FAI ISO?

[John G. Heim]

Thanks. It worked. I didn't have a > /mnt/fai_usb/live/filesystem.dir 
directory on my CD image.  Just boot/ and boo.cab. I do the nfs mount 
thing. So I did a debootstrap to the flash drive before the chroot step.

debootstrap squeeze /mnt/fai_usb
chroot /mnt/fai_usb /bin/bash

  I think you have a small typo below,. I think
grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sdb

should read

 > grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sdb

The only other thing I did different from what you say is that I 
formatted my flash drive as ext2 instead of ext3. I've read that there 
is no point in using ext3 on a flash drive.

>  From memory.  Fix for reality.
>
> Partition and format your USB (if you are using an old fdisk, start at
> sector 8 or later).  Format as ext3.
> Mounting as something like '/mnt/fai_usb' and the iso as '/mnt/fai_cd'.
>   Assuming /dev/sdb1 as your formatted USB device
>
> mount -o loop /path/to/iso /mnt/fai_cd
> mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/fai_usb
> rsync -avp /mnt/fai_cd/. /mnt/fai_usb/.
> cd /mnt/fai_usb/live/filesystem.dir
> mount -o bind /proc proc
> mount -o bind /dev dev
> mount -o bind /sys sys
> chroot . /bin/bash
> grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sdb
> (This may take a while if the buffer is still syncing)
> exit
> umount proc sys dev
> cd /mnt
> umount fai_usb
>
> And there you go!
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 2:34 PM, John G. Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu
> <mailto:jheim at math.wisc.edu>> wrote:
>
>     I know this is a long shot but I am hoping someone has an answer. I
>     have been booting from a CD when I install FAI. I now have a machine
>     without a CD-ROM drive. I know I should set up PXE eventually but
>     for today, i'd like to boot from a flash drive. I know I can just
>     copy an ISO file to a thumb drive to make it boot. This works with
>     the debian netinst image and grml. So if your debian netinst images
>     is called debian.iso, you can do this to create a bootable thumbedrive:
>
>     cp debian.iso /dev/sdb
>
>
>     But if I do that with my FAI ISO, it does not work. The thumb drive
>     is not bootable. I did double check that my FAI ISO image is
>     bootable. If I write it to a CD, it boots.
>
>     wodim fai.iso
>
>     This gives me a bootable CD. But the following does not give me a
>     bottable thumb drive:
>
>     cp fai.iso /dev/sdb
>
>     --
>     ---
>     John G. Heim, 608-263-4189 <tel:608-263-4189>, jheim at math.wisc.edu
>     <mailto:jheim at math.wisc.edu>
>
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu