cd-rom to boot from USB

ziofil · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

Hello everybody!
I know from experience that if a bios is new enough to support usb booting, then plugging a usb hard drive and booting from there is ok. But for some old bios this is not possible, so for ubuntu and I think slax too, there is a cd-rom (only ~10Mb in size) that loads the drivers for the usb ports and it's possible to boot from usb.
Is this possible also for Gentoo? Does it exist such a cd-rom? I tried the ubuntu usb cd to boot a Gentoo usb install but no luck..
Thank you
Z

Inodoro_Pereyra · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 1:45 am Post subject:

I don't get it. Why do you need to boot from USB when you can install Gentoo booting from CD?

Cheers!
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ziofil · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

Hello, thanks for the reply
This is my whole situation: I have a macbook pro in double boot with macosx and winzoz, and knowing the issues about the limit on the primary partitions under the GPT I performed a Gentoo install on a usb hard drive, but unfortunately nor rEFIt nor other means (that i'm aware of) can make the mac boot from usb. The only way possible is a cdrom like the one that works with ubuntu, so I was wondering if there is the same thing for Gentoo.
I don't need the Live CD because I need a stable system, which is already installed.

szczerb · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 7:20 am Post subject:

That would be pretty nice to have...I recently thought of using a heap of junk (as in a P166) with a minimal non-GUI-cut-down-from-Gentoo-system-with-a-CLI-MPD-client ;] But the spinning of a disc would be awfull and I don't have a lot of ram for it so would like to have on a pendrive and as a normal squashfs liveUSB, although I need a way to boot the heap of junk off the pendrive...

ziofil · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

would it be a difficoult thing to prepare? I mean, the ubuntu guys did it, why shouldn't we..? :wink:

do you know how it works?

nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin

I tried to install Gentoo on a USB HDD attached to a MacBook some time ago, but when I stumbled upon similar problems I gave up, because I was just playing around.

Some random thoughts:

I had a similar problem with an Eee PC - wouldn't boot from USB no matter what I did. Then I installed a bootmanager called PLoP from an USB floppy (!). From PLoP I could boot a large USB disk without any problems. I guess in your case you would have to boot from rEFIt into PLoP and then into Gentoo.

Another idea (which I haven't tried): Since recent kernel versions have EFI support, maybe it's possible to boot from USB with a GPT scheme and without BIOS "emulation".
OSX and even the install DVD boots from USB, so it might be possible.
However, like I said I've never tried this and I only have a very general idea of what would be necessary to archive this.
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ziofil · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin

ziofil · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

Sounds good!

I'll try then!