HOW TO CREATE BOOTABLE USB FLASH DRIVE USING ANDROID SMART PHONE

[grandma]

MAKING TCE USB BOOT FROM ANDROID SMART PHONE

Am posting this step-by-step on forum.

Have "DOWNGRADED" from 11x to 7x due to constant firefox crashes - XPCOM issues etc.

Philosophies:

SMALLEST PACKAGE = LEAST ISSUES (usually)

3X served me for a decade - but gmail and youtube hated it as did most sites primarly due to older openssl and media usually wouldn't play.

Tried 11X - got everything working for a week including audio (VLC and FIREFOX) by downloading an OFFICIAL MOZILLA ESR version 60 BZ2 file, but one little change somewhere in boot sequence began throwing XPCOM error.

So...backed up starting at 4x to find a browser that was stable, that youtube wouldn't accept it even though it played VLC audio consistently.

So I hacked USER AGENT and fooled Youtube to think I have latest version, then by adding a large user.js file to .mozilla/firefox folder I can control browser so it stops nagging for updates, keeps preferences (like purging/sanitizing on exit and never saving passwords - which I like to do) etc.

In short, I want a clean boot, browser that behaves etc.

Got to 5X - Firefox was still a bit too old, as was 6X, then hit 7X and by loading all the ALSA mods first (onboot.lst), then using a post-boot sudo PULSEAUDIO --system  and then by running a script to raise ALSA volumes to 100% while unmuting everything - bang - VLC and Firefox worked and with hacked useragent youtube videos have sound and everything works.

Smallest, oldest version plays.

I also was able to create a TINY ISO that ETCHDROID will put on your USB using an Android Smartphone. This works consistently.

1. I make a 3X USB using GRUB4DOS with a FAT32 partition of 70MB

2. Copy a few tiny basic utilities - about 30MB - with TCE 3.51 and just tiny old firefox and dosfstools and

3. When it boots it runs a TCZ of a script LEE taught me to create (thank you Lee - hope all is well) that puts a boot.sh file in /home/tc/.X.d. which

4. This runs a startup.sh file that either

a) loads everything else I need based on standard ONBOOT.LST that comes with any TCE ISO or

b) on first run it checks USB Flash Drive, and if it sees a tiny partition on XXX1 and lots of empty unused space on XXX2 it fdisk and creates a big partition with all unused space, fixes menu.lst, grabs a full version (7X in this case which can be modified) and then loads all the office tools, abiword, gnumeric, gimp2, epdfview, VLC, JWM, more modern firefox, wine and more...whatever and splashes the screen with good old reliable JWM and a -fill option - .y - looks great.

5. Then when a user reboots MENU.LST has a SAFE MODE 3X or defaults to a MODERN TCE (7X or whatever) that's fully loaded with office tools.

...all initially created with an ANDROID SMART PHONE and ETCHDROID to write the ISO to any FAT32 USB Flash Drive.

BUILDING ISO:

Once I build the initial 70MB bootable grub4dos partition with a simple grld, menu.lst, /tce folder and little TCE 3X utilities on a USB flash drive I make the ISO and DROIDETCH does the rest as far as getting that iso onto a USB Flash Drive - no Windows required and as always, that's a good thing.