/boot Partiton on One Flash Drive, Multiple Arch Installs

I have read some people have done this, but I have yet to find clear guidance on the topic from perusing BBS (maybe I cannot find the right thread) or the Arch Wiki, but if I wanted to put boot on a flash drive, and have that flash drive handle different LUKS on LVM volumes on different laptops, how would I set that up?
Do I have to write out the grub conf files in the 40_custom file by hand or is there a way to have different grub2 confs in the same partition so I can have the same flash, dedicated to only a /boot partition, properly boot up separate laptops with the least amount of effort? Thanks for the help.

ajstein wrote:@bstaletic Problem is only of the computers in question will support UEFI, the other will not.
If you have the liberty/don't mind setting all the machines to booting in BIOS/UEFI's Legacy mode then this bit is sorted. However, if you want to leave things as they are, then you're onto the interesting case.
ajstein wrote:@alphaniner Can you point me to some more info on syslinux, or explain why it will work better for this use case? I have used many Linux distros for years, but like many lazy posers, such as yours truly, I have stuck with GRUB/GRUB2 and never tried the other bootloaders, unless you kind of count ReFIT and daisy-chaining.
I've had better luck using Syslinux on portable hard disk installs than I have GRUB2, especially with some instances where the GRUB menu doesn't appear on certain machines, but GRUB is definitely loaded (something to do with screen size in pixels), where Syslinux has never failed to appear unless I've done a stupid.
I think the Wiki should also help.
Last edited by clfarron4 (2015-02-13 21:02:20)

Similar Messages

How do I boot from a USB flash drive?

I have two different Toshiba laptops. In the BIOS settings I only see the following options.
Laptop 1:
CD/DVD
FDD
LAN
HDD1/SSD1
Laptop 2:
HDD1/SSD1
HDD2/SSD2
eSATA HDD
CD/DVD
FDD
LAN
Is it possible to make either computer boot from a USB flash drive?
Thanks in advance for any help,
yeto

FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) equates to USB in my Toshiba laptops. Seems like it's taking some BIOS designers a long time to catch up with the rest of the computer world!
C.B.
Toshiba Sat. C75D-B7260 Win 8.1 64 Bit--Toshiba Sat. L775D-S7132 Win 7 HP SP1 64 Bit and Win 10 PRO Technical Preview--Toshiba Sat. L305-S5921 Win Vista SP2 32 Bit

Only one flash drive displays on desktop at a time

I wanted to work with files on two flash drives. When I plugged in the first flash drive, it showed up on the desktop. However, when I plugged in the second flash drive with the first still plugged in, it did not appear on the desktop. If I remove the first flash drive and plug in the second, it then shows up. Will the Imac only allow the display of one flash drive at a time? Thanks for your help!

Thanks for your suggestion. I found out that the problem seems to be with that particular flash drive. Tonight, I tried it out again by itself and for some reason now it won't show up at all on the desktop. I then tried plugging in another flash drive, together with the one that did show up yesterday, and both are showing on the desktop. No idea what's going on, perhaps the one that didn't show is old and not working properly.

Rescue and Recovery 4.5. Rescue media can't boot from FAT32 64GB flash drive.

T530 Windows 7. I did a full (base) backup to a 64GB USB flash drive formatted FAT32. R&R started by indicating “Rescue and Recovery Medium being created” and after a few hours finished the backup. When I click on ‘View all backups’ I can see the backup created. I then tested the flash drive to see if it’s bootable but the screen only shows rapidly moving white font gibberish over black background. I did the same as a test on a 8GB USB flash drive formatted NTFS (I had to stop the backup since 8GB was not enough space) but had no trouble booting from it. Both flash drives have the folders: boot, efi, Preboot, RRbackups, tvtos and files: bootmgr, bootmgr.efi, fcopy.ini. In other words, the only difference seems to be that it works with 8GB NTFS but not with 64GB FAT32. Is that the issue or just coincidence?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

