[Server-devel] mkusbinstall fails

[David Leeming]

OK I followed your advice. As follows:
- used Windows to format (FAT 16)
- transfer to Ubuntu
- check in Partition editor: shows as a good 1.86GB partition, fat16,
Flags=boot
- run mkusbinstall
-   says "Copying live image to USB stick"
-   same i/o errors appear as in the jpeg I attached previous email, ending
with "USB stick set up as install image"

- insert in XS machine and boot
- get same error as before

EXTLINUX 3.36 Debian-2007-08-30 EBIOS Copyright (C) 1994-2007 H. Peter Anvin

Could not find kernel image: linux
boot:

If it means anything, the XS machine has a failed installation on it
already, and if there is no bootable USB stick available it starts up in
Grub. 


David Leeming
Technical Advisor, People First Network, Honiara, Solomon Islands
Alternative email address: leemingdavid at yahoo.com.au 



-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langhoff at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, 16 February 2009 1:05 p.m.
To: David Leeming
Cc: server-devel at lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: mkusbinstall fails

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 2:42 PM, David Leeming
<leeming at pipolfastaem.gov.sb> wrote:
> Tried with another USB stick - exactly the same result.

Thanks for writing up carefully  the steps you followed... I think I
spotted the problem...

> SET UP BOOTABLE USB STICK
>
> - insert 2GB USB drive previously formatted with Windows (FAT)
> - start Partition editor, delete the existing partition

Here is where the problem starts... the USB stick is perfectly good
with a FAT partition. Repartitioning and formatting it in ext2 is
likely to be the source of the problem.

Anyone else reading this: do not repartition the USB stick :-)

David: you need to re-partition the usb stick in a funny format.

 - use fdisk to delete the partition, create a new partition of type
"e" (WIN95 16bit LBA), make the partition bootable

 - use mkfs.vfat with the -F 16 option

Once you have done that, you can check that the disk is in good shape
and usable trying it on a Windows machine for example.

Hope that helps!

BTW, where did you see instructions to replace the USB disk partition
format? I want to make sure we don't have misleading wiki pages...

cheers,



,
-- 
 martin.langhoff at gmail.com
 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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