Formatting challenge

[CTRLurself]

so here's what i'm going to do.

1) create a partition that is 8GB (the OSX disk size, plus a little extra) format as FAT

2) create a menu.txt and syslinux.cfg file there with the appropriate contents

3) SOMEHOW GET syslinux.exe to run and create a ldlinux.sys file here (this is the first problem i run into)

4) I need to extract the ISO file into the root directory of the partition, and find out what the boot files are (I'll check the insanelymac forum for this one). Edit the syslinux.cfg and menu.txt file to include this option.

5) figure out how to make it auto-boot this option

6) edit GRUB to include the option to boot off of this partition (which in turn actually boots off of another partition).

7) remember how i did everything and share it with the community... and then finalize my idea for it's broader application.

If somebody can help me with steps 3 through 5 that would be AWESOME... but for now I'm going to bed.

[CTRLurself]

Would something like this help?
there are a few solutions here that may work.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...y-grub-367901/

that would appear to be perfect... i'll still need to figure out what the bootable file is for OSX, but I'll get back to you with the results.

Thanks a bunch

[az]

3) SOMEHOW GET syslinux.exe to run and create a ldlinux.sys file here (this is the first problem i run into)

4) I need to extract the ISO file into the root directory of the partition, and find out what the boot files are (I'll check the insanelymac forum for this one). Edit the syslinux.cfg and menu.txt file to include this option.

http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/node/21

sudo apt-get install syslinux

syslinux /dev/sda1 (assuming the device is sda1 - Use the correct device name!)

5) figure out how to make it auto-boot this option

6) edit GRUB to include the option to boot off of this partition (which in turn actually boots off of another partition).

7) remember how i did everything and share it with the community... and then finalize my idea for it's broader application.

If somebody can help me with steps 3 through 5 that would be AWESOME... but for now I'm going to bed.

You can add to these pages, as appropriate:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...n/FromUSBStick
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromUSB

[CTRLurself]

1) create a cd sized partition (700 gb or slightly larger) or a dvd sized partition (4.5 gb or thereabouts).

2) format the partition iso9660 (in essence, creating a cd disk on the hard drive).

3) burn the iso to the new partition just as you would burn to cd, specifying cdrom=/dev/hdX,Y (the partition on the drive instead of the cd drive).

4) add an entry in your grub conf file to point the the new partition, something like:
title some_live_cd
root (hdX,Y) # where X,Y is the partition you just created)
chainloader +1

in step 2 it says to format the partition as iso9660. I understand why, I know what it is, but I don't know how to actually do it. Can i command line it? or do it with GParted (I don't have my laptop handy right now to check)? or do i need to use something else?

for step 3 i cannot find the full command line I need to burn a disk, just "use cdrom=/dev/hdX,Y" I did however find

3. Make a temporary directory to mount the iso into: mkdir /mnt/iso.
4. Make a mount point for /dev/hda4: mkdir /mnt/hda4.
5. Mount the iso: mount -t iso9660 -o loop /path/to/image.iso /mnt/iso. Then mount hda4: mount /dev/hda4 /mnt/hda4.
6. Copy the mounted iso into hda4: cp -R /mnt/iso/* /mnt/hda4.
7. Unmount the iso: umount /mnt/iso.

which would accomplish the same thing in a more round-about way.

And step 4 would be easy if i can figure out steps 2 and 3... again, any help would be appreciated.

[az]

in step 2 it says to format the partition as iso9660. I understand why, I know what it is, but I don't know how to actually do it. Can i command line it? or do it with GParted (I don't have my laptop handy right now to check)? or do i need to use something else?

for step 3 i cannot find the full command line I need to burn a disk, just "use cdrom=/dev/hdX,Y" I did however find



which would accomplish the same thing in a more round-about way.

And step 4 would be easy if i can figure out steps 2 and 3... again, any help would be appreciated.

man wodim
man mksiofs

[CTRLurself]

man wodim
man mksiofs

please clarify, because that means nothing to me... like which one does what.

[az]

man is the command to see the manual to command-line programs. The programs you are asking about are called wodim and mkisofs. Typing

man wodim

will show you the manpage to Wodim.

