[TriLUG] booting an external disk with grub 0.97

[Joseph Mack NA3T via TriLUG]

On Tue, 21 Apr 2015, C TC via TriLUG wrote:

> Referencing older tools here, some of them in the Window$ space; but maybe
> there's an option for you.
>

hmm. If I'm desperate I'll try these. At the moment I've got a tool that should 
do the job (grub 0.97) and I'd like to find out if I can use that. I'd like to 
see that through before trying something else.

> You can create an ISO of the drive, and use something like YUMI ( 
> pendrivelinux.com) or unetbootin (unetbootin.sourceforge.net) to boot this 
> ISO. I use Unetbootin in Linux to create CentOS, Red Hat, and Fedora bootables 
> in our lab.

Yes I've made 4G flash drives using pendrivelinux.com. It wasn't real easy, but 
it worked. I didn't understand what they were doing. It occured to me that I 
could do what they were doing from the command line, but they weren't giving 
away their secrets. I also didn't understand casper and persistent storage, 
despite putting a couple of days into it.

> By design, YUMI can handle multiple ISO images from a single USB
>
> A few years back (2009?), I used PeToUSB to create a multiple boot USB to boot 
> several system tool ISO's and images for testing. This was before I had access 
> to a complete VM option.

If/when I exhaust grub 0.97, I'll try these.

I see grub2 and SYSLINUX can boot external disks. I don't know how they do it. 
Is it something about grub2 and SYSLINUX, or do they just have the right initrd?
It's all opaque.

I would have moved to grub2 years ago, except it's a nightmare to use. I'm sure 
it wins prizes for modular design, but fails dismally for usability.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) austintek (dot) com - azimuthal equidistant
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