User Feedback :: USB Boot: "Flashy Cursor of Death"

Syslinux is stuck with the old dos limits because it is emulating a dos boot floppy. So, try this to force the sectors to 32 and the cyclinders to 1024
sfdisk -S 32 -C 1024 /dev/sda

Make sure you have your bios set to boot from USB-ZIP .
And check to see that you have
USB keyboard enabled, if you have it ..

When you ran the sfdisk command, did you make partitions then?
I did ..
I used :
1: 0 75
2: 76 1982 ( my last cylinder )
3: skip
4: skip
save/write/exit

This made two ( type 83 - linux ) partitions on my USBkey ..

Then after a reboot to sync the partition tables to the OS,

I went back in to CFDISK to CHANGE them to type 6 partitions..
DO NOT FORMAT .. DO NOT REPARTITION.. ONLY CHANGE TYPE

I rebooted again to sync, just in case ..

Next, run the frugal_usb.sh from the frugal_usb.tar.gz

Once it starts, It takes a LONG TIME to return to the prompt..

This is all done as root user..

I went in later, after a successful boot, and formatted the second partition..
I used fat32 for it.. - just my choice.. It's larger than 1024 cylinders..

73
ke4nt

I also am having problems with my thumb drive. I have always been able to use it in the past with DSL, infact I can mount and use it now with the mount app in DSL 8.1, but the install script gets to the point where it asks me if I'm sure because it is going to destroy everything on sda1, then it just sits there forever, it never mounts it because I never see the led blink. Not sure what the problem is because I have run Runt from it before also. Any ideas?

Joel
KB6QVI

Joel, Please show us your partition table. The target partition must be 32 sectors/track and within the first 1024 cyclinders and type 6.

Robert,
Here is partition table:
Disk /dev/sda: 132 MB, 132120576 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 126 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 63 64496 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2 64 126 64512 b W95 FAT32

Joel

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