CentOS - Aug 2015 - dd iso to flash drive

I?ve been trying to get the dd of an iso to a usb flash drive to work for CentOS
6.7.  It is working with the CentOS 7 DVD1 iso (x64), but if I use the same
process with 6.7 bin dvd1 iso or the 6.7 live dvd, the flash drive will not
boot.  I thought 6.x and forward could be done like this.

-wes

Booting from the USB requires that there is a syslinux directory to boot
off of. In EL6, there is only isolinux, which is what booting from a DVD
uses. You should be able to copy isolinux to syslinux, rename the files
from s/iso/sys/ and then update syslinux.cfg to point to the USB drive
to boot from. Here's an example from my setup:

===LABEL next
        MENU LABEL ^A) Boot the next device as configured in your BIOS
        MENU DEFAULT
        localboot -1

LABEL usb-new-striker01
        MENU LABEL ^1) New Striker Dashboard 01 - RHEL 6 - USB - Deletes
All Existing Data!
        TEXT HELP

                Installs a new Striker Dashboard 01 using RHEL 6. Will
create a traditional
                /boot + MBR install for systems with traditional BIOSes.
Partition will
                be 0.5 GiB /boot, 4 GiB <swap>, remainder for /.
        ENDTEXT
        KERNEL vmlinuz
        APPEND initrd=initrd.img repo=hd:sdb1:/
ks=hd:sdb1:ks/usb-new-striker01.ks

LABEL usb-new-striker02
        MENU LABEL ^2) New Striker Dashboard 02 - RHEL 6 - USB - Deletes
All Existing Data!
        TEXT HELP

                Installs a new Striker Dashboard 02 using RHEL 6. Will
create a traditional
                /boot + MBR install for systems with traditional BIOSes.
Partition will
                be 0.5 GiB /boot, 4 GiB <swap>, remainder for /.
        ENDTEXT
        KERNEL vmlinuz
        APPEND initrd=initrd.img repo=hd:sdb1:/
ks=hd:sdb1:ks/usb-new-striker02.ks

label rescue
        MENU LABEL ^B) Rescue installed system
        MENU HELP

                Boot the RHEL 6.6 DVD in rescue mode.
        ENDTEXT
        KERNEL vmlinuz
        APPEND initrd=initrd.img rescue

label memtest86
        MENU LABEL ^C) Memory test
        MENU HELP

                Test the RAM in the system for defects.
        ENDTEXT
        KERNELmemtest
        APPEND -
===
Delete the ks... from the APPEND line if you don't want to use a custom
KS (the existing data from isolinux.cfg should show this, more or less).

I personally re-rolled the ISO so that this (modified) syslinux.cfg was
in the ISO, so that I didn't have to do it after the fact.

hth

digimer

On 13/08/15 02:21 PM, Wes James wrote:
> I?ve been trying to get the dd of an iso to a usb flash drive to work for
CentOS 6.7.  It is working with the CentOS 7 DVD1 iso (x64), but if I use the
same process with 6.7 bin dvd1 iso or the 6.7 live dvd, the flash drive will not
boot.  I thought 6.x and forward could be done like this.
> 
> -wes
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> 

-- 
Digimer
Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/
What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without
access to education?

On 08/13/2015 11:34 AM, Digimer wrote:
> Booting from the USB requires that there is a syslinux directory to boot
> off of. In EL6, there is only isolinux, which is what booting from a DVD
> uses. You should be able to copy isolinux to syslinux, rename the files
> from s/iso/sys/ and then update syslinux.cfg to point to the USB drive
> to boot from. Here's an example from my setup:
> 
Perhaps something went wrong with the 6.7 DVD, I haven't tested yet.
It is definitely supposed to work by just using dd to a USB stick.
Both 6.5 and 6.6 DVDs works just fine and so does the 6.7-network-
install iso. I just installed a node 10 minutes ago using that one
booted from a USB stick.

	Thomas