The readme file for RNR 4.5.1 states:
Consideration 7
Unable to boot from a 64 GB USB memory key
When you create rescue media on a 64 GB USB memory key and then boot your computer from the memory
key, an error message is displayed, saying, ?¡ãError loading Operating System.?¡À
To solve the problem, change the 64 GB USB memory key to one with less storage capacity.
===
The question is.. is your Flash USB a memory key?
I would reformat the 64GB to NTFS, then run the Create Rescue Media option onto it. Then try to boot the USB.
There is another post out here stating on certain USB sticks, you have to PREFORMAT it, using diskpart command, before using the Create Rescue Media option..
This link might help:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-74246

Can I use more than one flash-drive for ready-boost on Satellite L650/0ed

Hi,
I have a toshiba Satellite L650/0ed, is it alright if i use more than one 8gb flash-drive for 'ready boost' - what is the maximum number of flash-drives use can dedicate to 'ready-boost'.
In addition, if i use a 16gb flash-drive, will this dedicate more memory to 'ready-boost'.
Why is the seagate 1tb 3.5 expansion drive not compatible for ready-boost.
Thank you,
-Brent907

Hi mate
Please check this Microsoft page which describes the ReadyBosst
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/readyboost
There you can find this statement:
+ReadyBoost works with most flash storage devices. In Windows 7, it can handle more flash memory and even multiple devices *up to eight* , for a maximum 256 gigabytes (GB) of additional memory.+
Hopefully this can be helpful!

Install and boot osx on a flash drive

I was looking at this tutorial:
http://tech.bradbergeron.com/guides/howto-install-and-boot-os-x-on-a-flash-drive /
I have a PowerBook G4 12" (ppc) and I want to see if I can get it back up and running. The problem is that the internal optical drive and the hdd are both broken. I would like to create an installer on usb and deploy a working osx installation to a flash drive. I know this is officially supported with osx on intel based machines but not ppc. However, the hack in the article above shows a way that you can run osx from a usb flash drive. My father has a MacBook Air so I can get access to Disk Utility and Pacifist but before I try it I think I might get stuck at the point where you have to copy SetupAssistant, BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg from the hdd of your working copy of osx (remember I don't have one because the hdd is broken). Either the versions of these files on his machine (10.8) will be different from my 10.6, or they won't exist. Is there a way that I can extract them from the disk or get them from the net.
I know what you're thinking, (just get a new machine already). But I'm really interested in tech and thought it would be nice if I could bodge a solution to this problem together.
Also, this hdd is the second hdd now and I only installed it 2 months ago. The machine is 9 years old. My friend in irc said that it could be a fault somewhere else that caused the incredibly short life span of the new hdd.
I realize this is a wild stab in the dark but I also thought about being able to create and installer for Ubuntu and deploying a working installation of that OS to this machine.
Of course I am only doing this as a matter of interest. It is not because I am too poor to buy a new laptop.
Wisey

Some articles that may help you.
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/11128/how-do-i-make-my-1-5-ghz-powerboo k-g4-boot-from-a-usb-stick
http://lifedigital2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/how-to-install-mac-osx-from-usb- on-powerbook-g4/
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20061017084322177

My compaq cq62-214nr will not boot from a usb flash drive

I have a Compaq CQ62-214 NR Notebook. When I enter the bios boot options screen with F9 there is a blank space where Boot from USB/Flash Drive should be. If I enter the bios setup and move usb flash drive up to the first option above Notebook hardrive and Internal CD/DVD Rom ,save the changes to the BIOS then Reboot. Enter the boot options screen again the blank line moves up to the first choice slot but still is blank. If I press enter over that black option the computer does not boot from the OS I have install on the usb flash drive it just starts its normal windows boot screen. YES I have upgraded the BIOS to the lates version F.37
Can somone tell me what is wrong.

Try booting into the one time boot menu.
Step 1: As soon as you turn on the computer on the hp invent screen keep tapping F9 key.
Step 2: you will get boot otions such as hard drive, optical drive, USb drive
Step 3: You can hit enter on the usb flash drive. Should boot from the os on your flash drive
*Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.
****Click the White Kudos star to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****

