Arch Linux

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

ARRGH! Need to make a USB thumbdrive a bootable Arch install "CD"

<rant>

I HATE computers sometimes.  Alright, so I decided that I was going to resize some partitions and junk.  I use PartitionMagic to resize my NTFS partition on my laptop, all went well, was left with some unallocated space.  Peachy.  Then I download GPartEd to resize my ext3 partition.  The LiveCD crashes on boot.  No problem, I'll just use Knoppix or something.  THAT crashes on boot.  So I use the failsafe-style autoconfigure option upon boot, and I get to X.  Well, my mouse doesn't work.  It's a SYNAPTICS TOUCHPAD!  So then, no problem, I'll just use my USB mouse.  I plug it in and ... the mouse DOESN'T WORK!  So starting from the Konqueror window that defaultly launches, I tab tab tab tab tab shift-tab my way into the address bar and hit "/" to get to the filesystem.  I backdoor my way into searching for GPartEd and launching it from Konqueror.  It needs a root password.  So I sudo passwd a password together, and I'm in.  I try to move the ext3 partition ... oh what?  It doesn't move?  There's 15GB of space behind it and I can't PUT IT THERE?  So I struggle with the keyboard as I COPY my partition to the beginning of the blank space, delete my old partition, and have the newly copied partition span to the end of my drive.  I got it.  Right on.

So then I restart.  Grub is giving me error 22.  Not a big deal, I'll grab an Arch CD and reinstall grub.  Well, I find out that my girlfriend's LG CD burner is DEFECTIVE, so now my own laptop AND her desktop can't burn a CD.  So now what the hell do I do??  I have a 1GB USB flash drive that I want to transfer the contents of the Arch FTP iso over to in an attempt to boot off it and fix grub.  I dd the iso to my drive, but no luck!!  @#$@!!!!

It is almost four in the morning, and I have to get up in 5 hours to go to work tomarrow.  I have spent the ENTIRE NIGHT trying to MOVE DATA on the SAME drive and trying to BURN A CD!!  ****ing hell!! This is worse than tring to install an RPM on Red Hat in the 90s!  BAAAHHHHH!

</rant>

Any of you guys know how to "burn" and ISO to a thumbdrive so I can plug it into a computer and boot an arch install "CD" off the drive?

FurryNeko

Member

Registered: 2006-10-31

Posts: 6

Re: ARRGH! Need to make a USB thumbdrive a bootable Arch install "CD"

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … _USB_stick

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: ARRGH! Need to make a USB thumbdrive a bootable Arch install "CD"

Hey thanks, that's really awesome.  I'm gonna try that right now.

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: ARRGH! Need to make a USB thumbdrive a bootable Arch install "CD"

WOOHOO!

[max@myhost ~]$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda4              19G  2.7G   15G  15% /
none                 1006M     0 1006M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1              69G   56G   13G  82% /mnt/windows

Man, I can call this a learning experience.

Got a CD burned at work and reinstalled grub, worked great, edited my menu.lst config and shifted my fstab a bit.  Now it works like a charm!  I can take a deep breath.

The real ironic part about this is was I had a lot of trouble only when I was trying to use a distro other than Arch.  Should have known better!