Migrating DVD ISO image to USB

[inode0]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 4:49 PM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Robert G. (Doc) Savage
> <dsavage at peaknet.net> wrote:
>> The Fedora-14-Live-multi.iso image is a DVD image that uses GRUB rather
>> than isolinux to boot to a menu of Live CD ISO images. At 5.3 GB, it
>> will not fit on an ordinary single layer DVD and requires a dual-layer
>> DVD disc & drive. If it could be written to an 8GB USB thumb drive, it
>> could be used to boot a system with a CD, an ordinary single-layer DVD,
>> or no optical drive at all.
>>
>> The Fedora livecd-iso-to-disk utility cannot make a bootable USB from
>> this image because it uses GRUB rather than isolinux like live CDs. I
>> submitted a RFE to enhance l-i-t-d, but it was declined. I've tried
>> using dd to copy the ISO image directly to the thumb drive:
>>
>>        # dd if=Fedora-14-Live-multi.iso of=/dev/sdd bs=2048
>>
>> but this does not produce a bootable device. Can anyone suggest a method
>> that will work?
>
> I think you can do this with a couple additional tweaks to grub after
> copying everything from Fedora-14-Live-multi.iso to the usb stick.
> Please be careful and double check the commands below.

Ok, I downloaded Fedora-14-Live-multi.iso and gave it a try. We can
drop what I had as the first step.

We need to partition the usb stick. I used ext2 (I expect ext3 is fine
too) with just one partition. I used tune2fs with -c 0 and -i 0 to
disable fsck and be sure to label the partition Fedora-14-multi. Then
remount it.

# echo '(hd0)   sda' > /media/Fedora-14-multi/boot/grub/device.map

I think we need a tab character between (hd0) and sda in the command above.

You might need to do the following step from a machine where the usb
stick is mounted on /dev/sda1 ... I'd have to test that to be sure but
I recall grub-install being cranky otherwise.

# grub-install --root-directory=/media/Fedora-14-multi --no-floppy '(hd0)'

Now the usb stick is booting happily into the various live spins.

John