Take care that you use the correct device name for your USB stick. The mkdosfs command is contained in the
dosfstools Debian package.
In order to start the kernel after booting from the USB stick, we will put a boot loader on the stick. Although any
BootLoader (e.g. LILO) should work, it's convenient to use
SYSLINUX, since it uses a FAT16 partition and can be reconfigured by just editing a text file. Any operating system which supports the FAT file system can be used to make changes to the configuration of the boot loader.
To put SYSLINUX on the FAT16 partition on your USB stick, install the syslinux and mtools packages on your system, and do:
Again, take care that you use the correct device name. The partition must not be mounted when starting SYSLINUX. This procedure writes a boot sector to the partition and creates the file ldlinux.sys which contains the boot loader code.
Mount the partition (mount /dev/sda1 /mnt) and copy the following files from the Debian/Swift archives to the stick:
vmlinuz (kernel binary)
initrd.gz (initial ramdisk image)
syslinux.cfg (SYSLINUX configuration file)
Optional kernel modules
If you want to rename the files, please note that SYSLINUX can only process DOS (8.3) file names.
The syslinux.cfg configuration file should contain the following two lines:
Adding an ISO image:
The installer will look for a Swift ISO image on the stick as its source for additional data needed for the installation. So your next step is to copy it to the usb stick. The file name of the image must end in .iso.
When you are done, unmount the USB memory stick (umount /mnt) and activate its write protection switch.
Booting the USB stick
Warning If your system refuses to boot from the memory stick, the stick may contain an invalid master boot record (MBR). To fix this, use the install-mbr command from the package
mbr :
# sudo apt-get install mbr
# fdisk -l (to find out which device is your flash drive)
# install-mbr /dev/sda