Fedora Live USB with GRUB

As already mentioned in my last post, my laptop won’t boot from a USB stick prepared using a binary copy of an ISO (by means of dd). Here is the method I use to boot the Fedora Live images off my USB stick using GNU GRUB2. The device node of the USB driver is denoted /dev/sdX in the following and must be replaced with the actual device node (e.g. /dev/sdc).

  1. Prepare a partition on the USB stick and/or make sure there is enough space on it (it must be slightly larger than the ISO image).
  2. Make sure it is flagged bootable. ( fdisk -l /dev/sdX is your friend)
  3. Remember the name of the USB partition you’re going to use or if unlabelled, label it.
  4. Loop-mount the ISO image using something like mount -o loop /path/to/iso /mnt/loop
  5. Copy the content of the ISO over to the USB
  6. Install GRUB on the USB by issuing grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/mnt/usb /dev/sdX
  7. Create a /mnt/usb/boot/grub/grub.cfg with the following content
    menuentry "Fedora Live" {
     linux /isolinux/vmlinuz0 root=live:LABEL=XYZ rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet  rhgb rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM
     initrd /isolinux/initrd0.img
    }
    
    menuentry "Fedora Live (Basic Video)" {
     linux /isolinux/vmlinuz0 root=live:LABEL=XYZ rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet  rhgb rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM xdriver=vesa nomodeset
     initrd /isolinux/initrd0.img
    }

    where XYZ must be replaced by the actual partition name of your USB partition.

  8. Unmount and boot

Fedora 15 Live USB for HP 8440p

Unfortunately, none of the „common methods“ for creating a Live USB workes such that my HP EliteBook 8400p would boot them. The procedure described by Jordon Mears came closest. The only technical difference is, that for some obscure reason, the machine won’t boot from anything else than FAT when it comes to USB sticks.

Here are the slightly modified steps:

  1. Download the ISO image
  2. Unmount USB
  3. Delete partitions on the USB
  4. Create one primary partition of type 0x0c (Win 95 FAT LBA) of size ??.
  5. Make it bootable
  6. Use mkfs.vfat -n USB /dev/sdX1 to create the filesystem
  7. Make sure syslinux, and isomd5sum are installed
  8. Use livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 512 /path/to/iso /dev/sdX1
  9. Sync

Good luck!