[finnix] Concerning finnix-thumbdrive

[Walker, Philip M (Managed Home)]

Hello,

I use Finnix on a variety of thumbdrives with good success.
Assuming that your USB flash stick comes up as /dev/sdb, you can prepare the flash drive like this:

DEVFILE=/dev/sdb

# ========= remove existing partition table (destroys flash contents!)
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=${DEVFILE} bs=512 count=1

# ======== create usb-zip FAT partition (partition 4) using one of the following 4 command lines:

# if flash stick capcity is less than or equal to 1GB
sudo mkdiskimage -F -4 ${DEVFILE} 0 64 32

# if flash stick is between 1 and 2G
sudo mkdiskimage -F -4 ${DEVFILE} 0 128 32

# if flash stick capacity is between 2GB and 4GB
sudo mkdiskimage -F -4 ${DEVFILE} 0 256 32

# if flash stick capacity is between 4GB and 8GB
sudo mkdiskimage -F -4 ${DEVFILE} 0 512 32

# Remove the flash stick and re-insert it so the kernel can reload the partition table
# Assume in the following examples that it comes up the second time as /dev/sdc
# and that the new partition is therefore /dev/sdc4

DEVFILE=/dev/sdc

sudo syslinux -s ${DEVFILE}4
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/myUsb
sudo mount ${DEVFILE}4 /mnt/myUsb
cd /mnt/myUsb

sudo cp -a /cdrom/isolinux .
sudo cp -dVr /cdrom/isolinux/* .
sudo mv isolinux.cfg syslinux.cfg
sudo rm -f isolinux.bin
sudo cp /cdrom/* .

It sounds like you are able to convince the BIOS to attempt to boot your flash stick,
although you might (depending on which BIOS you're using) have to tell it that your
USB stick is a Floppy, a Hard disk, or a ZIP drive (technically, we've emulated a ZIP here).

Good luck, hopefully you'll have more success with this sequence of steps.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: tru knowledge [mailto:tknowledge1 at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 10:21 PM
To: General Finnix discussion and announcements
Subject: [finnix] Concerning finnix-thumbdrive

Hello, but this is the second post concerning this issue, and finnix-thumbdrive is not working... I have used the seventh flashdrive to test, a simple 1 gigabyte imation.. The script ends with the dots...
Saying that it is "waiting for the partition table to become active" ..
I am not exactly expecting a response here.. The support in this mailing
  list is insofar non-existent.