[TAG] Booting a "Live CD" image without a CD

[Kapil Hari Paranjape]

Hello,

On Thu, Mar 17, 2005 at 09:54:30PM -0500, Ben Okopnik wrote:
> I've looked at many LiveCD distros in the past few days. A number of
> them can be run from USB - but require that the machine boot from the
> USB, not an option here. I've even carefully studied the "Booting
> Knoppix from USB" HOWTO, which assumes the same thing, to see if I could
> somehow mingle Puppy's floppy boot and Knoppix on a USB stick... no
> luck.

Use Knoppix boot.img on a floppy and copy the KNOPPIX directory to the
USB stick. This should work provided the kernel+initrd on the boot.img
supports USB---I think it does but there may be a kernel boot option.

The Knoppix boot mechanism is:

1. Recognise possible hardware where the KNOPPIX hardware may reside.
   Usually this only means Hard Disks and CD's but nowadays USB devices
   are also supported. (Handled by /linuxrc on initrd).

2. Look on all block devices for the KNOPPIX directory and under it the
   cloop image file (I forget what its called---its the biggest file in
   this directory). Once found, it is cloop-mounted. (Also handled by
   /linuxrc).

3. Transfer control to the cloop stuff. The remaining hardware detection
   a la discover/kudzu is done here.

I think puppy uses Xorg and also possibly the vesa driver only. You may
have better luck with Knoppix.

Hope this helps,

Kapil.

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