This is the message I get during startup when I try to load the Fedora 9 Beta LiveUSB, which I made by (successfully) following the Fedora HowTo (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/USBHowTo).

I've repeated the whole process three times, but it always stops at that point:

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WARNING: Requested /sbin/init binary does not exist on rootfs
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Dropping to a shell. Good luck!

bash-3.x#


But luck won't help in any way...

If any of you can help, well, thank you!

that link is what is sometimes called the "poor man's install"....correct me if I am wrong but the pix for the bootloader shows boot from image....in other words you merely place an iso image on the usb stick.

2) if you agree...why not format it as a ext3...the partition favoured by Fed....copy the structure to usb....recompile kernel to allow ext3...change /etc/fstab to a non-cramfs or non-unionfs or whatever fedora iso uses?

3) there are a number of live cds from other projects that do populate the usb correctly...DSL and puppy spring to mind

Hey, thanks for answering.

I don't remember what the bootloader said. But I thought that link was precisely the most reliable... isn't livecd-iso-to-disk supposed to handle the process for you? Burning the iso to a CD worked, but it's not what I want: I'd like to have a glance at KDE 4, and be able to change and record the settings.

The partition was formatted as vfat, it didn't work, then I re-formatted it as ext3. Didn't work either. Was it because I needed to "recompile the kernel"? Well, I'm still quite newbie, so these words scare me a bit :P

Eventually I installed Slax on the same usb, and it can boot without any problem. But I still can't try out the new KDE 4...

generally most distro do not intend to go to KDE4 as its still buggy.

www.distrowatch.com shows most new releases are kde 3 series

fedora "pre" 9 "rawhide" is supposed to have kde 4
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora

That's why I was trying to set up the LiveUSB. Fedora 9 is supposed to have "Live Persistence" http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/LivePersistence

ok well when you ran the live cd....did you see kde 4 or not?
"But I still can't try out the new KDE 4..."

2) is that the only reason why you were trying out fedora pre 9?

the reason I ask is...a pre 9 is like a rc or similar and not yet regarded as stable itself. (I am not sure what to call it, btw )

Not with the USB, but when I burned the iso on a CD, yes.


I've been using Fedora for half a year now, since F8. The LiveUSB is also to convince my Windows friends to get Linux... KDE 4 will help, for sure!

It's Beta already. Final release in 25 days. The USB could be constantly updated, I suppose.

I have created and installed Fedora live-cd images to usb devices, mainly 1-2GB in size. Also when the F9beta was released I too was very interested in the "persistence" aspect of a usb install. I have installed the Gnome desktop release first and just today d'loaded and installed the Rawhide F9 KDE live image and installed it to a 2GB usb device and currently waiting for 61 updates to be installed.

I will reboot when finished and see if "persistence" is working. I have run into a couple of problems with the Gnome F9 beta during updating hopefully KDE gives a better showing.

Well now to the original post:
I wasn't able to install to a usb device and create a "overlay" for persistence when I tried to run this script:
then with the help of google I found this site at this link JeremyKatz
then I grabbed the "livecd-iso-to-disk" script from the link on the page and then ran the script with the arguments mentioned for my install:
then the image was written to my usb device.

I had placed the "livecd-iso-to-disk" script in the directory containing the live-cd image then opened a terminal there and ran the above script and arguments as "su" and the install proceeded. I have also used the same usb device to install the rawhide F9 KDE image and the script removed and over wrote the previous install.

EDIT: well the "update" appeared to go well and while running from the usb device before during and after updates seemed good and now the "but" part upon rebooting got this message:
same problem experienced with a Gnome beta also.

EDIT 2: Have reinstalled to the usb device and added a couple of packages and made a few minor adjustments to the desktop also edited and saved a couple of screenshots and upon rebooting changes were "persistent". My experience with the usb installs has been that when an update of packages has been made there may be a very good chance that the usb device will no longer boot. Just for the purpose of checking out KDE4 and some of F9's features it works well.

Ok, thanks for the report.

I guess I need to keep on trying until it works I'm downloading Rawhide-20080404 now.

Did you use ext3 or vfat?

I used vfat!

Has the "Requested /sbin/init binary does not exist on rootfs" fatal error been fixed yet?

The Fedora 9 LiveUSB solution would be perfiect if one could successfully update Firefox to the latest stable version (the version in the iso seems to cause a lot of disk writes), and add the Synaptic Touchpad functionality. Both of these are available, but when the LiveUSB installation is updated, it refuses to reboot, throwing the above error.

Thanks.