Installing DSL to a USB Flash Drive (Linux way)

Installing Damn Small Linux to a USB Flash Drive from your Linux Desktop

Here the steps for doing that:
Minimum size for USB Drive: 128MB.
Save all of your data on your USB to another storage medium, such as a CD/DVD or hard drive.

• Begin by determining the location of your flash drive. It will be something like /dev/sda

 fdisk -l

• Check your syslinux version and upgrade it if you want FAT32 support. (Syslinux 2.11 works for FAT16; Syslinux 3.35 works for FAT32). Compile & install the latest syslinux from here.
  
• If you need to wipe the MBR on the Flash Disk, do it with a command like below. This shouldn't be necessary unless there's another funky bootloader in the MBR (like, if you were experimenting with another bootable USB linux distro).

 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1

( BE *VERY* CAREFUL NOT TO WIPE YOUR HARD DRIVE'S MBR HERE!!!)

Download ms-sys then install and put another MBR in its place:

 ms-sys -s /dev/sdX

Another way to put MBR in its place is using 'mbr.bin' 512 bytes file from the Syslinux package:

   locate mbr.bin
 cat /somepath/share/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sdX

• Run fdisk on /dev/sdX, so it looks like this:

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdX1   *           1        1021      253177    b  W95 FAT32

Use d to delete existing partitions until none remain.
Use n,p,1 to create a new primary partition. Use a to make it bootable.
Use t,b to make it W95 FAT32. Don't forget to hit a to make it bootable!
Use w to save the changes and exit

• Download the dsl-embedded zipfile.
• Create a FAT16 or FAT32 partition on the pendrive:
  

mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdX1 ("-F 32" will do FAT32; "-F 16" will do FAT16)

• Mount the pendrive & unzip the dsl-embedded.zip file onto this.
• Unmount the pendrive
• Type syslinux -s /dev/sdX1 to make it bootable.
• You can now boot via QEMU (from within Linux or windows), OR as native from the USB drive.
• You can also run DSL from a GRUB bootloader menu on your USB key. This is very useful if you're using DSL as part of a data/system rescue toolkit, as you can include multiple preset configurations of DSL as well as other utilities.

Note: syslinux needs the package "mcopy" included in the package "mtools".
Note: Unfortunately, this method does NOT give a 50MB Linux Distribution because qemu dir
and method is (comparatively) big. You will end up with a 110MB distribution.
Note: The iocharset=utf8 option when mounting the USB stick may result in
the "KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX" not being found upon booting.

Method I: Using GRUB as boot loader

Note: This method has been reported not to work under certain conditions

• Download the current.iso dsl-cd image.
• Create an ext2 partition (=> 51MB) on pendrive. Mount it.

    mke2fs -v -L "DSL" /dev/
   mkdir -p /tmp/pendrive
   mount /dev/ /tmp/pendrive/

where is the corresponding file which represents your USB storage device/partition.

Note: ext3 is ok too.

• Change to the directory where you mounted the ext2 partition, install GRUB boot loader:

    cd /tmp/pendrive/
   grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=. /dev/

Note: Replace with the corresponding file which represents your USB storage device/partition.
Note 2: This method did not work for me, I used the manual method of running grub and
entered "root (hd1,1)" and "setup (hd1)" (your paths will probably vary).

• Copy the contents of the cd image to the usb drive.

    mkdir /tmp/dsl-cd
   mount [/path_to/]current.iso /tmp/dsl-cd/ -o loop
   cp -vR /tmp/dsl-cd/* /tmp/pendrive/

• While in the same directory - where you mounted the ext2 filesystem - create a menu.lst file for grub in the directory ./boot/grub/menu.lst

   cat > /tmp/pendrive/boot/grub/menu.lst << root="/dev/sda1" lang="us">
    Note: You might have to change (hd0,0) to the correct partition for your USB drive. However,
    the default should work on most systems. 
 Unmount the filesystem. 
 You can now boot from your USB storage device
Method II: Using GRUB as boot loader  
Someone found the above process doesn't work and has documented for others
this working process 
The Situation:  
 Running SLED 10 (Suse) 
 The USB key is a 1GB and appears as /dev/sda 
 Logged in as root 
 The DSL ISO is downloaded to /root/Desktop/dsl-3.3.iso 
 Two partitions, the first to use as general USB storage, the second for DSL 
 The DSL partition wanted to be ext3 so that Windows doesn't mess it up 
 The first partition needs to be the big storage one as Windows doesn't
  like addressing the second partition on flash drives
Here is the procedure:  
 fdisk /dev/sda 
 d - Delete all partitions on the key 
 n - Make a partition 
 p - Primary partition for general storage 
 1 - First partition 
 1 - From the first block 
 948 - Most of the space, about 933MB 
 
 n - Make a partition 
 p - Primary partition for DSL 
 2 - Second partition 
 949 - Start from the next available sector 
 1012 - To the end of the disk.  I give it 64MB 
 
 a - Make the partition bootable 
 2 - Mark the DSL partition bootable 
 
 t - Change the partition type 
 1 - Change partition 1 
 b - Change it to Win95 FAT32 
 
 w - Write the changes 
 
 fdisk -l   - Gives the following output: 
 
        Device    Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         948      954131+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2   *         949        1012       64416   83  Linux
 Your flash drive should now look like this

 mkdir /mnt/iso 
 mkdir /mnt/usb 
 mount -o loop /root/Desktop/dsl-3.3.iso /mnt/iso 
 mke2fs /dev/sda2 
 
Note: If you want to have an ext3 filesystem, add the -j flag: mke2fs -j /dev/sda2 
 
 mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/usb/ 
 cd /mnt/iso 
 tar cvf - . | (cd /mnt/usb; tar xvf - ) 
 mkdir /mnt/usb/boot/grub 
 cp /boot/grub/*stage* /mnt/usb/boot/grub/ 
 cat > /mnt/usb/boot/grub/menu.lst
 
 title Damn Small Linux
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/isolinux/linux24 root=/dev/sda1 ro lang=us toram noeject frugal
initrd /boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz
boot
cd /mnt/usb/ 
 grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=. /dev/sda 
 cd /root 
 umount /mnt/usb 
 umount /mnt/iso 
 rm -r /mnt/iso 
 rm -r /mnt/usb 
 Done! Your DamnSmallLinux on USB is ready. Reboot and try it!!