[PLUG] boot from USB, run on RAID?

[Robert Citek]

A USB key is just like any other disk in that it'll have an MBR, a
boot loader, and partitions.  They key is that your MoBo needs to know
how to recognize the USB stick and boot from it.  That may require
some adjustment in you BIOS and some BIOSes do a better job than
others.

So let's imagine you have Ubuntu installed and the thumb drive appears
as /dev/sdb, here's a quick-and-dirty way to get grub on it:

1) partition the drive with one 100 MB partition: sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
2) format the partition as vfat: sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdb1
3) mount it: pmount /dev/sdb1
4) install grub: grub-install --recheck --root-directory=/media/sdb1 /dev/sdb
5) copy memtest: cp /boot/memtest86+.bin /media/sdb1/boot/
6) create a menu.lst file in /media/sdb1/boot/grub/.  For example:

timeout         10
title           Memtest86+
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/memtest86+.bin

That will give you grub on a USB stick.  Once you get that to work,
then you can add stanzas to menu.lst for a Linux kernel.

Regards,
- Robert

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 10:03 AM, Kurt Sussman <plug at merlot.com> wrote:
> All the big kids boot their servers from a USB stick, and run either
> diskless (SAN, mounted by the USB boot) or internal RAID. I'd like to
> understand this better.