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gmsmstr
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Putting ISO on USB Stick

Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:14 am

Just wondering, has anyone tried to put the ISO on a USB Stick? I.e. you plug in the USB stick and it boot and installs to the existing flash drive or HD?
 
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normis
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:58 am

you don't "put" iso on a CD anyway. You burn the contents of the ISO to the CD, so putting the file on a USB won't work. You can use Netinstall to copy the installation files to the USB and then boot from it to run the install, but it will install only on the same USB drive.
 
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stephenpatrick
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:40 am

... yes, but:

It would be extremely neat and handy to be able to insert a USB stick "with the equivalent of the .ISO"
Boot from USB, run the installer which then puts ROS on the default (main) partition (compact flash or DOM)
I know this is really only an issue for x86-users where netinstall might not be an option ... YVMV

Regards
 
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normis
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:42 am

... yes, but:

It would be extremely neat and handy to be able to insert a USB stick "with the equivalent of the .ISO"
Boot from USB, run the installer which then puts ROS on the default (main) partition (compact flash or DOM)
I know this is really only an issue for x86-users where netinstall might not be an option ... YVMV

Regards
I understand and we'll see how hard it is to make, but as I said - you can simply place the soon-to-be-router HDD in a windows machine, Netnstall it, move it back to it's own PC and boot to install. I understand that it's not so quick as the suggested way, but at least it's a working way
 
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stephenpatrick
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Tue Jan 22, 2008 11:03 am

Brilliant thanks ... but IMHO don't put it too high on the "wish list" because there are lots of other things to add first ..

Regards
 
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gmsmstr
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:52 pm

Ya I would agree don't put it high on the list. MLPPP is a much more needed function.

I use USB sticks to install windows, and it works quite well.

And yes, I know you "burn" the ISO, but the question is why can't you put a ISO on a Flash drive. I can burn a CD ISO on a DVD, so whats the difference? Why would it not see other controllers during an installation?
 
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normis
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Wed Jan 23, 2008 9:13 am

Ya I would agree don't put it high on the list. MLPPP is a much more needed function.

I use USB sticks to install windows, and it works quite well.

And yes, I know you "burn" the ISO, but the question is why can't you put a ISO on a Flash drive. I can burn a CD ISO on a DVD, so whats the difference? Why would it not see other controllers during an installation?
because 'burning an iso' is quite different than copying an iso (to a flash drive). iso is just a container. you would have to get a different kind of image (not an ISO) and then "dd" it to the drive. we don't provide such images at the moment. we did do it some time ago
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Thu Jan 24, 2008 1:57 am

Ya, you have to convert the ISO to a VHD file, then extract the BOOT sectors, then place that onto the flash drive THEN, copy the files over. Got it to work, once. lol l :)


Oh well. Was an interesting little thought hahah.
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Mon Jan 28, 2008 12:48 pm

Is it possible to boot from CD as usual, but then USB disk to be available in the same way as ATA disk is, so we may simply install there?
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:06 pm

yes ... it is possible, but unplug the IDE drive before installation, or use Netinstall instead
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:25 pm

Great. That is all I would need, and I would try first time I obtain new licence.

I could not figure out how netinstall works.
 
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normis
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:50 pm

Netinstall? insert USB device PC, run Netinstall, choose the USB drive as Destination, install. Remove USB device and plug into router ..
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:54 am

Hmm, when I read manual it looks more complex than just that. :)
 
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normis
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Mon Feb 04, 2008 8:57 am

Netinstall has many ways of installation.

1. Booting from network if your PC supports it.
2. Making a boot diskette that will boot from network if your PC doesn't have native netboot ability
3. Installing on a local CF/USB/IDE drive that can be removed and just plugged into a PC to use
 
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AnRkey
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Fri May 25, 2012 12:05 pm

Normus, when making the ISO, is it done on Linux? If so, it should be easy to output a .img file, then we could use dd to transfer it to flash. There are gui tools for this too.

Ask the powers that be what they think.

R
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Mon May 28, 2012 6:45 pm

For information you can use the zalman ve200 virtual optical disk enclosures to be able to boot from ISO files.

http://linitx.com/product/13354

We use them all the time for OS installs.

Hope that helps

Nick.
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Tue Nov 26, 2013 2:01 pm

The 6.6 ISO boots almost fine if you just make an Easy2Boot USB stick and copy the ISO to the \_ISO\MAINMENU folder.
99% of all linux ISOs work with Easy2Boot this way.

However, I get this message:

Looking for harddrives...

Found harddrive as IDE Primary master (disk c)

FATAL ERROR: no CD-ROM found
Press ENTER to reboot


It seems that it is looking for a CD-ROM device only?
I get the same message if I extract the ISO contents to the FAT32 USB flash drive.
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Tue Nov 26, 2013 2:22 pm

For information you can use the zalman ve200 virtual optical disk enclosures to be able to boot from ISO files.

http://linitx.com/product/13354

We use them all the time for OS installs.

Hope that helps

Nick.
6.6 ISO does boot from my Zalman VE-200 OK :-)
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Thu Dec 05, 2013 12:36 pm

Its really very cool feature. I am using it for moving ISO files to a USB flash disk.
 
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Mon Dec 16, 2013 12:31 pm

FATAL ERROR: no CD-ROM found
Press ENTER to reboot[/b]

It seems that it is looking for a CD-ROM device only?
I get the same message if I extract the ISO contents to the FAT32 USB flash drive.
you have to emulate the CD to get past this detection.

the zalman virtual image box emulates an usb mass storage device (usb CDROM) which
the the kernel enumerates during the boot process. this is something that most USB
gear does: like the 3G-sticks which have the "driver" diskette embedded, or some promotion
USB drives which are detected as a HDD *and* a CDrom.

generally booting iso from usb is easy, i did this several times with other "OS" (if you consider windows xp as an OS).
if you have grub or grub4dos you can create a memdisk, which holds the entire contents
of the iso file, promote it to be a drive, and boot off from it. but then it's just an int13h
device (hard disk).

you can however tweak linux kernel to look for iso-s and mount them while booting:

http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/ ... the_kernel

it however requires this feature to be compiled in the kernel. but you can give it a try and
modify the kernel boot parameters in the 6.6 ISO file :-)
 
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janisk
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Mon Dec 16, 2013 2:29 pm

here you can get zipped IMG file of RouterOS

on linux:
$ sudo dd if=/home/test/Downloads/install-image-6.7.img of=/dev/sdd1 oflag=direct bs=1048576 && sync
where of= target partition of USB stick partition or hard drive partition. Then boot up, do the installation like cd-install. Reboot and you are done.

edit:
the forgotten link:
http://www.mikrotik.com/download/share/ ... ge_6_7.zip
 
steve6375
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Mon Dec 16, 2013 8:13 pm

Where is the .img file?
 
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janisk
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Re: Putting ISO on USB Stick

Tue Dec 17, 2013 10:41 am

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