[Tfug] CD to boot USB

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 11:41:37PM -0700, earljviolet at deserthowler.com wrote:
>Many of the machines don't allow booting from USB.
>
>I'm searching for a CD to boot a USB drive or USB stick for installation. 
>Apparently my googling combination isn't adequate to find such a CD.  If
>anyone knows of one or has any suggestions, I would appreciate it.
>
>Earl

So, to get this straight, you would like a CD that will begin the boot process
and then hand off control to a USB flash device of some sort?  I can't think
of any program offhand that does exactly this.

My best suggestion would be to check out GRUB 2.0.  It is vastly more capable
than GRUB 1, with many features and a whole host of modules which go beyond
simple filesystem I/O.  Plus it has added a simple shell-like scripting
support to automate such tasks.

Your biggest hurdle is that the BIOS needs to make the USB flash device
available in a legacy (DOS) mode.  I think this is the only way you can get
boot abilities out of it, unless GRUB has some other trickery available.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
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