more stuff about installing from memory stick

more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Kitty Litter]

Samuel,
I talked to Kirk about this the other day and among other things he insists 
that if I copied the .iso image to the stick with dd if=blah of=blah it 
would boot. Well, my computer won't recognize the stick as bootable when I 
do this, it goes to the next boot device which is the normal hard disk. I 
also tried reformatting the stick with ext2 and grub and syslinux but 
couldn't get it to boot. Vfat and syslinux is the only thing that will boot. 
Even if I load the loop module from busybox before doing any steps of the 
install, The .iso file I previously put in the root of the stick doesn't get 
mounted unless I do it from the shell. I really don't feel qualified to file 
a good bug report on this. Obviously this was never really tested, maybe 
it's something they hoped would work, who knows. So how about asking them to 
at least include loop.ko in initrd.gz? If they should come up with a fix I 
would be more than happy to try it. Is it possible to be more than happy?

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Samuel Thibault]

Kitty Litter, le Sat 15 Nov 2008 17:33:27 -0500, a écrit :
> I talked to Kirk about this the other day and among other things he insists 
> that if I copied the .iso image to the stick with dd if=blah of=blah it 
> would boot.

Most computers don't like that.

> I really don't feel qualified to file a good bug report on this.

There's not much to do to make it "good": just describe precisely what
you have tried. At worse they will tell you what was wrong or ask for
more details.

Really.  Please report bugs.  Even "bad" bug reports are useful, as long
as you answer the questions that people ask.  In any case, there is no
more point in raising the issue on this mailing list than raising it in
a bug report: it's all just mails anyway...  The difference is that with
a bug report you will get the attention of the most qualified people.

Samuel

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[luke]

On Sat, 15 Nov 2008, Kitty Litter wrote:

> I talked to Kirk about this the other day and among other things he insists
> that if I copied the .iso image to the stick with dd if=blah of=blah it would
> boot. Well, my computer won't recognize the stick as bootable when I do this,

I have never heard of that actually working.  It probably should, in 
theory, but in practice it doesn't, or rarely does.

Luke

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Terry D. Cudney]

Hi Randy, Samuel et al,

	I wasn't able to do much  with this until today. I have been able to do an install using my usb stick, basically following >exactly< the instructions in the D-I documentation.

	I have a 4 GB stick, so I decided to partition it. Partition #1 is fat32, partition #2 is ext2. Make sure to make the fat32 partition bootable while in fdisk (linux' fdisk, I don't know about windows fdisk... doubt it will work). Use the mtools utility (or your windows machine) to format the fat32 partition.

	Mount the fat32 partition. Copy linux and initrd.gz from the "other images (netboot, USB stick, etc)" (I suspect this may be your problem, as the other initrd images are set up to mount the .iso from CD, HD or whatever. This initrd.gz is for mounting the .iso from the usb stick.) (If I am misunderstanding this, please feel free to set me straight, Samuel or anyone).

	Copy the .iso you want to use to the fat32 partition. (I used the net-inst image for my amd64)

	Create your  syslinux.cfg file on the fat32 partition. Mine looks like:
	default linux
	append initrd=initrd.gz speakup.synth=ltlk
 
	do "syslinux /dev/usb-stick" after you unmount the stick.

	That should do it... Boot from the stick and it should come up talking in the installer, no G-I menu, straight into the installer.

	I don't know about filing bug reports, etc, but after the installation completed (apparently successfully), when I do the initial boot, the system does not talk. My son looked at the screen, there is an error from grub2 and the system refuses to boot. I'll have to get grml going and see what needs fixing in the grub config, I guess.

