I was wondering if you could "burn" and iso to a USB flash device. More or less im trying to get my flash drive to boot with a menu that allows me to select what i want to boot from. It would be an .img file of a windows 98 boot floppy and some type of linux boot disk (dont know yet). I know ISOLINUX does this but how can i get the iso i created on the USB drive?

It doesn't quite have to be that hinky. To get some pointers you might want to take a look at the Knoppix port to Compact Flash, its built for 128Mb sticks, but it'll give you a good idea how things work. Really though, its a lot simpler then that. Think of it as doing a linux install on a different hard-drive.

I started to write out a general recipe for doing it by hand, but its a bit of a headache. Post back if you want the long form, the mini-knoppix should be a good example though.

Cheers,

Finegan

Ok...here is the deal. I've been having TONS of problems with my new laptop that I got and Linux. The laptop is a Dell 300m and removable docking station that has the CDRW/DVD drive. There is no floppy and would rather not have to go out and purchase a USB one if I don’t have to.

I like the idea of running Linux off of my pen drive and/or a CD-Rom, but I can’t get either to run right. The first site that got me started on the pen drive idea was this one http://www.localareasecurity.com/mod...artid=6&page=1 I tried doing this and ran into problems. I could get the pen drive to boot just fine and come up with the syslinux boot screen but when I press enter to start the boot process I get this error as the very first line "PCE: Device 00:1f.1 not available because of resource collisions" and it end up with a "Kernel pannic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:01." down a little bit further

I then found this site http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/ and used the link at the bottom of the page to download what has already been modified with the correct USB drivers but that ended up with the same error messages too.

If I boot right off of a knoppix cd then Icome up with this error message:

"Can't find Knoppix filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit"

I don’t know if I have to pass a certain command before I boot or if it is my laptop that is the problem. There have been a few installs of RH9 on this laptop, but I would rather not install to the hard drive if I don’t have to.

Hmm, it really looks like you're not actually getting a kernel that can talk to the card. When the kernel boots from the card, its just reading byte for byte, in order straight from the front of the disk, but when the kernel tries to fire off init, it actually has to be able to see and locate the drive and the programs on it and interact with the filesystem, etc... a lot of those pen devices just aren't supported well yet. They're all supported in a chunk usually compiled as a module known as usb mass-storage. In there the maintainer has to have what disk geometry is associated with the vendor id of the device... I'm willing to bet yours isn't in there yet, or at least not with the kernel you're trying to use.

A normal old bootable Knoppix would be the best bet, quicker too, and one thing they don't mention is that constant read/writes to those flash devices just beats them up over time. What's the problem with booting from cdrom?

Also, why not RH on the drive? Is it just misbehaving a lot?

Cheers,

Finegan

If I boot right off of a knoppix cd then I come up with this error message right away:

"Can't find Knoppix filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit"

I have figured out that the CD-Rom drive is seen as a USB drive in windows because it is in a docking station. So how do I get knoppix to see the USB cd-rom when it boots up? (root=/dev/???)

I dont want to do a full install of RH9 because the wireless card isn't supported yet (centrino) and im going to wait till the drivers have been released and tested. I'm running slackware 9 on one of my desktops at home which im trying to figure out this whole linux thing.

Thanks for all your help

The USB cdrom will get emulated to scsi, so... as long as the driver is there for it in the kernel or the initrd:

/dev/scd0

Yeah, Intel is dragging their heels on getting info on the Intel 2100 wireless chip onto the floor.

Cheers,

Finegan

It appears that knoppix doesn't support booting from a USB cdrom. Ive tried all i can think of and have scoured the internet looking for a fix and have come up with none. Any other ideas? or even distros that would work without installing to the HD.

Not really, Knoppix is more or less the end all be all of live-run distros. Its really easily monkeyed to replace the stock Knoppix kernel with a home compile, I'm kinda surprised that they left out usb support and scsi emulation on the default kernel and initrd, but there's only so much space to cram everything I guess.

Cheers,

Finegan