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diff --git a/usb-and-pxe-installers/README_USB.TXT b/usb-and-pxe-installers/README_USB.TXT new file mode 100644 index 000000000..a1f436ddc --- /dev/null +++ b/usb-and-pxe-installers/README_USB.TXT @@ -0,0 +1,176 @@ +
+Installing Slackware using a bootable USB stick
+===============================================
+
+**WARNING:**
+ The procedure outlined below will destroy all data that is currently
+ stored on the USB stick you use to create a USB Slackware installer.
+
+
+Introduction
+------------
+
+ With the release of Slackware 12.0, the era of floppy-boot came to
+a definite end. The reason is simple - the Linux 2.6 kernel will not
+fit on a single floppy, even in it's most condensed configuration.
+In this README, I will show you how to use a bootable USB stick to
+install Slackware. This method - creating the USB equivalent of a
+boot/root floppy pair - is easy to use and fast. It requires that your
+computer is able to boot from USB-HDD.
+
+
+Booting the Slackware installer from a USB stick
+------------------------------------------------
+
+ The 'usbboot.img' file is a 25 MB small USB boot image that you can
+use to boot into the Slackware setup program. The mini image does not
+contain any installable Slackware package. In order to install Slackware
+you will need a local NFS/HTTP/FTP server or another Slackware package
+source like a prepared local harddisk partition. This small image file
+works great, especially when you can't or don't want to use CDROM media
+as the carrier for the Slackware packages.
+The image is transfered to a USB stick in a matter of seconds. Even the
+oldest and tiniest of USB drives is well suited for this purpose.
+
+ The usual way of installing Slackware from a network server repository,
+is to boot the Slackware CDROM, and run the ('pcmcia' and) 'network' script
+that load the drivers for your network card. You need a working network
+card before running setup and go through the installation procedure.
+When you type 'pcmcia' and/or 'network', the Slackware installer would look
+for the appropriate driver files on an available CDROM, and if no CDROM
+is found it prompts you to insert floppy disks.
+
+ Now, with a boot from our USB stick we are assuming there is no CDROM
+and no floppy drive available to us. So, this USB boot image contains
+all the drivers you need and will not prompt you for additional 'floppies'.
+A consequence of adding all the network and pcmcia drivers to the USB image
+is that using a bootable USB stick is not a suitable method to install
+Slackware on old PCs that are low on memory! The ramdisk will be more than
+30 MB in size, and you will need RAM for your kernel as well.
+
+
+Transfering the usbboot.img file to a USB device
+------------------------------------------------
+
+In order to create a bootable USB stick with the Slackware installer on it,
+copy the 'usbboot.img' file to a USB stick as follows:
+
+(1) In a Linux terminal if you're in X, or just from the console, change
+ directory to where the file 'usbboot.img' is located - you may have to
+ mount your Slackware CDROM or DVD first.
+(2) Insert a USB stick that is going to become your Slackware installer.
+ Note that all data the stick contains will be erased in the next steps!
+ You need to find out the device name for this USB stick. Sometimes it
+ helps to run the command 'rescan-scsi-bus' if the USB stick is not
+ being detected right away.
+ On systems without SCSI or SATA disks, the USB stick will usually be
+ assigned '/dev/sda' as the device name. If '/dev/sda' already is your
+ SCSI or SATA hard drive, then '/dev/sdb' would become the device name
+ for the USB stick. Be very convinced that you know which device name
+ represents your stick before you advance to the next step!
+(3) Transfer the image file to the USB stick using the 'dd' program. In the
+ example command line below, I am assuming that the USB stick is known as
+ '/dev/sdx'.
+
+ dd if=usbboot.img of=/dev/sdx bs=512
+
+ Be careful about the device name for your USB stick! The above 'dd'
+ command will wipe out any existing data on the device, so you had better
+ be sure that it is not the SATA hard disk you're targeting!
+
+
+Booting from the USB stick
+--------------------------
+
+ Your computer BIOS must support booting from USB HDD.
+
+ Plug the stick into your computers USB slot, and boot it up. Make
+sure you select boot from USB-HDD - how you do this is very dependent on
+the type of computer you have. Many computers will display a message
+during the initial stages of the booting that says something like
+"Press [F12] for a boot device list".
+
+ The Slackware installer will start just like when you had booted from
+a CDROM (maybe somewhat faster even). Log in as root. Start the install
+by partitioning your hard drive as usual, and running 'setup'. If you want
+to install from a network server such as a NFS, HTTP or FTP server, you
+should run the commands 'pcmcia' (if your network card is a PCMCIA type)
+and/or 'network' prior to running 'setup' in order to load a driver for
+your network card. If you want to install Slackware using a local hard
+disk partition in case you copied the content of the Slackware CDROMs/DVD
+there already, that is also an option.
+It would not make much sense to opt for the third install method to
+"use a CDROM" since we just abandoned the use of a CDROM medium :-)
+
+
+A remark about fdisk warnings
+-----------------------------
+
+ After writing the 'usbboot.img' to the USB stick, if you run fdisk -l
+you will see alarming output like this:
+
+ This doesn't look like a partition table
+ Probably you selected the wrong device.
+
+ Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
+ /dev/sda1 ? 8563200 8326647 2088818490 1 FAT12
+ Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
+ phys=(124, 38, 11) logical=(8563199, 1, 16)
+ Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
+ phys=(344, 195, 26) logical=(8326646, 0, 49)
+ Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
+
+... and so on, for partitions 2, 3 and 4 as well.
+
+ This is actually harmless. The 'usbboot.img' file was copied to the
+raw device, it did not create partitions at all. Fdisk reads the information
+in the first sector and incorrectly interprets that as a messed-up device.
+
+
+Restoring a USB stick to its original state
+-------------------------------------------
+
+ When you have used the small 25 MB image to create a USB installer,
+your USB stick is no longer useful for anything else. Any remaining
+space on the stick (assuming you used a larger-than 25 MB stick for it)
+is inaccessible. Fortunately, it is easy to re-create a FAT partition on
+the stick (thereby removing the Slackware installer of course) so that
+the USB stick again becomes available for carrying around your data.
+
+ Take care about which device actually is your USB stick !!! The next
+command will render all data on /dev/sdx inaccessible !!!
+
+(1) First, wipe the bootsector of the USB stick:
+
+ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=512 count=1
+
+(2) Then, create a new FAT32 partition on the stick and write a FAT32
+ filesystem on it (vfat or type b in fdisk terminology):
+
+fdisk /dev/sdx <<EOF
+n
+p
+1
+
+
+t
+b
+w
+EOF
+mkdosfs -F32 /dev/sdx1
+
+ The 10 lines starting with 'fdisk /dev/sdx <<EOF' and ending with the
+ single word 'EOF' is actually one single command spread over ten lines,
+ including the two empty lines in the middle. This format is called a
+ 'here-document'. It allows you to use a command which expects interactive
+ input in a non-interactive way. If you're uncomfortable with the above
+ command you can just run
+
+ fdisk /dev/sdx
+
+ and create a partition interactively :-)
+
+==========================================================
+Author: Eric Hameleers <alien@slackware.com> 22-jul-2009
+Wiki URL: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=slackware:usbboot
+
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