To see how to use the mkisofs (MaKe ISO FileSystem), type

man mkisofs

[CTRLurself]

first off I was able to sudo syslinux, it downloaded fine, but when i did the "syslinux /dev/sdb1" i got a

/dev/sdb1: Permission denied

i tried this on a flash drive (sdb1) in fat16, fat32 and ext3 format

next, i couldn't figure out anything using the mkisofs command other than it's not "man mkisofs" it's "mkisofs -help" but the help was little use for how to format the partition as iso9660. it gave modifiers, but no real instructions on it's basic usage (people always assume everybody knows the basics of all of ubuntu)

so i moved onto wodim which had MUCH better documentation

I tried "wodim -force -format dev=/dev/sdb1" which was me attempting to force format a flash drive to cdfs in wodim, but it gave me the error:

wodim: Operation not permitted. Warning: Cannot raise RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limits.wodim: Permission denied.
Cannot open SCSI driver!
For possible targets try 'wodim --devices' or 'wodim -scanbus'.
For possible transport specifiers try 'wodim dev=help'.
For IDE/ATAPI devices configuration, see the file README.ATAPI.setup from
the wodim documentation.

so i tried "wodim -force-raw96r dev=/dev/sdb1" and it said

wodim: No tracks specified. Need at least one.
Usage: wodim [options] track1...trackn

and it gives very bad instructions on how to specify a file but something i think will be important is:

-data If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are written in CD-ROM mode 1 (Yellow Book) format. The data size is a multiple of 2048 bytes. The file with track data should contain an ISO-9660 or Rock Ridge filesystem image (see genisoimage for more details).

so i did "genisoimage -help" which was about as helpful as "mkisofs -help" in fact i'm fairly certain they are the same program (the help files looked identical)

the file is in .ISO format, but I'm not sure how to specify the file, so i think the command i need will be, "wodim -force -raw96r dev=dev/sdb1 -data /bin/kalyway.iso" where "dev/sdb1" is the target partition (temporarily a flash drive) /bin/kalyway.iso is the file's location. I'll be testing this shortly (I'm having drive permission errors right now that will be remedied be a quick re-install because I'm not patient enough to fix drive permissions for about 12 drives/partitions).

And if anybody would like to take a look at the "genisoimage -help" file and try to help me figure out how to burn a bootable ISO file to a hard drive partition/flash drive, it would be much appreciated.

[Loaded.len]

This works fine for me.

sudo syslinux -s /dev/sdb1

NOTE: you don't NEED the "slow and stupid switch" (-s) But in my case I use this on a USB key so I don't always know how other BIOSes will react.

[CTRLurself]

Attempting a different method:

1 - format flash drive as fat32 (it's sdb1) I used Gparted
a - sudo apt-get install gparted
b - sudo gparted
2 - sudo apt-get install syslinux mtools
3 - sudo syslinux /dev/sdb1 to put the ldlinux.sys file onto my flash drive
4 - syslinux -s /dev/sdb1 makes the flash drive bootable
5 - mount -o loop /path/to/ubuntu8.04.iso /mnt mounted the ISO to the /mnt directory
6 - make sure that hidden files are displayed in the /mnt directory (ctrl+h to toggle).
7 - copy all the files from mnt to the flash drive
8 - sudo gedit /mnt/isolinux/isolinux.cfg simply select save-as (no editing required for 8.04 supposedly, yet to test) and select to save it as syslinux.cfg in the isolinux directory of the flash drive.
9 - rename the isolinux directory of the flash drive to syslinux
10 - use

Like I said, I haven't tested this yet, but I will in the morning. This method yields a live-booting flash drive, but I'm fairly certain that I can adapt this method to fit my OSX application.

I think all I'll have to change is instead of step (7) I'll have to actually cp the directory with the extracted ISO files in it, and figure out what file is actually the boot file and edit my .cfg file accordingly.

I'll keep you updated, on this whether this method will work for me... but in the mean time, if anybody know's what I'm missing for the "wodim format as iso9660 and burn the iso directly" method let me know, because that seems as though it would be a much more repeatable method.

Thanks again