[clug] Help please - trying to make a USB stick boot

[Ivan Lazar Miljenovic]

On 11 April 2012 16:29, Denise Bates <dbates at fwi.net.au> wrote:
> On 04/11/2012 04:20 PM, Mike Carden wrote:
>>
>> I'm trying to help someone fix a broken Grub bootloader on an eepc
>> that has USB ports but no optical drive.
>>
>> I have a copy of the boot-repair-disk iso from sourceforge and I would
>> like to put it on a USB stick and boot the eepc with it.
>>
>> If I try to use Ubuntu's usb-creator-gtk to make the stick, it fails
>> with an error message 'Invalid version string GNU/Linux' and the
>> resulting stick boots to syslinux then stops for lack of a kernel. And
>> indeed the .disk/info file inside the boot-repair-disk.iso does
>> contain that string. The usb-creator tool is supposed to be
>> distro-agnostic but that error would seem to indicate otherwise.
>>
>> So I tried to use unetbootin instead to create the stick but it
>> complains about some unmet dependencies (things which *are* installed)
>> and it fails too.
>>
>> So I tried just using dd but that makes a stick which won't boot so I
>> guess there is more boot-fu that I need to make that work.
>>
>> Ideas anyone?
>>
>> Ta,
>> MC
>
> Try downloading Puppy Linux, burn it to a CD on a working machine, boot it
> up and install it to the USB stick via the "universal installer"

The SysRescueCD website also has instructions on how to install it
onto a USB key (though whatever you do, don't try to upgrade it; I
b0rked the USB key trying as it would no longer boot from it).

-- 
Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
Ivan.Miljenovic at gmail.com
http://IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com