Jul 8, 2010

Creating Bootable pen drive for Linux OS Installation

Creating Bootable pen drive for Linux OS Installation

Release:
            Redhat Enterprise Linux
            Fedora
            Cent OS
Requirement:
·         4 GB flash drive
·         RHEL / Fedora / Cent OS Installation CD/DVD.
·         Bios must be supported with the USB device bootable option

Procedure:
1)      Mount the CD Drive
#mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
2)      Create a FAT filesystem in pen drive
#mkisofs /dev/sdb1
3)      Mount the pen drive
#mount /dev/sdb1 /misc
4)      Copy the required files from CD to the pen drive
#cd /misc
#cp /mnt/isolinux/* /misc
#rm isolinux.bin boot.cat trans.tbl
#mv isolinux.cfg syslinux.cfg
5)      Make the USB Bootable
#syslinux /dev/sdb1
6)      Install grub on the usb pen drive
#grub-install –root-directory=/misc /dev/sdb
7)      Create grub.conf file in the pen drive
#cd /misc
#mkdir –p boot/grub
#vi boot/grub/grub.conf
            default=0
      timeout=5
      root (hd0,0)
      title Install RHEL
      kernel /vmlinuz
      initrd /initrd.img
8)      Create one directory and copy the OS CD iso files within that directory in pen drive
#mkdir images
#cd images
9)      Create the ISO files of the CD
#mkisofs –J –r –T –o RHEL-disc1.iso /mnt
10)   Unmount the pen drive
#umount /misc
11)   Now Restart and boot system through USB
12)   It boots like linux askmethod installation in this, need select the “Had drive”
13)   Then it is asking for, which partition OS images are present. In our case it is “sdb1” (pendrive) then give the Directory holding images as “images”.
14)   Remaining is same as the normal installation.