "  Note: you must install livecd-tools before running this."
   exit
fi

/sbin/sfdisk -n -uM /dev/$1 << EOF
,10,b,*
,,83
;
;
EOF

mkfs -t vfat /dev/${1}1
mkfs /dev/${1}2

/usr/bin/livecd-iso-to-disk $2 /dev/${1}1
mount /dev/${1}2 /mnt
cp $2 /mnt/
# end of script

         mark