Quick transcript my of Debian netboot installation on USB keychain
Don't forget what you need to make partition active in fdisk or install-mbr won't help!
dpavlin@eeepy:~$ sudo apt-get install syslinux mbr root@eeepy:~# install-mbr /dev/sdc root@eeepy:~# syslinux /dev/sdc1 root@eeepy:~# mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb/ root@eeepy:~# cd /mnt/usb root@eeepy:/mnt/usb# wget http://ftp.hr.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/debian-installer/i386/linux root@eeepy:/mnt/usb# wget http://ftp.hr.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/debian-installer/i386/initrd.gz root@eeepy:/mnt/usb# wget http://ftp.hr.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/mini.iso # ipw2200 firmware wget http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php?i_agree_to_the_license=yes&f=ipw2200-fw-3.0.tgz tar xvfz ipw2200*.tgz root@eeepy:/mnt/usb# echo -e "default linux\nappend priority=low vga=normal " "initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=12000 root=/dev/ram rw" >> syslinux.cfg root@eeepy:/mnt/usb# cd .. root@eeepy:/mnt# umount /mnt/usb
If you get following output:
MBR FA:
you didn't make first partition active.
root@t42:~# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 503 MB, 503709696 bytes 16 heads, 61 sectors/track, 1008 cylinders Units = cylinders of 976 * 512 = 499712 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 1008 491873+ 6 FAT16