BIOS won't boot to USB, but create optical boot proxy?

[melodie]

Are you familiar with the different naming convention for partitions in Linux as opposed to what MS uses in Win?
If not then familiarising yourself with the differences would help a lot.

We all have our pet hates and the MS 'thing' of calling partitions - "drives" - is one that gets to me  

No, not familiar, got some learning to do, and yes calling partitions "drives" just muddies the water. Now, I intend to proceed with this C partition install, but thinking it over I'll still look to a USB install also because unlike my hard drives it's brand new and portable. And so... since the C will be wiped, OK, I assume the USB will be wiped. And then part of my original question's still open - can I still use the remaining drive space later for Windows stuff? Or will the Linux file system prevent that?

Hi,

You can start to learn quietly and gently, with the tool Linux Live USB. http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ "For you, LiLi creates portable, bootable and virtualized USB stick running Linux."

All you have to do is have your USB stick normally formatted to Fat32, either with the Windows tool or with the Linux Live USB tool (I tried once, don't remember which one worked best). I used a ISO image which was on my hard drive, to install to pendrive : no virtual machine or such, but feel free to test options.

I don't understand your questions, but:

always do a backup of your personal data to another media than the one on which you are going to install the distribution. A possible error could damage it and you would not be able to get it back.

That's the main point.

Once on your stick, start, it, use it as Live, wait to be at ease with it before installing to the machine hard drive. (A few days or a few weeks, don't hurry).

what else ? before installing, you will send a few informations about how your hard drive looks like, from the GNU/Linux point of view.

The Linux Live USB program allows you to have an install to USB with fat32 partition type WITH persistence, which is very nice too.

A pendrive can have 1 GB or more... an install takes what it needs depending on the size of the ISO. If you don't use all the space for the distro the left space will be available for datas from your Windows install.

[Just17]

Linux gets installed onto partitions.
It can use partitions on any part of the HDD, so you can arrange to have the first partition in a Win filesystem format and put Linux anywhere else on the drive you wish.

So for dual use the way to do it is to have the first partition of a USB device in FAT or NTFS.

If you arrange the partitions as you want them before installing, then choose 'existing partitions' for the install, none of the partition structure will be touched .....  just the contents of the selected partition/s will be overwritten/wiped.

There are two types of 'install' ......  a full standard install, and a portable Live install, like a CD.
The 'Live' type can go on a CD/DVD as you know, but can also go on a USB device or indeed on a fixed HDD.

For portability ......  meaning a requirement to boot the OS on many different hardware setups .....  i believe a live install works best.
It can be on external USB connected HDD or on a flash stick.

If the partition it is to reside on is prepared in Linux format (ext2, ext3) then a form of 'persistence' can be arranged, so that changes made can be retained for the next time it is used.
Because of the structure of the live session not everything can be changed, but the user account can be tweaked for personal preferences and those changes retained.
Also new applications can be installed and retained.
Those would probably be the two most important parts of such a live system.

There is some information in this thread that you might find useful for installing a Live session to USB device ...

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,74878.0.html

Probably getting into information overload now ......  so will leave it to you to read what you can and get back with further questions

regards.

@Melodie

yes MD5sum is the same here

[melodie]

Hi,

Just18, thank you very much. It is now available here, and here.

I'll try it as soon as possible.

Regards,
Mélodie

[rutazoid]

You can start to learn quietly and gently, with the tool Linux Live USB. http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ "For you, LiLi creates portable, bootable and virtualized USB stick running Linux."

hi melodie, yes this seems like a very easy and versatile tool, especially as it filters distros that can boot from a stick. maybe other USB drives too? i downloaded it. BUT, my BIOS won't boot to USB anyway, so i'll need to use PLOP or something to get this to work.

[rutazoid]

Probably getting into information overload now ......  so will leave it to you to read what you can and get back with further questions

  Yes, sometimes I wonder just how much I can learn fresh any more. Maybe I'll change my handle to "Just65". Again, thanks for all your help. And I will get back here with results when I have some.

