Hi folks, Of course, it's very convenient to install Archlinux using a bootable USB flash putting the corresponding .iso file in it (e.g. archlinux-2010.05-core-i686.iso). But it's not convenient to keep a separate flash drive for it. The natural solution is to create another partition at the same jump drive for regular file transfers etc. Linux has no problem working with multiple partitions, but not M$ Windows. It principally recognizes only the 1st partition. Some flash drives can be hacked with toggling so called Removable Media Bit, but most cannot. I realized that the easiest way is to "manually" change the partition number of the bootable image before writing it into a flash drive. The script below does it rewriting the partition record from the first line to the second one. (Alternatively you can rework it to read back the MBR from the bootable drive, hack it and write back). Then with fdisk you can create another partition with number 1 - and voilà - it will be recognizable even by M$. Cheers, Sergey (the script is far from being perfect, just illustrates the idea) ----------------------------------8<------------------------------ #!/bin/bash # changes the partition number of bootable image from 1 to 2 # accepts a bootable image file as argument BLOCK=1 COUNT=16 PARTTBL_OFFSET=446 TEMP_FILE=/tmp/part_table dd if=/dev/zero of=$TEMP_FILE bs=$BLOCK count=$COUNT dd if=$1 of=$TEMP_FILE bs=$BLOCK skip=$PARTTBL_OFFSET seek=$COUNT count=$COUNT dd if=$TEMP_FILE of=$1 bs=$BLOCK seek=$PARTTBL_OFFSET conv=notrunc count=$((COUNT*2)) ----------------------------------8<------------------------------
