Install from USB pen drive

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Contents

Introduction

If you are lazy as me to go to a store to buy a CD-R or for whatever reason want to install Arch Linux from your USB mass storage device (aka pen driver) then you have an easy way through this HOWTO.

Requirements

  • Syslinux
pacman -S syslinux
  • i686/x86_64 image
http://www.archlinux.org/download/
  • A BIOS capable of booting USB devices

Copying ISO contents

You should mount and copy all Arch Linux ISO contents to your pen drive: I'm going to suppose your pen drive is mounted at /media/disk. Also don't forget to change the .iso filename.

Mounting the ISO:

mkdir /mnt/tmp
mount -o loop Archlinux-i686-2008.03-1-archboot.core.iso /mnt/tmp

Copying contents:

cp -ar /mnt/tmp/* /media/disk

Creating boot image

SYSLINUX requires the boot files to be in the root of the media.

cd /media/disk
cp isolinux/* .

SYSLINUX configuration:

cp isolinux.cfg syslinux.cfg

Finally, SYSLINUX will create the boot image by running:

syslinux /dev/sdb

Replace /dev/sdb by your pen drive device. This command should be run at /media/disk

BOOT!

Some BIOS are not smart enough (like mine) to detect that a USB device was connected. If this is your case, just use "Pause Break" to connect you pen drive in a very early boot stage. Also, if available on your BIOS, prefer using F12 boot menu.

Enjoy!

References

Run GNU/Linux from a USB pen drive

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