The how-to at http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=57754 contains some tweaks to the livecd-ng script and gentoo-basic profile to enable the standard livecd-ng packages to be used for building a Live USB stick version of Gentoo in addition to the LiveCD. This is espcially useful for people who want to install or rescue Gentoo systems where no CDROM is available (eg. many people's VIA mini-itx based machines). Note: Users machines must support USB booting in the BIOS. The tweaks made to the livecd-ng script are shown in the how-to. However the new findusbmount() function will probably need to be made more generic to cycle through all possible attached USB devices, not just the first one. Also this script should be careful to ignore non-usb scsi devices. In additon, the example gentoo-basic profile kernel config file should be modified to include USB settings as modules and FAT and VFAT compiled directly into the kernel. The linuxrc script should also attempt to load the USB modules. Adding default support for USB style LiveCDs would be really good and would further help differentiate Gentoo from other distributions. Fairly minor modifications to livecd-ng are required to support this. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. run emerge livecd-ng 2. make script, linuxrc and kernel config changes described in how-to 3. run livecd-ng gentoo-basic fetch build initrd clean cloop isogen umount Actual Results: Without the changes, the generated Live CD files/image can only be used for booting Gentoo via CDROM. Expected Results: The generated livecd ISO will still work for booting machines into Gentoo Live when I burnt it to a CD. Also I am able to copy the main boot files to a usb, run Syslinux to make the usb stick bootable and then boot my VIA machine using the USB. -
it would also be handy if there was an option on the livecd for those computers that cant boot off the usb stick so you can tell it boot off cd but use the data files off the usb stick this is handy for those computers with cdrom drives that work just enuf to load kernel and initrd but much else beyond that is asking for trouble this would of course free up the cdrom drive also and is there anything on this yet? i wouldnt mind doing some testing
I am working on a solution to this. Stay tuned. Regarding comment #1 about freeing up the CD drive: you can parse the option 'docache' to cache the contents of the CD-ROM. This will allow you to eject the CD-ROM under the install.
yes i know about that but that has 2 problems that i keep hitting 1 lack of memory on computer to do that 2 cdrom drive doesnt want to correctly read in first place reading the kernel and initrd at times is enuf of a challege let alone the full cd
FYI: I've opened bug #65503 which tracks an enhancement request for genkernel which is needed for emulating a LiveCD from, say, an USB flash disk.
old bug, reopen if necessary
Did you even bother to check the date of the last comment? This bug might be old - but as I said in comment #2 I am working on a solution to this.
Except you're doing it for catalyst, not livecd-ng... just in case anyone else missed that.
Heh - yes.
Brix: can we RESOLVE this one?
Sure.
