Boot Linux through USB key?

[Churnd]

I searched and couldn't find anything related to this...

I have a laptop with an internal hard drive and a modular bay drive. I want to install Linux on the modular drive (not sure which one yet... either SUSE or RedHat). I did this once before with Mandrake and I didn't like the way that LILO overwrote the MBR.

So I want to try again without using a linux bootloader. Instead I want to use a USB Key to boot to Linux. I can't use my floppy drive because the modular bay goes where the floppy would normally be.

I've never heard of booting from a USB key so I figure as long as I can set my BIOS to do so and have the right boot loader on the key, it'll work?

 

[jhu]

what's wrong with using lilo?

 

[Churnd]

I don't like the way that after it times out it automatically boots Linux. Linux isn't my primary OS "yet", so I'm still an XP user. I tried again and again to change the settings in LILO, but it never "took". Plus, if I use LILO, I can't boot to Windows if I take the modular drive out and replace it with the floppy drive. Why... I have no idea. I get a screen filled with a bunch of 1's and 0's (if I recall correctly).

 

[EmperorRob]

Unless your motherboard supports directly booting from a USB device you'll need some other medium like a floppy or cd. Plus you'll need a ramdisk to load usb mass storage and scsi modules. If linux isn't your main OS you may not want to attempt that. Have you seen FlashLinux?

 

[Churnd]

Originally posted by: EmperorRob
Have you seen FlashLinux?

No. I'm aware that there are a few versions of Linux that can be run from CD. I don't see how you could actually learn anything from using that since you can't save anything (??I have no idea??).

 

[jhu]

Originally posted by: Churnd
I don't like the way that after it times out it automatically boots Linux. Linux isn't my primary OS "yet", so I'm still an XP user. I tried again and again to change the settings in LILO, but it never "took". Plus, if I use LILO, I can't boot to Windows if I take the modular drive out and replace it with the floppy drive. Why... I have no idea. I get a screen filled with a bunch of 1's and 0's (if I recall correctly).

you can change the default os that is booted by changing the "default" option in lilo.conf. eg:

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
message=/boot/message
lba32
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.0-0.43.6
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.0-0.43.6.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda5

other=/dev/hda1
label=dos

with the above example, you can automatically boot to dos by changing "default=linux" to "default=dos"

also, what is this modular drive that you have? is it an ide interface or something else entirely?

 

[JC]

Maybe this article will help you.



JC

 

[Anubis08]

Why don't you use grub. It gives the option to change default drive at setup, my dual boot is currently setup to boot windows, but Igave myself 20 seconds to choose linux at boot. Works great.

 

[Anubis08]

Sorry that didn't help your quest though. Try looking on kingstons website. I know some of their flash drives ship with software to male them bootable. Maybe they have some for download.

 

[funggorgor]

here you go
http://openfacts.berlios.de/in...bootable_USB_key_HOWTO

 

[Churnd]

Well, I will definitely keep this in mind for the future... but it looks like my BIOS doesn't support booting from a USB device. Thanks for the replies though.

 

[Churnd]

Originally posted by: jhu

also, what is this modular drive that you have? is it an ide interface or something else entirely?

It's an IDE interface'd regular laptop drive. I bought the fastest drive for a laptop (Hitachi 7k60), and moved my old one to the modular bay, and disabled cache writing to make it hot-swappable. I'm not sure where I actually installed LILO. I think I might have accidentally overwritten the MBR on the first drive, but that still doesn't explain why LILO wouldn't still load unless it was looking for information from the 2nd drive that wasn't there?

 

[silverpig]

Flash Linux

It's a version of gentoo designed to run from a 256 MB flash drive.