[CentOS] Installing from USB flash drive

[Bowie Bailey]

m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> Bowie Bailey wrote, On 05/26/2010 10:59 AM:
>>     
>>> I successfully created an install media on a USB flash drive, but now I
>>> have a minor problem installing from it.  Whenever I run the installer,
>>> it insists on installing grub on /dev/sdb (the flash drive) rather than
>>> /dev/sda (the hard drive where I'm installing everything).
>>>
>>> Is there a way to convince the installer to put grub in the right
>>> place?
>>>       
>> If you are installing from a kickstart, or at least preparing the install
>> using KS, yes.
>>     
> <snip>
> So, if you're *not*, and you just want to install on a new drive, then the
> Grand Unified Boot Loader religiously won't let you do what you want,
> since, it's *sure* (the same way M$ is), that it knows how to do this *so*
> much better than you do, and if you want to do it any other way, why
> that's the *wrong* way, and will do everything it can to keep you from
> doing it the "wrong" way.
>
> Next time I bounce my system at home, I really ought to plug in /dev/hda
> again, and maybe I can access stuff on it - I had to physically unplug it,
> because a straight install *refused* to install the boot record in the MBR
> on /dev/sda....
>   

Agreed.  It's truly obnoxious that we can specify which drive to install
the OS onto, but we can't specify where to put the boot loader.

What I did was skip the grub install and then install it from the rescue
prompt.  Unfortunately, this left me with no grub.conf at all, so I had
to look at another machine to get the proper format and manually create
grub.conf.  After that, however, it booted normally.  I'm doing a 'yum
update' now, which includes a new kernel.  I'm keeping my fingers
crossed that it will update my grub.conf properly.

-- 
Bowie