Boot USB Flash drive with ZipSlack Install
 

I was wondering if there is a way I can get zipslack to install on my 1 GB flash drive and install grub to the flash drive so when it goes to boot usb it will start grub and from there zipslack. So is there a way? How would I go about it?

if your bios supports booting from usb it will be pretty easy. Install zipslack like you would normally do. The only thing you will have to do is compile usb support into the kernel, or make an initrd image with the kernel modules in it. I would also recamend adding "append=rootdelay=5" to your grub /boot/menu.lst. This will give the kernel 5 seconds to find the usb device before it mounts /

Thank you very much chrisortiz.
Does anyone know of a good tutorial on how to do that to initrd image and what modules I need to add? If no if someone has the time could they explain to me how to do this?( Don't worry if no one has the time to explain that, I figure it's probably long!) Sorry but I'm a bit newish to Linux still cause till recently I haven't been able to even really play with Linux.

If you have Slackware installed allready, Pat included a file in the instalation that could be of help.

/boot/README.initrd

Best regards,
...drkstr

Thank you, I should have Slackware in a couple of days, I'm just waiting for it to arrive.

Here it is in it's entirity.

=============================
Slackware initrd mini HOWTO
by Patrick Volkerding, volkerdi@slackware.com
Sat Sep 3 22:20:13 PDT 2005

This document describes how to create and install an initrd, which may be
required to use the 2.6 kernel. Also see "man mkinitrd".

1. What is an initrd?
2. Why to I need an initrd?
3. How do I build the initrd?
4. Now that I've built an initrd, how do I use it?


1. What is an initrd?

Initrd stands for "initial ramdisk". An initial ramdisk is a very small
Linux filesystem that is loaded into RAM and mounted as the kernel boots,
and before the main root filesystem is mounted.

2. Why do I need an initrd?

The usual reason to use an initrd is because you need to load kernel
modules before mounting the root partition. Usually these modules are
required to support the filesystem used by the root partition (ext3,
reiserfs, xfs), or perhaps the controller that the hard drive is attached
to (SCSI, RAID, etc). Essentially, there are so many different options
available in modern Linux kernels that it isn't practical to try to ship
many different kernels to try to cover everyone's needs. It's a lot more
flexible to ship a generic kernel and a set of kernel modules for it. The
generic 2.6 kernel in Slackware supports the ext2 filesystem (which is
used by the initrd), and also supports most IDE controllers (much like the
old bare.i kernel). So, if you have an IDE based system that uses the
ext2 filesystem, then you will not need to use an initrd to boot.
Otherwise, read on.

3. How do I build the initrd?

The easiest way to make the initrd is to use the mkinitrd script included
in Slackware's mkinitrd package. We'll walk through the process of
upgrading to the 2.6.13 Linux kernel using the packages found in
Slackware's testing/packages/linux-2.6.13/ directory.

First, make sure the kernel, kernel modules, and mkinitrd package are
installed (the current version numbers might be a little different, so
this is just an example):

installpkg kernel-generic-2.6.13-i486-1.tgz
installpkg kernel-modules-2.6.13-i486-1.tgz
installpkg mkinitrd-1.0.1-i486-1.tgz

Change into the /boot directory:

cd /boot

Now you'll want to run "mkinitrd". I'm using reiserfs for my root
filesystem, and since it's an IDE system the reiserfs module will be
the only one I need to load:

mkinitrd -c -k 2.6.13 -m reiserfs

This should do two things. First, it will create a directory
/boot/initrd-tree containing the initrd's filesystem. Then it will
create an initrd (/boot/initrd.gz) from this tree. If you wanted to,
you could make some additional changes in /boot/initrd-tree/ and
then run mkinitrd again without options to rebuild the image. That's
optional, though, and only advanced users will need to think about that.

Here's another example: Build an initrd image using Linux 2.6.13
kernel modules for a system with an ext3 root partition on /dev/hdb3.
Note that you need both the jbd and ext3 modules to use ext3:

mkinitrd -c -k 2.6.13 -m jbd:ext3 -f ext3 -r /dev/hdb3


4. Now that I've built an initrd, how do I use it?

Now that you've got an initrd (/boot/initrd.gz), you'll want to load
it along with the kernel at boot time. If you use LILO for your boot
loader you'll need to edit /etc/lilo.conf and add a line to load the
initrd. Here's an example section of lilo.conf showing how this is
done:

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-2.6.13
initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
root = /dev/hda6
label = Lnx2613
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

The initrd is loaded by the "initrd = /boot/initrd.gz" line.
Just add the line right below the line for the kernel image you use.
Save the file, and then run LILO again ('lilo' at the command line).
You'll need to run lilo every time you edit lilo.conf or rebuild the
initrd.

Other bootloaders such as syslinux also support the use of an initrd.
See the documentation for those programs for details on using an
initrd with them.


---------

Have fun!
=============================

Best regards,
...drkstr

Thank you that should be helpful.