[ale] Fedora NetInstall via USB Drive?

Brian MacLeod nym.bnm at gmail.com
Mon Apr 27 09:06:44 EDT 2009


> And then running "syslinux" pointing to my USB device.  I notice that it
> does create some file in the root directory, but for the life of my USB
> doesn't boot anymore.  I used to have a "USB-ZIP" option when I chose my
> boot device after post, but only "USB-CD" shows up.  What am I doing wrong?


Right.  As I said in before, USB-ZIp is different.
----
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).
----


> I've had to reformat the USB device a couple times. I tried it as an ext3
> format first, but "syslinux" said it only wanted FAT. When I tried to
> reformat it back to FAT it crapped out on me and I had to reformat it under
> Windows Vista. Once I got back to status quo, I copied the "pxeboot" files
> and ran syslinux.


And when you reformatted, did you make it bootable?  There is >0
chance that in the process of formatting it and changing filesystems
that the bootable flag was removed from the partition table of the
device.  This is generally why I only use partitioning tools in linux,
or, if I must, fdisk in windows (not the gui'd up storage manager in
Windows).

Syslinux installs a file in the root so it can work -- the MBR code
loads this file, and then this file loads the configuration.  Pretty
much all bootloaders do this now.

bnm



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