Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dm7000s]

Hello,

I have a thinclient (VIA C3-533MHz, Trident onboard video) with USB ports and a CF-to-IDE adapter. Only 64MB's of main memory.
No CD/DVD-ROM, no floppy.
Besides taking the thing apart and attaching a CD-ROM player with an external powersupply, the only other install possibility might be via LAN (PXE) boot (tried some things, but couldn't get it to work). No floppy connector on the mainboard.

So in summary: The only option to install things is via USB (stick).

Tried things like DSL and Puppy. All quite easy to get the thinclient booted/install with those from an USB stick.
Also tried the LIVE edition from vector linux (extracted the iso to usb stick, changed isolinux to syslinux etc. etc.). Works perfect (very slow btw).

Now I'd like to try VectorLinux5.9 beta1 light, but the ISO structure seems completely different from the live-cd iso's. Is there a possibility to get VL-Light booted from an USB stick, in a fairly easy way, like the live cd's?

VL-light should work with "DSL like" response (or better, I hope to find out!!) with only 64MB Ram, correct?

[kc1di]

came across the following article that may be of help.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4062492

[BlueMage]

Aha, my favourite!  I've also got a thinclient that I got from work - no optical, small hard drive, the usual.  DSL and Puppy both install fine.  Vector .... Vector of any flavour is a bit trickier.  But hey, challenges are what keep life interesting, no?

First of all, I'm assuming you want to do a full install, not merely run from the USB stick, correct?  If I'm not, that's fine - I'm also interested in learning how to run Vector from USB stick as opposed to HDD install.  But if you do wish to install, the first thing I'm going to recommend is to grab the iso-install script from here.  For the record, I use a 2GB stick for this sort of thing, so I'll again be assuming that you will too.

Now, place the install script, and the .iso of Vector on the thumb stick.  Boot your thinclient using DSL (I found Puppy to be a little quirky doing this, though Puppy does a far better job of preparing the partitions with GPartEd - swap between them as necessary), drop to run level 2 (Ctrl-Alt-F2, login as root, "init 2" without quotes) and then navigate to your mounted thumb drive.  From there, run the iso-install script.

It should work.  It really should.  The reality is, it probably won't the first time - It'll either hang on extracting the image or creating an appropriate "proc" directory - I think this is something to do with DSL, I honestly don't know.  Either way, should that happen (and the folks who know better than i do about this will now cringe) comment out the offending command.  If it's the image extraction, you'll have to fiddle - I can't remember the commands exactly.

[dm7000s]

Kc1di and BlueMage, both thanks for your answers!

Before I wanted to try the methods described above, I first tried something simpler. And it worked.
Here is what I did:

I extracted the contents of VL5.9-Light-B2.iso to my USB stick.
I also extracted the contents of the isolinux folder (from the iso) to the root of the USB stick.
I changed the name from isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg.
Did a syslinux x: (in windows).

The thinclient booted right away from the USB stick, and was ready to install VL light!

[kc1di]

Happy that worked for you

[BlueMage]

Hahah, oh man, my method definitely seems overly complicated now.  Sweet though, I can has a USB-bootable Vector.

[gychang]

Hahah, oh man, my method definitely seems overly complicated now.  Sweet though, I can has a USB-bootable Vector.

I need more help...

I have thinkpad 560Z (no CD, bootable external floppy, and nonbootable USB with 2G of memory card) and fresh VL6.0-Light-B2.iso (on CD).

Right now the 560Z has DSL linux installed and working.  I want to eventually end up with VL Light on 560Z.

Would appreciate if anyone can direct me (somewhat of a newbie) on how to accomplish the mission.

gychang

[lighans]

Kc1di and BlueMage, both thanks for your answers!

Before I wanted to try the methods described above, I first tried something simpler. And it worked.
Here is what I did:

I extracted the contents of VL5.9-Light-B2.iso to my USB stick.
I also extracted the contents of the isolinux folder (from the iso) to the root of the USB stick.
I changed the name from isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg.
Did a syslinux x: (in windows).

The thinclient booted right away from the USB stick, and was ready to install VL light!

Well. I am trying this, but have no clue how to syslinux x:. I'm running linux.

I want to install 6.0 Standard on a netbook (acer aspire one 150).
Light Live worked, but I couldn't go to init 2 in my recent ditribution, so no none-cdrom install for me.
(the trouble is, that the netbook doesn't start at the moment, because my "trying so hard te be nerd, but knowing I'm not behaviour". Grub gives an error.....) Well, happily I have another laptop to tell the bad news an pray for help.

[Daniel]

There is a much simpler way than above. Extract the contents of the iso to the usb stick and go into the folder labeled "boot" (w/o quotes). Find the script called liloinst.sh and run it. The usb stick will then be bootable.

[M0E-lnx]

Actually, the script is called bootinst.sh
You it like this

Code: [Select]

./bootinst /dev/sda1replace /dev/sda1 with the partition where your files are on the usb stick.

[Daniel]

The bootinst.sh script only works for FAT filesystems. The liloinst.sh script should work for all or most filesystems.

[Lyn]

I have an Acer Aspire 1 - trying the usb boot method with unetbootin and I get the following error..

could not find ramdisk image : /isolinux.init.gz

What am I doing wrong?

[Daniel]

Where did you put the .iso image file?

[Lyn]

On the USB memory stick

[Daniel]

The .iso may have to be somewhere not on the usb stick for it to work. Have you watched the unetbootin tutorial on www.opensourcebistro.com ?