Lamar Owen wrote:
USB disks _can_ have partitions (obviously, since you can stick about any drive into a usb adapter),
The instructions in <http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ certainly advise making a partition /dev/sdb1 with partition type b and running mkdosfs on it.
Have you successfully booted with this USB stick before? Some USB sticks aren't bootable.
Several times, including now after following the instructions in http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ch02s04.html.
Previously it had the CentOS Live CD on it, which ran perfectly. (That was how I installed CentOS on my new HP Microserver, after it was pointed out to me that you had to press SPACE during the boot to bring up a choice including Network Install.)