[Solved] Creating bootable USB without CD

[vltcl]

Hi,

I am new to tiny core and I don't have a CD reader.

Here is what I did:
- downloaded Core (11MB) from http://www.tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html
- mounted the .iso on my Fedora31 system with sudo mount -o loop /path/to/my-iso-image.iso /mnt/iso
- parted /dev/sdb "rm 1"
- parted /dev/sdb "mklabel msdos"
- parted /dev/sdb "mkpart primary ext4 1M 64M"
- parted /dev/sdb "set 1 boot"
- cp -r iso file to /mnt/sdb1 (where it was mounted)
- rebooted my laptop and switched to the USB in the BIOS

From there I have a black screen with a fixed cursor blinking and nothing else.

Maybe you can give me advice on what I did wrong or what I need to read up on, or better yet how to get it to work.

[vltcl]

- cp -r iso file to /mnt/sdb1 (where it was mounted)

although I did this later, initially I copied the contents of the iso (since I mounted it before) so specifically the boot folder.

[jazzbiker]

Hi, vltcl!

Downloaded .iso is already partitioned and has bootloader installed into system area, so no need to complicate things. As it is device, not partition, image, it must be written to /dev/sdX, not to mounted /mnt/sdXY. So, connect Your USB drive, don't mount any of its existing partitions, or if they are automounted in Fedora, unmount them. Let's assume that Your USB drive will be recognized as /dev/sdc. Then

Code: [Select]

sudo dd if="path-to-Core.iso" of=/dev/sdc bs=1M
sync

Have a nice Core!

[polikuo]

Welcome to TC forum.

Obviously, you need a bootloader to boot.

The common ones are GRUB2 and Syslinux.

If you're lazy, you can just dd the ISO to your USB.
(The USB should be bootable now, but the installation is incomplete)

Most motherboards should be able to boot into the system with that USB now.

Reboot the machine with the stick and see if it boots.

Then install the system with the official installer [tc-install] or [tc-install-GUI]

Code: [Select]

tce-load -wil tc-install
Unmount the USB then run

Code: [Select]

sudo tc-install
I recommend you choose the [net] option to fetch the required files from the internet.

BTW, What machine are you using ?

[vltcl]

Thank you for your answers.

Code: [Select]

sudo dd if="path-to-Core.iso" of=/dev/sdc bs=1M
sync


This results in the BIOS sending me directly back to the selection of devices to boot from (boot menu)

What machine are you using ?

Lenovo L450 Thinkpad on x86_64

If you're lazy, you can just dd the ISO to your USB.

What is the "not lazy" way? Same as jazzbiker's suggestion.

What is wrong? I was under the impression, that this would work.

[jazzbiker]

Hi, vltcl!

Probably, Your machine have UEFI. Please, search the forum about UEFI-related issues. Unfortunately there's no easy way, which can be explained in a few words and performed with a single troubleshooting recipe.  I think You may pay additional attention to PDP-8 posts, in my opinion he explored the UEFI on relatively fresh hardware very thoroughly and propose various workarounds and recipes.

[vinceASPECT]

hello  forum,

There is a win32 tool for that.

forget the exact name    usb2core   OR  tcl2usb

it may show up in  this forum. Sure that many know of it and can help.

thc

V

[curaga]

You can do a manual install from any linux system (instructions on the main page's install page, or wiki), or you could boot TC in a VM, attaching your usb stick, and doing the install in the VM.

[NewUser]

hello  forum,

There is a win32 tool for that.

forget the exact name    usb2core   OR  tcl2usb

it may show up in  this forum. Sure that many know of it and can help.

thc

V

That's core2usb1.6, if memory serves. Used it yesterday.

[vltcl]

Probably, Your machine have UEFI.

ls /sys gives: acpi dmi memmap
Since there is no efi, am I save to assume that I have BIOS?

There is a win32 tool for that.

I don't want to use third party tools, since I want to learn as much as possible from the process.
Besides that though: What exactly does it do? And how?

You can do a manual install from any linux system

So my steps are not supposed to work? Shouldn't I be able to boot from a dd'ed iso on USB and then install it from there?
Can you link an official link to tc-install.cz? I believe I will need that for your suggestion and can't find it anywhere on tinycorelinux.net.

[curaga]

dd is supposed to work, but your BIOS did not like it.

tc-install is for installing from TC. http://tinycorelinux.net/install_manual.html is the manual install process, which you can do from any Linux system.

[Juanito]

In addition, tc-install is provided by the CorePlus iso, so if you can boot the iso you can use it to install.

http://tinycorelinux.net/11.x/x86/release/CorePlus-11.1.iso

[vltcl]

http://tinycorelinux.net/install_manual.html is the manual install process, which you can do from any Linux system.

This clearly says: "It assumes that TC was booted from a liveCD and is already running on the target system with Internet access."

I downloaded the book though in which an actual description of a manual installation is given (Page 18).
I followed these steps:

- Since I assume, that I have BIOS and not UEFI, I chose the BIOS installation instructions.
- cfdisk (made a new partition on /dev/sdb)
- mkfs.ext2 (as suggested for USB's)
- mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/tcusb
- mkdir boot
- mkdir tce
- cd /mnt/tcusb/boot
- wget http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/4.x/x86/release/distribution_files/core64.gz
- wget http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/4.x/x86/release/distribution_files/vmlinuz64
- following the instructions from the grub docs, I installed grub and ran
  grub-install /dev/sdb
- I then mounted the partition and added a grub.cfg with the contents from the
  tinycore book (I used the notation for grub 0.97)

Now when I boot, there is a message "Grub loading" and the machine immediately
reboots.

Whats wrong?

[curaga]

The install guide says so, because the pictures show our package manager, etc. The actions themselves are not distro specific.

Could it be you installed grub 2?

[vltcl]

Could it be you installed grub 2?

Yes, is this bad?
I changed the content of the .cfg file to the grub2 notation and I have the same result.
Also I can't just call update-grub becauase the command is not found. So I wrote the file myself with only the contents specified in the tinycore book.
I cannot simply run grub aswell because it is not installed via dnf (fedoras package manager).