Can't boot from a USB flash drive

I believe this ability was lost after updating to BIOS 80.52 following HP's "strong recommendation".No warning was given that this update would remove this ability and see that "Due to security changes, after this BIOS update is installed, previous versions cannot be reinstalled."
I have tried disabling Secure Boot and enabling Legacy Boot, and tried re-applying BIOS defaults.
Is there a particular combination of BIOS settings that I haven't been able to find?As the warranty on my computer expired in July 2014, the HP Customer Support Contact page won't even accept my request for assistance - despite the "strongly recommended" BIOS update being made available *after* this date. I require the ability to boot from USB flash drives ... how can this now be achieved?
Is there an HP BIOS for a more recent HP product with the JasmineR motherboard (or an AMI or other BIOS) available and how could I install it?
Boot a BIOS flashing program from CD or DVD and somehow bypass the HP BIOS's block on updates? Thanks in advance for any advice

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. I don't have another PC handy but will try to find one. The USB flash drive definitely does NOT appear in the boot menu - even as an HDD or CD/DVD as I have seen mentioned elsewhere as a possibility - and all USB devices are enabled in the BIOS settings and USB HDD and USB Floppy/CD are above rEFInd and all other entries in the boot order. I should also have mentioned that I've tried a (Lexar) USB flash drive prepared approximately a year ago with GParted Live which *has* previously booted the machine, and also different models of flash drives (Toshiba, Transcend) and different methods of preparing them such as burning bootable ISO images with Win32DiskImager, Universal USB Installer and Rufus, and manually creating and formatting a bootable FAT32 partition with diskpart (as per https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200124.aspx) and copying in System Rescue CD/GParted/Clonezilla files, ensuring there is an /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi file. In diskpart, the "attributes disk" command shows that the USB drives are not marked as bootable and "help attributes disk" says READONLY is currently the only disk flag that may be changed. (Don't know if this means anything as the GParted disk isn't "bootable" but did boot) Did the BIOS update disable enumerating USB devices until later in the Windows 8.1 boot process?

Booting from a USB Flash Drive and Optimizing Performance

I know that you can boot Leopard from a USB flash drive, and I have a 16GB flash drive I'm using as a bootup disk on this 2006 MacBook I have that has a broken hard drive (it was recalled, but the recall ended in 2010).
The problem is that it's very slow. I have about 8GB of free space on it, so it can't be the VRAM being too small. The USB speed just stinks. There must be ways to optimize the OS to run off of a slow drive by accessing data as infrequently as possible. What can I do to speed this up? Should I disable hard disk sleeping? Should I use some kind of Mac tuneup/optimization tool's feature?
I plan to get an internal hard drive for it, but I'm stuck with this for a while.

Not all USB2 Flash drives are equal, in fact I bought 2 16 GB USB drives for cheap, as along side of them were even the same brand 16 GB Flash Drives just a different model, for 5 times as much!
Me was thinking how bad could they be? Well, they could be 5 times worse than other USB2 flash drives... LOL on me!
They under extremely rare occasions will Read or Write at 5 MB/s, & very often 1 MB/s...
My Buffalo Flash drives do near USB2's top speed, see some diffs...
http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/
Optimizing yours will give little benefit.
You could also do a USB2 RAID0 setup if you have enough ports.

Booting from a USB Flash Drive

Is this possible? I travel a lot and to have a flash drive for use in an emergency would be great.

This could be the device you are looking for, the TechTool Protege. It says it is a 1 GB, flash memory, pocket-sized device that can boot Macs via FireWire. It says it comes with the latest version of OS X already on it. It sounds interesting, but I've not heard of it before.
http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=34
Regards,
Steve M.
Edit: This seems to be the same device without the TechTool stuff on it.
http://www.kanguru.com/fireflash.html
Message was edited by: Steve M.

How do I transfer photos from one flash drive to another?

I downloaded original photos to several flash drives before I had enhanced them. I realized I needed to do that before I gave them to my family.
In Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 I fixed the photos and now I want to put them on the same flash drives without distroying the originals. I would appreciate knowing how to transfer the new photos to the flash drives without replacing the originals.