	HTH,

	--terry


On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 05:33:27PM -0500, Kitty Litter wrote:
> Samuel,
> I talked to Kirk about this the other day and among other things he insists 
> that if I copied the .iso image to the stick with dd if=blah of=blah it 
> would boot. Well, my computer won't recognize the stick as bootable when I 
> do this, it goes to the next boot device which is the normal hard disk. I 
> also tried reformatting the stick with ext2 and grub and syslinux but 
> couldn't get it to boot. Vfat and syslinux is the only thing that will 
> boot. Even if I load the loop module from busybox before doing any steps of 
> the install, The .iso file I previously put in the root of the stick 
> doesn't get mounted unless I do it from the shell. I really don't feel 
> qualified to file a good bug report on this. Obviously this was never 
> really tested, maybe it's something they hoped would work, who knows. So 
> how about asking them to at least include loop.ko in initrd.gz? If they 
> should come up with a fix I would be more than happy to try it. Is it 
> possible to be more than happy?
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Name:	Terry D. Cudney
Phone:	705-812-4949
SIP: 8978@ekiga.net
E-mail:	terry@octothorp.org

Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like...
having a peeing sectionin a swimming pool.

Tired of technology? Check this out: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Samuel Thibault]

Hello,

Terry D. Cudney, le Sat 15 Nov 2008 19:44:40 -0500, a écrit :
> 	I wasn't able to do much  with this until today. I have been able to do an install using my usb stick, basically following >exactly< the instructions in the D-I documentation.

Do you have any idea of what you did differently from last time? (from
your description I can't see a difference).

Samuel

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Terry D. Cudney]

Hi Samuel,

	It's been a couple of weeks since I looked at this before, so I'm not sure what I did last time. One thing for sure is that I used the net-inst.iso of today (Nov 15).

	I think I may have used the vmlinuz and initrd.gz from other than the "other images (netboot, USB stick, etc)". The documentation is not very clear on this point, at least to my way of thinking.  As Randy (Kittylitter) was suggesting to use the vmlinuz and initrd.gz from the loop-mounted iso itself, it wasn't clear to him either that you have to use the vmlinuz/initrd from the usb branch. Or, am I wrong on this point? Do we in fact, need to use the linux/initrd.gz from: "\other images (netboot, USB stick, etc)"? The files there are from October 29/08, while other branches, CD/DVD/etc are up to the current date, AFAIK.

	Any idea on why I got the grub2 error on initial boot after the install? I haven't been able to get back to that, to see if I can recover the system... tomorrow, I hope.

	--terry

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 01:49:38AM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Terry D. Cudney, le Sat 15 Nov 2008 19:44:40 -0500, a écrit :
> > 	I wasn't able to do much  with this until today. I have been able to do an install using my usb stick, basically following >exactly< the instructions in the D-I documentation.
> 
> Do you have any idea of what you did differently from last time? (from
> your description I can't see a difference).
> 
> Samuel
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Name:	Terry D. Cudney
Phone:	705-812-4949
SIP: 8978@ekiga.net
E-mail:	terry@octothorp.org

Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like...
having a peeing sectionin a swimming pool.

Tired of technology? Check this out: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Samuel Thibault]

Terry D. Cudney, le Sat 15 Nov 2008 22:41:49 -0500, a écrit :
> The documentation is not very clear on this point, at least to my way of thinking.

The documentation for etch is not so clear indeed.  I had a look at
the documentation for lenny, and it clearly tells to get the images from
hd-media, so that should be better then.

> 	Any idea on why I got the grub2 error on initial boot after the install?

Without knowing which error happens, there can be plenty of reasons.

My only idea could be to boot with the USB stick still pluggued (but
with its booting disabled from the bios)

Samuel

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Kirk Reiser]

Well what I actually said is I thought it should work not that I
insisted but then Randy loves to stir shit him being a homoham and
all! 'grin'

   Kirk
--
Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Gaijin]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 05:59:38PM -0500, luke wrote:
> I have never heard of that actually working.  It probably should, in 
> theory, but in practice it doesn't, or rarely does.

Typically, you need a bootloader on track 0, sector 0.  It's just a
small program that tells the computer how to load the rest of the OS.
Maybe add it to grub or lilo and write a boatloader to the stick...

			Michael

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Terry D. Cudney]

Hi Samuel etal,

	You are right, booting fromthe HD with the stick still plugged in, did  attempt to boot the system, but it ran into another problem somewhere and never started speech. I had sighted help for a few minutes there.

