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

[Bowie Bailey]

m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Bowie wrote:
>   
>> m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>     
>>> Bowie wrote:
>>>       
>>>> 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
>   

I used your script (after removing the '-n' from sfdisk) and got the
same results.  Unless you have a better idea, I think I'm going to try
putting the boot.iso on the first partition and see what happens. 
Unfortunately, I won't be able to test until tonight since I don't have
a system here that will boot from a flash drive.

-- 
Bowie