[ale] Fedora NetInstall via USB Drive?

[Brian MacLeod]

Marc,

The big parts of this are getting your USB drive bootable (if it isn't
already), and putting the right files in.  The flash memory devices
take a little more care than the external hard drives hard drives do
(usually a hard drive is partitioned in a way that is compatible with
booting).  Either using tools such as HP's USB Format or simply
repartitioning the USB in linux to be FAT (safer) or FAT32 (can be
tricky) and bootable.  Format that out, and then contrary to what some
suggest, don't download the "boot.iso" which are often supplied with
the RH/Fedora based distributions.  Your plan to do a net install, so
it is easier to treat it as such...

Download the PXEBOOT files from the distribution.  Example (change
various parts for distribution/architecture as needed)
In:
http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/fedora.redhat/linux/releases/10/Fedora/i386/os/images/pxeboot/

you can see vmlinuz and initrd.img, which are generally what you need.
 Place these somewhere obvious on the drive (I usually make a new
directory from root, to keep the root of the drive clean).

Again, this is easier from an already running linux machine (yum
install syslinux or apt-get syslinux), but after installing syslinux
(pretty good odds it is already there) or download the binaries for
windows to do this (as administrator):

linux:
syslinux /dev/nodeofdriveX  (sda/sdb/ or what have you, X the
partition number which would generally be 1)

Windows:
syslinux Y:   (Y: is the drive letter the drive shows up as).

Then, on the root of the USB drive, put/edit the file syslinux.cfg:

--- BEGIN syslinux.cfg ---
prompt 0

timeout 100

label fedora
kernel /fedora/vmlinuz

append initrd=/fedora/initrd.img

--- END syslinux.cfg ---

And of course, turn on USB boot in your BIOS.  That you'll have to
figure out a bit on your own, since various ones put it in different
places.  This could potentially be a problem area if your BIOS
supports USB-ZIP emulation and not HD (see:
http://syslinux.zytor.com/doc/usbkey.txt on how to deal with this).

Boot from the drive, and type fedora.

The recipe given here can be built on to create a drive supporting
several linux distributions later.

bnm



On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 8:24 AM, Marc Ferguson <marcferguson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Folks,
>
> I'm looking for a howto or some information on doing a NetInstall of Fedora
> using a USB drive.  Call me crazy, but I'm getting tired of burning DVDs -
> only to have them sit and stale in a spindle.  So; I did a NetInstall of
> Fedora 10 x86_64 (when it came out) and I loved the process.  I don't
> remember the LONG URL the guy from the IRC channel gave me.
>
> I think I need to download and then copy n paste a .img file to my USB drive
> and I should be good to go.  If that's not the process then please help.
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Marc F.
>
> www.fergytech.com
> Registered Linux User: #410978
>
> "When life gives me lemons... I make Linuxaide, hmm good stuff!"
>
>
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