[melodie]

hi melodie, yes this seems like a very easy and versatile tool, especially as it filters distros that can boot from a stick. maybe other USB drives too? i downloaded it. BUT, my BIOS won't boot to USB anyway, so i'll need to use PLOP or something to get this to work.

Thanks to Just18 we now have the tools ready to go to do that. He cleared out the way, and provided an image for floppy and yesterday an image for CD. I host both here:

Hi,

Just18, thank you very much. It is now available here, and here.

As Just18 said the CD image has not been tested yet, but if you want to try it, and let us know how it goes, it would be interesting.

With Linux Live USB : you may have to try more than once, sometimes all is not as clear as it seems to be at first sight. This is how I saw it when I tried, but at the end I got the ISO I selected in my folder to be installed to the pendrive. (I was just testing the Linux Live USB program, it was not for personal need).

And don't worry about the distros which can and can't : all PCLinuxOS versions can be installed to pendrive and be used as Live with or without persistence.

Regards,
Mélodie

[Just17]

Regarding preparing a Live USB ......  the PCLOS utility is on the LiveCD and can be run from there to produce a LiveUSB the same as the LiveCD it is run from. It can also use a different PCLOS ISO if you wished.

All is needed is to format one partition of the USB device to ext2 or ext3 .......  which can also be done from the LiveCD.

No need for downloads or to use another OS 

regards

[djohnston]

Maybe I'll change my handle to "Just65".

If you do, I might have to change mine to "Just60". 

[menotu]

Michael Reed from LinuxJournal has done the following "how-to" on using Plop

Using Plop Boot Manager for USB Boot


Plop Homel


Plop Downloads

[Just17]

Michael Reed from LinuxJournal has done the following "how-to" on using Plop

Using Plop Boot Manager for USB Boot

I read that earlier today and came away totally confused .....  even though I have used PLOP!   

Was it only me?

[melodie]

Hi Just18,

I'll have to go back to you with this Plop boot manager, because after the last mail exchange I had with the developer, it appeared that some options can be used to not show the theme displayed, but just start the usb and end of line.

I started looking in the docs which come along the tarballs from his website, but didn't take the time to continue long enough...

I can't get quite into the text at this page shown by menotu now, for time reason, and maybe I'll have to understand what particular point you feel you have missed up to now : can you explain me ?

Else, in his second and last mail, the dev told me he would in the future, release a version : not free gpl, but free for commercial use as well. (and he said about kplop, recently created and uploaded, which is gpl and works with Linux kernels only, and syslinux only as bootloader).

The delicate point in all this which is the part I am very interested, (additionnally to use Plop, which works very well !) is about the GPL, and about money : when he asked people to send 5 euros to contribute to his plop boot manager, nobody sent anything. I was thinking that he could get financial contributions if he didn't keep it private and maybe also if he didn't fix an amount...

[djohnston]

I read that earlier today and came away totally confused .....  even though I have used PLOP!   

Was it only me?

Maybe it's this incorrect statement:

There might be a slight problem here as USB keyboards wont work until the operating system itself has booted.

Or maybe it's his generalized, non-specific way of describing what he did to boot that other OS. I like to keep things simple, so I'll keep using the PLOP boot floppy. I won't be replacing GRUB on the MBR of my hard drives any time soon, if at all.

[Just17]

I read that earlier today and came away totally confused .....  even though I have used PLOP!   

Was it only me?

Maybe it's this incorrect statement:

There might be a slight problem here as USB keyboards wont work until the operating system itself has booted.

Or maybe it's his generalized, non-specific way of describing what he did to boot that other OS. I like to keep things simple, so I'll keep using the PLOP boot floppy. I won't be replacing GRUB on the MBR of my hard drives any time soon, if at all.

I went back and read it again .......  and quite honestly found the article itself confused ....  besides the errors.

At the end of it I doubt anyone would be any wiser and probably less so than if they had just gone to the PLOP home page.

[djohnston]

I went back and read it again .......  and quite honestly found the article itself confused ....  besides the errors.

At the end of it I doubt anyone would be any wiser and probably less so than if they had just gone to the PLOP home page.

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