USB booting :: too many Cylinders....

Hi,

I just checked pen drive in cfdisk its now showing 9 heads 56 sectors & 1014 cylinders

what gives ....

Must have done something wrong

I'll check on USB keyboard when I'm in BIOS again

Later

That happens when you exit sfdisk, and go into cfdisk or fdisk.
You need to setup the partitions IN sfdisk ..
After your initial execute parameters, you are given choices
about 4 possible partitions ( the primaries )
If you wish to make ONE large partition, try this ...

1:0 888 6 *
2:0 0
3:0 0
4:0 0

Then write changes to partition table, and it exits..

I don't know how you wish to setup your partitions,
but the first ( or only ) one needs to be setup
as a fat16 ( type 06 ).

DO NOT USE CFDISK OR FDISK
unless you have made partitions FIRST using sfdisk,
otherwise , a default geometry may be used instead.

Then partition using the dosfstools.dsl package as your
sources for dos utilities ..
' mkdosfs /dev/sda1 '

I like to make a 128 MB fat partition, for the 5 way.tar.gz
script in the repository, which adds the qemu to your pen.
Then make the other 128MB of the drive another partition,
and format it as ext2 for use in backups and extensions.

Then you would use this in your root shell ..

sfdisk -f -H18 -S32 -C888 /dev/sda
1: 0 444 6
2: 445 888 83
3: 0 0
4: 0 0
write/exit

mkdosfs /dev/sda1
mke2fs /dev/sda2

Here is the info for the 5 way pendrive.
It supercedes the older "Install to Pendrive" routine.
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....and+way

Also , these threads give some more details procedures for
using the sfdisk tool to correctly setup your pendrive geometry..
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....8;st=10
or
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....=sfdisk

Let us know..

73
ke4nt

Well ... its like this ..

sfdisk -f -H18 -S32 /dev/sda

followed your route 0 888 6 *....

sfdisk asks for me to dd= first 512 bytes on drive ?? not sure if I should do that on /dev/sda or /dev/sda1 ??

mkdosfs /dev/sda1 no problems

reboot

do Install to Pen drive .... drops out with error

mtools_skip_check (have exported this to 1)

reran ok ...

(in cfdisk /dev/sda1 shows as boot ,NC ??)

Going to check if it works ...

Ok so I'm letting you know where I'm at ;-)

Installing my distro was easier than this lol

original here.