Boot Debian from an USB device

Posted by sebas on Mon 9 Oct 2006 at 12:49

Here is a very short (but in my opinion very useful) how-to for creating an USB boot device, which enables you to boot Debian from your memory stick.

We are assuming that your USB device is indicated by /dev/sda, and that you are interested in Debian stable (other distributions are untested, but should work).

First unmount your memory stick.

sudo umount /dev/sda

Now download the boot.img.gz, which is necessary to make your USB device bootable:

cd ~
wget ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz

Extract this image and write it to your USB device:

sudo zcat ~/boot.img.gz > /dev/sda

Now mount the volume to /mnt:

sudo mount /dev/sda /mnt

In this case a Debian Stable net-install image is used. You may also use a business card iso. Nevertheless, you should be sure to use the same version of the ISO-image as the image.tar.gz that was used before.

Download the ISO to the USB device:

cd /mnt/
sudo wget http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r3/i386/iso-cd/debian-31r3-i386-netinst.iso

Now you can unmount the volume:

cd ~
sudo umount /dev/sda

You can remove the USB device, and plug it in your new system. Of course you should tell your BIOS to boot from USB.

There is a copy of this how-to on the website of our company VirtualConcepts

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Posted by barney (193.108.xx.xx) on Mon 9 Oct 2006 at 13:31
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sudo zcat ~/boot.img.gz > /dev/sda
Will only work if your user has write access to /dev/sda. You probably want to do
sudo sh -c 'zcat ~/boot.img.gz > /dev/sda'

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Posted by Anonymous (81.19.xx.xx) on Mon 9 Oct 2006 at 15:35
Is this really booting from a USB device, or simply installing from a USB device?

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Posted by sebas (82.171.xx.xx) on Mon 9 Oct 2006 at 19:14
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Good point.. it's about installing from an USB device. Sorry for the confusion.

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Posted by JoshTriplett (66.93.xx.xx) on Mon 23 Oct 2006 at 02:55
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I tend to use "tee" for this, since it takes an output file directly on the command line:
zcat ~/boot.img.gz | sudo tee /dev/sda > /dev/null
In general, this also has the advantage of not running the command generating the output as root.

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Posted by ybiC (72.196.xx.xx) on Mon 9 Oct 2006 at 16:04
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Nice write-up, yo.

Depending on the contents of your /etc/fstab, the mount command might need to look something like this: mount -t msdos /dev/sda /mnt

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Posted by Nilshar (88.191.xx.xx) on Tue 10 Oct 2006 at 08:21
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Nice.
I have a 4Gb USB stick, I was wondering if it is possible to have a full debian system on it and boot on it, any idea ?

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Posted by Anonymous (80.99.xx.xx) on Tue 10 Oct 2006 at 09:06

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Posted by Nilshar (88.191.xx.xx) on Tue 10 Oct 2006 at 09:15
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Thanks

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Posted by Anonymous (84.77.xx.xx) on Fri 13 Oct 2006 at 23:24
You could try ftp://ftp.caliu.cat/pub/distribucions/xarnoppix/Xarnoppix-4.11-i3 86.iso

From live cd one can install to usb device, later booting from usb with linux dirconf=configuration_name it's posible to use many persistent configurations.

It's kde based and catalan localized but in fact wit more than 3 Gb free ( 700 MB FAT16 + ext2 2300 MB ) you can install a lot of locales ;-)

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Posted by Anonymous (87.2.xx.xx) on Wed 25 Oct 2006 at 09:33
You could also try Debian Live, even if usb target is not supported yet (although is scheduled to), you can copy the files from the generated image or the downloadable iso in your usb key, then install syslinux, and you have a live debian system on usb. Tried, it works.

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Posted by MG (72.204.xx.xx) on Sat 27 Jan 2007 at 01:36
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Sure, easy.
http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=usb#grml2usb

But 4GB is enough for complete grml plus your own apps
http://grml.org/grml2hd/
In this case, tweak /etc/fstab to minimize flash writes, so: tmpfs for /tmp, /var/run, /var/lock, /var/log, etc. (not /var/tmp, which must persist).

Also consider the exceptionally shock-resistant WD Passport (under 100 bucks) following advice from
http://os.newsforge.com/os/06/02/22/2221258.shtml

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Posted by Anonymous (202.72.xx.xx) on Mon 30 Oct 2006 at 12:29
Thanks, worked a treat!

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Posted by Anonymous (69.176.xx.xx) on Fri 9 Nov 2007 at 17:25
It would be nice if the zcat process would not make the partition so small.

Any tips on making it larger and still be bootable?

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Posted by Anonymous (193.214.xx.xx) on Mon 23 Jun 2008 at 15:51
I managed to put the image on a usb stick and boot. When i choose "detect ethernet card" it finds nothing, even though the command lspci finds 2 ethernet cards.

Does this image officially support install over network, because i really cant get it to work. "ethernet card not found" hauts me!

-Alf :)

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