Need some help in making USB stick bootable

[Skeeve42]

Hi!

I'm working the third night now to get a LiveCD onto a USB stick.

I come up to the "boot:" prompt and when I enter "live-nosplash-powerpc video=ofonly" I end up with a message:

BusyBox v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-5ubuntu12) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs)

I'm stuck here. What can I do now? What do I have to change in my process of getting a bootable Live-USB-stick?

This is what I did so far to make it boot:

• Booted LiveCD
• Partitioned the stick with mac-fdisk as described here.
• Copied yaboot and made the attrib-changes from /cdrom as Cescribed on the page linked above.
• Mounted the Stick to /mnt
• Copied the cdrom content using this command line
  (cd /cdrom ; tar cBpf - .) | (cd /mnt ; tar xvBpf -)
  The only error message was about a not permitted link of '.' to 'ubuntu' (hfs doesn't allow symlins?)
• Removed /install/yaboot
• Copied everything from /mnt/install to /mnt
• Removed /mnt/install
• Changes made to /mnt/yaboot.conf
  
  • strings '/cdrom/' removed
  • changed '/casper/powerpc/' to'/ppc-'
  • changed '/casper/powerpc64/' to'/p64-'
• copied /casper/powerpc/vmlinux to /ppc-vmlinux
• copied /casper/powerpc/initrd.gz to /ppc-initrd.gz
• copied /casper/powerpc64/vmlinux to /p64-vmlinux
• copied /casper/powerpc64/initrd.gz to /p64-initrd.gz
• removed directories /caper/powerpc*

I think, that's it.

Did I forget something important?

[avtolle]

Which version are you trying to install (7.1, 8.04)?

[avtolle]

I've never tried this; looking at the linked article, I don't see anything obvious that you didn't do.

The reason for my question about which distro release is that under 7.10, IDE drives were not recognized. Thus, the fix, to continue booting, was, at the Busybox prompt such as you got, to type in

(prompt) modprobe ide-core
 (prompt) exit

which allowed booting to continue, with what you enter designated by the colored text.
Try this, if using 7.10, and see if booting continues.

[Skeeve42]

It's 8.04 I've tried. I will try what you suggested.

[Skeeve42]

doesn't help. Doesn't even work:

FATAL: module ide_core not found.

Note: I typed ide-core but the message was about ide_core.

[Skeeve42]

Something more!

When I enter "exit" I get:

cp: unable to open `/root/var/log´: No such file or directory
mount: Mounting /root/dev on /dev/.static/dev failed: No such file or directory
mount: Mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount: Mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init

And then the BusyBox again

[avtolle]

I'm wondering if your copying of the files on the .iso using tar was unwise. Have you tried a straight copy (sudo cp) command to copy the .iso to the usb stick? Your latest post got me to thinking (dangerous at best, doubly so on Friday afternoons) that use of tar might have fouled something up. My two cents.

[Skeeve42]

I didn't copy a .iso but all the from the CDROM. I'll try to copy the .iso later. Yes. I know the page I linked said to copy an iso image. Other source made me think I can copy the files from the CD.

I'll keep you updated.

[avtolle]

FWIW, I've copied an iso from one Cube to another over the LAN just to see if it works. Checked the md5sum, etc., all went well, and burned the copied iso to disk and was able to install that way. So, a long way of saying that based upon that, a direct copy of the iso to the thumb drive should have the same result, and hopefully get you going.

[Skeeve42]

GOT IT!

I just booted from a LIVE-USB!

Instructions will follow. It's darn easy!