Boot Sequence

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Profile mintakans
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Message 1408638 - Posted: 28 Aug 2013, 3:14:27 UTC

Hi Again,

After trying to load linux, how do I boot from USB at startup. I realise that my old computer does not have boot sequence for USB (it's only cd/dvd, hdd and floppy) although it has 2 working USB port. Also, I try not to load linux using virtual machine as it defeats the purpose of running linux while being dependant on windows. Please advise.
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Message 1408651 - Posted: 28 Aug 2013, 3:59:11 UTC

It is very possible that there are no option to boot from USB. I have a couple of Pentium 3 machines, and I don't remember an option to boot from USB.

I am probably wrong, but I think first implementations of booting from USB first appeared when Pentium 4 came out.
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Profile ivan
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Message 1408724 - Posted: 28 Aug 2013, 7:29:56 UTC - in response to Message 1408638.  

Hi Again,

After trying to load linux, how do I boot from USB at startup. I realise that my old computer does not have boot sequence for USB (it's only cd/dvd, hdd and floppy) although it has 2 working USB port. Also, I try not to load linux using virtual machine as it defeats the purpose of running linux while being dependant on windows. Please advise.

You might have an option to go into a boot menu at start-up. Make sure all messaging is turned on within the BIOS and then look for something like "Press ESC for set-up, F1 for boot menu" to flash up (probably briefly...) as you boot. ISTR at least one of my machines giving me more boot options that way than are given in the in-BIOS menu selections.
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Message 1408770 - Posted: 28 Aug 2013, 11:04:37 UTC - in response to Message 1408638.  

Hi Again,

After trying to load linux, how do I boot from USB at startup. I realise that my old computer does not have boot sequence for USB (it's only cd/dvd, hdd and floppy) although it has 2 working USB port. Also, I try not to load linux using virtual machine as it defeats the purpose of running linux while being dependant on windows. Please advise.


You might want to look into Plop Boot Manager. I've been semi successful with it, but I found a workaround for what I was doing and left it.

You'll have to do some reading and there was an example that worked for me, so it shouldn't be too difficult. More or less, what it can do is it makes a bootable iso that you burn to a cd. In that iso there are pointers to your USB drive.

And that's about all I can tell you about Plop. I had DOS on a USB stick and no way to boot from it. I was able to boot from my CD and it gave me access to the USB drive, then I found a different solution involving virtual machines.
</Tazz>
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Message 1409019 - Posted: 28 Aug 2013, 21:23:47 UTC

You might just have to put even a tiny HDD in that machine if only for the /boot/ directory for your distro's install. If you have the flash drive hooked up when you put the CD in and tell it to install, customize the install and have it install everything to the flash drive except for /boot/ which goes on /dev/hd0 (or /dev/sda, whatever the first hard disk is). That way it boots from the HDD, but ~50MB of boot data is all there is on there.

You could probably get away with doing something similar with a CD-RW, as well.. or even just a CD-R. Burn the /boot/ directory on that, or do some research on how to build your own bootable CD that points to the flash drive as if it were a hard drive.


I was thinking of something similar a few years back when toying with a hardware RAID setup, back when the kernel removed support for booting from certain hardware RAID setups. I was just going to get a 64 or 128MB flash drive and throw /boot/ on that and boot from USB, which would then load the drivers for the hardware RAID and continue on like normal.
Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)
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Message boards : Number crunching : Boot Sequence


 
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