On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 8:27 AM, tux<tux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> > I have an 8GB flash drive that I would like to put multiple Fedora Live >> > CD's on. (KDE,Gnome,LXDE,XFCE, FEL, Games and Edu,Third party spins, etc. ) >> > >> > Does anyone have any advice on how to do this On 02/01/2010 09:03 AM, Don Quixote wrote: > I think it should be straightforward to do this, but you'll need to do > it carefully and methodically. I do something like this with my > VirtualBox disk images. I put them in physical partitions for > efficiency, but sometimes copy them out to regular, uncompressed files > then convert them to sparse images then compress them with bzip2 for > backup. I works real well, but is tedious and error-prone. I need to > automate it or Imma gonna overwrite my /home with some WinXP disk > image. > > Anyway what you need is a Master Boot Record on the first 512-byte > sector of your USB stick. Make one small ext2 primary partition for > /boot, then a logical partition for each of your live CDs. > > The MBR only allows four primary partitions, but only /boot needs to > be a primary. So you can make one primary, then one extended. Within > the extended you can make as many logical partitions as you like. > > The primary and extended partitions are stored directly in the MBR, > towards the end of that first sector. The extended is divided up into > logical partitions, with their positions and sizes specified in a > linked list that is also inside the extended. I don't know the > details but I would imagine each partition link element is just before > each logical partition. > > Use "ls -s" to get the size of each of your LiveCD images in > kilobytes. If they are compressed, decompress them first. > > Multiply the size in kilobytes by two to get the size in 512-byte sectors. > > When you partition your stick, use GNU parted - NOT GParted! Not the > GUI partitioner, just parted, the command-line tool. Set the size > unit to sectors. Use parted's help to get the exact syntax but I > think you just use: > > unit s > > Create a /boot partition as I said with ext2. I don't think it needs > to be very big - a megabyte or two would be plenty. It won't contain > a kernel as /boots usually do. > > Create a logical partition for each of your LiveCDs. Make each > partition EXACTLY the same number of sectors as the LiveCD image that > will go into it. It's OK if the partition is bigger - it just wastes > some space. Make sure it's not smaller. It's really best to be > careful and methodical and get the size exactly the same. > > You'll need to figure out the /dev entry for your USB stick. Chances > are that it is /dev/sdb though - the second SCSI drive. USB Mass > Storage is built on the SCSI Architectural Model. /dev/sda would be > your boot disk if you're using SATA, SAS or Parallel SCSI. If your > boot disk is /dev/hda, then it is Parallel IDE. If that's the case > then your USB stick is probably /dev/sda not sdb. > > *** Get It Right Or You'll Be Sorry! *** > > If your stick is /dev/sdb, then the stick's /boot partition is > /dev/sdb1. Your LiveCD partitions are numbered starting with 5, > because they are logical partitions - /dev/sdb5, /dev/sdb6, /dev/sdb7 > and so on. Partition numbers 1 through 4 are reserved for primary and > extended partitions. > > Now use the dd command to copy a LiveCD image into a partition: > > $ dd if=FedoraLive.iso of=/dev/sdb5 bs=512 > > That copies the FedoraLive.iso input file to the first logical > partition as the output file with a block size of 512 bytes. Most > storage devices have physical sector sizes of 512 bytes, so you are > required to read or write them in integral multiples of 512. > > There's a couple pieces remaining though that I can't explain for you, > but I can give you some hints: > > It*should* work to set up grub to chainload each of the LiveCD > partitions. That should work just the same as if you were booting MS > Windows. Grub would load the first sector out of the desired > partition then run the boot loader found therein. > > What I don't have a clue about though is that booting a CD uses a > package called ISOLINUX. You don't want ISOLINUX to boot a USB stick. > There is another package for that, but you'll have to dig it up > somehow as I don't remember. Basically what you need to do is replace > the ISOLINUX on each partition with whatever the equivalent is for a > USB stick. > > If I recall correctly the way ISOLINUX works is that it finds a Linux > filesystem image in a single file on the CD, then it loads it as if it > were a filesystem on a real hard disk. You should be able to use that > same image file, but you will have to use some other software than > ISOLINUX to load it. > > Hope That Help! > > Don Quixote > -- Don Quixote de la Mancha quixote@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://www.dulcineatech.com Dulcinea Technologies Corporation: Software > of Elegance and Beauty. I have been experimenting with grub4dos. I have a single fat32 partition and have been able to successfully boot gparted live 4.5-2 by putting the files from the cd image into the /gparted folder on the usb drive and creating a /menu.lst file with the following entry: title Gparted 0.4.5-2 Partition Editor root (hd0,0) kernel /gparted/vmlinuz1 live-media-path=/gparted bootfrom=/dev/sd boot=live union=aufs noswap noprompt vga=789 ip=frommedia initrd /gparted/initrd1.img On the 64 bit KDE live cd there is this entry the /isolinux/isolinux.cfg file: label linux0 menu label Boot kernel vmlinuz0 append initrd=initrd0.img root=live:CDLABEL=Fedora-12-x86_64-Live-KDE rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet rhgb rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD noiswmd How would I convert this to work with grub4dos? Is it possible to copy the vmlinuz0, initrd0.img the osmin.img and splashfs.img to a folder on the drive and create a grub entry for it? I would like to create a separate folder for each spin and add an appropriate grub entry for each one. Thanks Tux -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
