Dobrica Pavlinušić's random unstructured stuff
Debian netboot from USB: Revision 4
Quick transcript my of "Debian netboot installation on USB keychain"<http://basic.vox.com/library/post/debian-install-netboot-from-usb-flash-drive.html>

Don't forget what you need to make partition active in `fdisk` or `install-mbr` won't help!

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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

.pre

If you get following output:

.pre
MBR FA:
.pre

you didn't make first partition active.

.pre
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
.pre