You should really have left them in My Pictures. If you use Explorer to drag files you corrupt the file paths in Organizer and end up with missing files.
It would be best to get the originals from your family and put them and the edits back into My Pictures.
You can then make duplicates for your family using my method above.
Edit - if dragging directly to the flash drive made duplicates then you should still have all the photos in My Pictures

Time machine on one external drive, multiple MAC's

Dear all,
I have connected a external drive "LaCie" to my Imac. Time machine on this Imac works fine.
I am trying to get my Macbook's Time Machine to use the LaCie drive as well, but it just won't work. I know there are similar topics on this forum dealing with the same issue, but the solutions described just do not work. What is going wrong?
My Imac is called ImacHans. My personal account "Hans" is the same on the Imac as well as on the Macbook. Passwords are identical. On both machines I am administrator. My Macbook connects to the Imac wirelessly. From my MacBook I can see the ImacHans in the finder. I can browse it's contents. In the finder I can see the "eject button" behind the ImacHans, so I guess that means the ImacHans is mounted? Within the finder I can browse to the LaCie drive. I can add new folders and delete them. Which means I have read and write access rights.
In Time Machine's preferences (on the MacBook) I can select the LaCie. So far so good, but when I ask Time Machine to "back up now" it fails within seconds. The error message is "Time Machine Error, the backup volume could not be found".
What is going wrong?
Any help is much appreciated.
kind regards,
hans.

This may do it from my original idea:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1329
Symptoms
If you back up to a Mac OS X 10.5 Server volume or Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard computer using Personal File Sharing via Time Machine, and the password to access the network volume is changed, Time Machine will report "The backup volume could not be mounted" in Mac OS X 10.5.
Products Affected
Mail, Time Machine
Resolution
Mount the network based volume va the Finder's Connect to Server option. Go to Time Machine preferences in System Preferences, click "Change Disk" and reselect the mounted volume as the backup disk.

How can I boot PC by USB Flash Drive or USB 2.0 Storage Drive ?

HI
anyone know ? help me please !

If you choose USB-FDD and select the USB hard disk in the Boot Priority list, the BIOS will try to boot from that device. For giggles, I stuck a working boot disk (NTFS) into a USB enclosure and tried to boot from it but it didn't work (continuous resets), I don't know what the boot sector requirements are.

Maintaining Multiple Arch Installs, Symbolic Links, BTRFS

Hi again.
A quick update on my previous post (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=164627). The GRUB problem I was having seems to have stopped. I got a very useful recommendation regarding pacman and XBMC still hasn't been fixed, but is fully usable with the workaround I am using and have just gotten used to it so it's not so much of an issue now. I think now that it should be marked as solved but how do I do that? Was looking around but guess I'm just missing it.
Anyway now I have a few more issues, or more just questions I guess that I would like help on. Recently I found an old laptop of mine and so to learn more about the Arch system I decided to try and install Arch. Now this laptop is around 5-6 years old and I haven't been able to get WiFi working fully for around 3 years and eventually upgraded 2 years ago to my current laptop. The WiFi was always 'soft-locked' until after about 4-5 restarts (in windows it was fine, but any Linux Distribution post Ubuntu 10.10 had the same issue). The issues still remains in other distributions even after "rfkill all". In Arch ever since running that command (the first boot from install media the issue occurred) this laptops WiFi has been brilliant. I also installed XFCE4 desktop for speed of set up. Now I'm looking to give my laptop to my younger brother before he heads of to University in September until he can afford a new one (or he breaks this one - somehow his laptops never last), as this old one now runs better than it ever did on Windows Vista. My girlfriend is also looking for me to install Linux again on her laptop (we used WUBI in the past) but a full install since her Windows Vista laptop is near unusable in Windows. So far I have got hamachi set up between my new and old laptop, this gives static IP addresses and will allow me to SSH into the laptop for upgrades every so often. I'm planning to do the same for my girlfriends laptop. Would I be stupid to do this via Arch? I've heard it breaks often and I don't want to have to be doing fixes for other peoples laptops as I won't have the time to do so. I guess the reason I want to use Arch is both laptops are quite old and Arch has breathed new life into my old one.
Secondly I have symbolic links set up in my "Music" and "Video" folders in my home directory to their counterparts in my Windows partition. However my music player "Clementine" doesn't find every album in the music folder. Does symbolic links have "flaws" like this or is it more likely to be my music player behaving badly with symbolic links? I would try another music player but I can't seem to find one which plays FLAC files with external / embedded .cue files so can't really test this out. I can of course link directly to the location but I thought I would ask, just to learn more I guess.
Now when I installed Arch using BTRFS file system I didn't know that I had to mount using compression immediately, I thought I could add it to the fstab at a later point - obviously not. Now I found a command which will defragment my drive and supposedly compress everything. However this command doesn't make any sense to me and I don't want to just run it without knowing what it does. Could anyone other me any insight into this please? Also does defragmentation after the fstab mount options have been added cause the compression?
"find -xdev -type f -exec btrfs fi defrag '{}' \;"
or I also found
"btrfs filesystem defragment ~/stuff"
Thanks for any help, I understand this post is quite long so I really appreciate it.
Last edited by BradPJ (2013-06-13 10:19:47)

