Bowie Bailey wrote:
> On 7/22/2010 6:09 PM, David wrote:
>> Has anyone successfully built a USB key for installing centos5.5 either
>> manually or using a tool like unetbootin?
>>
>> I am trying to create one using the 64bit install DVD iso and so far the
>> USB either won't boot (unetbootin) or the installation aborts after I
>> select the iso location on the USB key (manual).
>
> I was able to successfully install CentOS 32-bit from an 8GB USB flash
> drive (4GB is not quite big enough, even for i386) created with this
> procedure:
>
> Create a 10M DOS partition on the USB drive and make it active
> Create Linux partition using the rest of the drive
>
> mkfs -t vfat /dev/<USB DOS partition>
> mkfs /dev/<USB Linux partition>
>
> liveCD-iso-to-disk <boot.iso> /dev/<USB DOS partition>
> mount /dev/<USB Linux partition> /mnt
> rsync --progress <CentOS.iso> /mnt/
>
> You can get the boot.iso by loop-mounting the CentOS iso and pulling it
> out of the /os/i386/images directory, or grab it from one of the mirrors
> (the mirror links on the CentOS site link directly to the install isos,
> so you'll have to browse up a few directories and then go back down to
> find the images directory).
>
> I used 'rsync' here because I hate having a copy process run for 10
> minutes with no progress indication. :)
>
> The only problem I found was that the install insisted on installing
> grub on the USB drive rather than the target hard drive. I finally had
> to skip the grub installation and install it by hand afterwards.
Yeah - that may be either an install thing, or an anaconda one. I hate
that. I always have to reboot from the USB key, go to linux rescue, then
chroot to /mnt/sysimage, and grub-install /dev/sda
Then I have to edit /boot/device.map, and hand-make an
/boot/grub/grub.conf. I keep meaning to have one on the USB key, so I can
just copy it after I do the grub install.
mark