2006-02-06-installing-debian-from-a-usb-stick.html

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<p>Credit to <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/09/msg01722.html">dilinger</a> for this one.</p>

<p>Partition the USB stick (some come unpartitioned and expect you to mount the full device; that won’t work here). Make the partition bootable, type Linux (0×83).</p>

<p>We’ll assume the device node for the partition is /dev/sda1 from here on.</p>

<pre><code>mkfs.ext3 -m 0 /dev/sda1
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
grub-install –root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda
mkdir -p /mnt/boot/grub
</code></pre>

<p>Save <a href="files/menu.lst">menu.lst</a> into /mnt/boot/grub/</p>

<p>Save the appropriate vmlinuz and initrd.gz files and an install ISO into /mnt/</p>

<p>If you don’t have these already, try <a href="http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/sarge/main/installer-i386/current//images/hd-media/2.6/">here</a> and <a href="http://debian.osuosl.org/debian-cdimage/current/i386/iso-cd/">here</a> (use the “netinst” or “businesscard” ISO images unless you have a good reason to need the whole image and a > 512MiB flash drive).</p>

<pre><code>umount /mnt
</code></pre>

<p>That’s it!</p>

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