Bootable CD for USB

[compugen]

Did not know where to post this, so thought to put it here.

I had been running into issues installing the mandrake 10.1 CE to my EXTERNAL USB drive. Now have installed ubuntu though.

Why i want bootloader on cd is quite evident from my above situation. I always need to run from one place to there for getting things fixed up; thus I am having 2 drives -- One having windows utilities and OS and other having linux (Ubuntu, Mandrake 10.1) and utilities. Now I want ot have a boot cd wherein I can boot off from a cd and select what system i want.

Though it will require tweaking as to let bootloader load the OS that I want. This whole thread will need a two phase solution so for first we ll stick to a boot cd only.
The basic functionality that I want would be a menu which let me choose following::

1) Boot from internal hard disk
2) Boot from USB
3) Boot from this cd into Windows (windows bootable....ME or 9

[antidrugue]

You can try those instructions, from the Grub manual:
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...le-CD-ROM.html

[compugen]

@Antidrugue

Thanks for your swift reply. Well honestly I dont avoid grub but lately it had been quite a bad to me. The reasons might be any.
Ok coming back to it, i want a straight thing wherein I put CDR in and let pc boot from it. In boot menu I want to have an option which transfers the control to a USB drive.

You might wonder why in the world i need this. The concern is I hate carrying everything with me. I am not a pro but yes advanced windows user. I always loved linux though something or the other pulled me back to Windows. I dont hate it for just joining the new community but for the fact that windows and other ms products are quite resource hungry. I can recall days when 64MB ram and a gig of drive was like anything. Now I am having space of over a terabyte (incl. virtual space, hdd, tape drives). But to be honest only a gig or so is what I actually use; rest is all into songs or games and over 80% is software and OS installs.

All said and done you gonna believe I'm one of those creepy users who just wants to try everything and thats it!! Lols. Yes i am one of those.

But on a serious note I definitely want to be into linux for the only fact that I want my resources to be best used spcially ram and stuff. I want that the machine should be used to full potential before dumping

Summing it up:
Firstly i want a cd which can transfer system to USB boot.

TIA

[antidrugue]

Can't you just tell the BIOS to boot from USB?
If you can do that then you will be able to take advantage from those instructions here:
http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/USB_Based_FAQ

This looks good too, as it details the "device.map" configuration you'll have to do:
http://lists.theshire.org/pipermail/...st/000816.html

How does your kernel detects the USB key? /dev/sda? You need to specify it in "device.map".

[compugen]

Thanks again.

My BIOS have support for it but many pc's at work do not. So I need to have something from CDRom. I do know somethings though none seems to work. Any idea?
Yes its /dev/sda. And I have tried everything...device.map, fstab, grub loader, menu.lst, lilo.conf everything but thing is same.