If you like more flexibility or just want to know what's going on, you
should use the following method to put the files on your stick.
4.4.2.1. USB stick partitioning on Intel x86
We will show how to setup the memory stick to use the first partition,
instead of the entire device.
Note
Since most USB sticks come pre-configured with a single FAT16
partition, you probably won't have to repartition or reformat the
stick. If you have to do that anyway, use cfdisk
or any other partitioning tool for creating a FAT16 partition and then
create the filesystem using:
Take care that you use the correct device name for your USB stick. The
mkdosfs command is contained in the
dosfstools
Debian package.
In order to start the kernel after booting from the USB stick, we will
put a boot loader on the stick. Although any boot loader
(e.g. LILO) should work, it's convenient to use
SYSLINUX, since it uses a FAT16 partition and can
be reconfigured by just editing a text file. Any operating system
which supports the FAT file system can be used to make changes to the
configuration of the boot loader.
To put SYSLINUX on the FAT16 partition on your USB
stick, install the syslinux
and
mtools
packages on your system, and do:
Again, take care that you use the correct device name. The partition
must not be mounted when starting SYSLINUX. This
procedure writes a boot sector to the partition and creates the file
ldlinux.sys
which contains the boot loader code.
Mount the partition (mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
) and
copy the following files from the Debian archives to the stick:
If you want to rename the files, please note that
SYSLINUX can only process DOS (8.3) file names.
The syslinux.cfg
configuration file should
contain the following two lines:
Please note that the ramdisk_size
parameter
may need to be increased, depending on the image you are booting.
If the boot fails, you can try adding devfs=mount,dall
to the “append” line.
4.4.2.2. Adding an ISO image
Now you should put any Debian ISO image (businesscard, netinst or even
a full one) onto your stick (if it fits). The file name of such an
image must end in .iso
.
If you want to install over the network, without using an ISO image,
you will of course skip the previous step. Moreover you will have to
use the initial ramdisk from the netboot
directory instead of the one from hd-media
,
because hd-media/initrd.gz
does not have network
support.
When you are done, unmount the USB memory stick (umount
/mnt
) and activate its write protection switch.