Ah right thanks. I thought as much which is why I asked before I did so, I'll find another distribution. Just where I've been running Arch for a few weeks now and haven't had to do any maintenance at all really, but weren't too sure what I'd be in for in the long-run. I mean to be fair I was always planning on another distribution but as I was playing around at first on the old laptop I ended up with my current way to SSH in and just wondered if it would be viable to do it this way.
I knew it would be a driver issue at the core of my problem, just weren't too sure if it something else could of been affecting it. Guess I'll try and find another distribution which runs near as new software to Arch as possible as it seems the issue has been fixed in newer versions of the kernel and drivers. Granted the old laptop had been unused for around a year so any update in the last year could of fixed it in this case. Thanks for your input!
Last edited by BradPJ (2013-06-13 11:35:16)

MSI P965 Neo-F (MS-7235) problem booting from USB flash drive

Hi, all!
I was wondering if someone can help me. I am trying to install Windows 7 x64 on my 320GB HDD that is connected to my MSI P965 Neo-F (MS-7235) mobo (The CPU is a Core2Duo 6600 with 6GB of RAM). I created a bootable USB 8GB flash drive using Microsoft's "Windows 7 DVD USB Download Tool" and bootsect.exe (Needed to create a boot sector on the USB drive) from the MS store. I successfully tested the resulting bootable USB drive using freeware MobaLiveCD (Sorry, you'll have to Google "mobalivecd" since this forum doesn't seem to allow external links) running under Windows XP SP3 x86 (32bit). Under MobaLive's QEMU, Windows 7 setup loaded its files and produced an error message basically saying that it could not install Windows 7 x64 under an x86 OS (No surprise there since QEMU is emulating a 32bit processor - The point is that the bootable USB drive I created works).
I then went into my mobo's CMOS and under Advanced BIOS Features -> Boot Sequence -> 1st Boot Device, set the value to "USB-HDD" and rebooted my machine. The USB drive probably was not detected by the mobo under that setting because it proceeded to boot from my HDD which is the 2nd Boot Device. I repeated the same process using each one of the four USB ports in the rear of the mobo (I don't have the optional USB panel that the MSI users manual mentions) to no avail. I also tried setting the 1st Boot Device to "USB-FDD" and repeated the process for each USB port but the mobo still will not boot from the USB drive (It does not recognize it). When I set the 1st Boot Device to "USB-ZIP" and rebooted, the mobo hangs after "Verifying DMI Pool Data ..." which is no surprise since I am not using a USB ZIP drive but a USB flash drive. It appears that under that setting, it recognizes that there is a USB device attached but it is expecting a response (From a USB ZIP drive). I had no idea it would be this frustrating to boot from a USB flash drive! If anyone knows how to make this mobo boot from a USB flash drive, please let me know. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Quote from: RemusM on 12-June-14, 17:51:30
The P965 Neo motherboard is 8 years old, so don't expect miracles. .... You need to format the USB stick in the proper way. You may use this utility to do it: hxxp://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/ Also, it's a good idea to use the first (USB0) connector (controlled by Intel ICH8) for the USB flash drive. Good luck.
Thank You for your fast response, RemusM!
I'm not looking for a miracle. I'm just looking for a mobo that does what it is supposed to do: Allow me to boot from a USB flash drive (I don't think that is too much to ask for even from a board that was made in 2006)!
Thanks for recommending FlashBoot. I see under their "Why FlashBoot" section that it "... does not shift to user the burden of choice between "USB-ZIP" and "USB-HDD" at format time and proper BIOS setup at boot time. ... and every USB disk is formatted in such way that it will work in every environment properly, regardless of current BIOS setting.", so I will give it a try and let you know about the results afterwards.

/boot Partiton on One Flash Drive, Multiple Arch Installs

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