I\'ve started running linux (fedora 13) through a live usb. I\'ve noticed some t

Question

I've started running linux (fedora 13) through a live usb. I've noticed some things that a live usb cannot do--for instance, installing drivers, which is very important in my case. I don't have enough space on my hard drive to make a sufficiently large partition for linux, so I was wondering:

Is it possible to install linux to a usb flash drive as if it were a regular hard drive? That is, to avoid making a live usb with "persistence" but rather a full "hard drive" install on a flash drive.

My main concern is being able to install applications and drivers, particularly ndiswrapper.

Explanation / Answer

Install Fedora 13 is the only way to use a USB Drive more than 4 GB. There are a set of tools for creating the fedora install drive. One way is install unetbootin and create a live USB drive. Other ways is to use the live cd tools.

First you must want to download the Fedora DVD iso image .

The Methode is very simple.First Install the tools into your existing fedora system.

su -
yum install livecd-tools syslinux
mkdir /mnt/iso
mount -o loop <path to>/Fedora-13-i386-DVD.iso /mnt/iso
livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr <path to>/Fedora-13-i386-DVD.iso /dev/sdb1

the last command should be livecd-iso-to-disk –reset-mbr <path to>/Fedora-13-i386-DVD.iso /dev/sdb1

This sdb is your current USB Drive Mounted into your system. In Fedora 11/12 it will mount automaticaly.

Now you must unmount and remount the usb stick (eg remove and reinsert)   copy ‘images’ into USB and then copy the dvd iso image to the root dir (takes a long time).

mkdir /media/<usb disk>/images
cp /mnt/iso/images/install.img /media/<usb disk>/images/
cp <path to>/Fedora-13-i386-DVD.iso /media/<usb disk>/

And that’s it. Boot from the usb stick and follow the instructions as usual but select Install Media from ‘Hard Drive’ and select the usb stick (probably /dev/sdb1) as the location of the image. You can enter ‘/’ for the directory or leave it blank.

Problem :

when booted from usb disk you will get

boot:
Could not find kernel image: linux
boot:
Could not find kernel image: linux

There is an easy solution…

type at the boot line the following

/isolinux/vmlinuz initrd=/isolinux/initrd.img

then hit enter”

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