Tuesday, 20 Nov, 2007

My primary objective is to make a pc boot from usb flash drive and launch the standard debian installer.

Check & make sure your BIOS is set to "Boot from USB" (sometimes also known as "Boot from Removable Device").

Get boot.img.gz (stable linked below):

wget http://ftp.be.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz

unzip & place raw content inside the UNMOUNTED flash drive:

zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdc (assuming sdc is yours).

Above comment unzips and appends boot.img to your Usb Key.

 

Get current netinst iso image:

wget http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r1/i386/iso-cd/debian-40r1-i386-netinst.iso

Above command wgets etch-netinst.

 

Now copy-paste the ISO file image to the flash drive (as is).

 

All good - you may now disconnect your new Debian Installer USB Key and spread the Debian word everywhere!

If it works, it will boot a kernel and find automatically the iso image then proceed with the install process as usual.

Please Note:

During partitioning, your flash drive might be listed before your HDD(s). In other words, your USB Key might take precedence and be reported as /sda (while your other internal HDDs might show-up as /sdb,/sdc, etc.).

To mitigate the above issue, goto your BIOS then Set "Boot Removable Devices First" to "Disabled".

SRC:

http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/i386/ch04s04.html.en

4.3/5 - (3 votes)