	Booting with grml and looking at the /boot/grub/menu.lst shows that grub is configured to mount hd(1,1) as the root of the filesystem, while the actual HD partition that is to be root is "HD(0,1)". I tried editing menu.lst to reflect this, but still got the grub2 error on reboot (this time without the memory stick plugged in).

	Without sighted help, at this point I decided to try rebuilding the memory stick with today's HD-media images to do a re-install (as per the lenny guide). D-I boots and presents the installation menu (with speech). It proceeds as far as step 3 and fails to find an .iso image on the HD (of coursenot, it's on the memory stick). I tried skipping to step #4 to search for a .iso image but it cannot find one, even though the image is there on the stick.

	Am I correct in deducing that the HD-media instyaller is only going to look for the .iso on the HD partitions?

	If so, then which installer should we use to use a .iso on the memory stick? ... or am I missing something obvious to everyone else?

	--terry


On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 11:21:54AM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Terry D. Cudney, le Sat 15 Nov 2008 22:41:49 -0500, a écrit :
> > The documentation is not very clear on this point, at least to my way of thinking.
> 
> The documentation for etch is not so clear indeed.  I had a look at
> the documentation for lenny, and it clearly tells to get the images from
> hd-media, so that should be better then.
> 
> > 	Any idea on why I got the grub2 error on initial boot after the install?
> 
> Without knowing which error happens, there can be plenty of reasons.
> 
> My only idea could be to boot with the USB stick still pluggued (but
> with its booting disabled from the bios)
> 
> Samuel
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Name:	Terry D. Cudney
Phone:	705-812-4949
SIP: 8978@ekiga.net
E-mail:	terry@octothorp.org

Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like...
having a peeing sectionin a swimming pool.

Tired of technology? Check this out: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[luke]

On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, Terry D. Cudney wrote:

> 	Booting with grml and looking at the /boot/grub/menu.lst shows 
> that grub is configured to mount hd(1,1) as the root of the filesystem, 
> while the actual HD partition that is to be root is "HD(0,1)". I tried 
> editing menu.lst to reflect this, but still got the grub2 error on 
> reboot (this time without the memory stick plugged in).

Forgive the reminder, but did you recall to run update-grub after 
editing menu.lst?

Also check whether the kernel commandline in menu.lst contains some UUID 
or direct path reference for "root=".

Luke

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Terry D. Cudney]

Hi,

	Yes, I did the update-grub. There was no uuid parameter in the kernel line.

	Moot point now, as I'm trying a re-install...


	thanks,

	--terry

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 04:51:46PM -0500, luke wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, Terry D. Cudney wrote:
> 
> > 	Booting with grml and looking at the /boot/grub/menu.lst shows 
> > that grub is configured to mount hd(1,1) as the root of the filesystem, 
> > while the actual HD partition that is to be root is "HD(0,1)". I tried 
> > editing menu.lst to reflect this, but still got the grub2 error on 
> > reboot (this time without the memory stick plugged in).
> 
> Forgive the reminder, but did you recall to run update-grub after 
> editing menu.lst?
> 
> Also check whether the kernel commandline in menu.lst contains some UUID 
> or direct path reference for "root=".
> 
> Luke
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Name:	Terry D. Cudney
Phone:	705-812-4949
SIP: 8978@ekiga.net
E-mail:	terry@octothorp.org

Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like...
having a peeing sectionin a swimming pool.

Tired of technology? Check this out: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

Re: more stuff about installing from memory stick

[Samuel Thibault]

Terry D. Cudney, le Mon 17 Nov 2008 15:32:38 -0500, a écrit :
> 	Am I correct in deducing that the HD-media instyaller is only going to look for the .iso on the HD partitions?

Yes, but memory sticks do appear as HDs.  If yours doesn't then it's a
bug.  The problem you had with grub is that the BIOS puts your USB stick
as first disk and your actual disk as second disk, and thus when you
don't plug it things change.  To fix it you need to re-run grub-install
to fix the MBR of your disk (update-grub would only update menu.lst with
the list of kernels that appear in /boot).

Samuel