Unable to copy boot img file & boot from USB thumb drive.

[rockinrube]

Hello. I need some help with installing Red hat to my laptop. I’m a newbie and I’m going through an older Linux book (3rd edition) by QUE publishing. It has the CD for a Red Hat version, Vanderbilt I believe.

I’m attempting to copy the boot img file from the CD to my USB thumb drive under windows XP.

I’ve tried DD for windows, Flashnul and the win32 disk imager tool without success. In all cases, I copied the image file to my profile directory and to the temp folder. I’ve tried writing to the USB from both directories. In each case, all utilities state that the write was successful. Sometimes I see bytes used under the USB properties. But most times, there’s no disk usage under the properties tab.

Upon booting with the USB, I get 1’s and 0’s streaming across the screen. Below you’ll find the syntax of my commands. I know the system is USB bootable as I can boot into dos using the same USB thumb drive.

I’ve formatted the USB with FAT and FAT32 using the HP USB format tool. Is there a particular file system that I should use for this sort of boot up?

Please help. I’d really like to learn how to install Linux from scratch before I move to the GUI versions or live CD’s\USB’s. I’m sure there’s an easier way to do this. I just haven’t found it on the net yet.

Any help would be appreciated.

Flashnul

C:\flashnul\flashnul-1rc1>flashnul 1 -L "c:\documents and settings\ruben\my docu
ments\boot.img"

Disk PhysicalDrive1 (UNC name: \\.\PhysicalDrive1)
------------------------------------------------------------[Drive geometry]--
Cylinders/heads/sectors = 249/255/63
Bytes per sector = 512
CHS size = 2048094720 (1953 Mb)
---------------------------------------------------------------[Device size]--
Device size = 2055208960 (1960 Mb)
delta to near power of 2 = 92274688 (88 Mb), 4%
Surplus size = 7114240 (6947 kb)
-----------------------------------------------[Adapter & Device properties]--
Bus type = (7) USB
Removable device = Yes
Command Queue = Unsupported
Device vendor = Kingston
Device name = DataTraveler 2.0
Revision = PMAP
--------------------------------------------------------------[Hotplug info]--
Device hotplug = Yes
Media hotplug = No

Selected operation: load file content
Selected drive: PhysicalDrive1, 2055208960b (1960 Mb)

THIS OPERATION IS DESTRUCTIVE!!!
Type 'yes' to confirm operation. All other text will stop it.

Really destroy data on drive PhysicalDrive1? :yes

-----------------------------------------------------------------------[Log]--
Runing operation [load file content] for drive PhysicalDrive1

Writing 0x110000 (1152 kb), 1224607 b/s
image load finished

----------------------------------------------------------[Operation result]--
passes: 1
errors: 0
write bytes: 1474560 (1440 kb)
avg. write speed: 1498397 (1463 kb/s)
max/min write speed: 0 (0 b/s) / 0 (0 b/s)


Press ENTER to exit.


DD for windows

C:\dd for Windows>dd if=c:\temp\boot.img of=\\.\f:
rawwrite dd for windows version 0.5.
This program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details
2880+0 records in
2880+0 records out

[reed9]

I would highly recommend that you install a current linux version. Also, if you aren't planning to purchase a Red Hat license, I would go with one of the Red Hat clones, like Scientific Linux or CentOS.

I'm not sure if this would work on such an old distro as you're trying, but one of the easiest ways to create a bootable thumbdrive is to use unetbootin or Linux Live USB.

[rockinrube]

Hello and thank you for your advice. My intent was to run through the installation as detailed in the QUE training book.

However, I doubt that sort of install is used today with the advent of bootable media yes?. And yes, I have used unetbootin successfully to create a live USB device. (Fedora) It booted up fine. But I’d like to install a version on my laptop’s hard drive. (dual boot)

How do I go about getting to a linux pre boot environment in which I can run through a linux setup\install? Can the pre boot and setup process be run from the same USB stick? Can you recommend a version\process to meet that end? I can boot from USB or from DVD\CD ROM. I could then begin the lessons from a clean install standpoint.

Many thanks.

[reed9]

I'm not clear what you mean by "pre-boot" environment. Are you talking about installing linux not by using an installer program, but manually creating and populating the filesystem?

You can look at the Linux From Scratch book or the Crux installation guide to get more of an idea of how to do that yourself, rather than through an installer.
LFS Project Homepage
CRUX | Main / Handbook2-6

[rockinrube]

No, not manually. I want to go through the installer process-To simply boot a system and run a setup from either CD or USB. Sorry about the pre boot term...windows user for many years.

I just want to boot a system to where I then run the linux setup and then go from there..

Maybe it's a problem with this older boot.img file..Maybe it was only intended for a floppy and can't read or identify the sectors on the USB stick?

Anyway..I'll look to simply install a linux version from CD. I'm probably making it harder than it is..But that's me..I want to know how things work...to see it from the beginning..