LiveCD Creation Documentation

MidnightBSD on USB Flash Drive

One of the most common requests to the MidnightBSD project is a method to create bootable flash media. I've come up with an ad hoc process to do just that.

Prerequisites

You must be familiar with the LiveCD creation process, have a USB flash drive of at least 1GB, and patience.

Implementation

Creating the image
Putting it on flash media

(assumes flash is /dev/da0) dd if=${imgoutfile} of=/dev/da0 bs=1m

Test Environment

This setup was tested on 0.3-CURRENT (Jan 4, 2009) i386 with an Intel DP965LT motherboard. It worked well.

I also attempted to use it on a Mac Pro (Quad 2.0Ghz), and while holding option showed an EFI boot option, nothing would work with the flash. I have not tried GPT yet. Suggestions welcome.

A similar process should work with newer releases (e.g. 0.8.5 release) but the memstick image file is already built for installation purposes. It might be wise to look at modifying the make release process there.

Possible Uses

Aside from using the Live CD image, one could copy the disc1 iso (install) and use that instead of CD-ROM media for installation . In that case, you would need to pick a few different options in sysinstall. This has not been tested to date; if you have su ccess, please update the wiki or send us an email.

It would be nice to modify make release to create a flash boot image for install and live cd like use.

Related Topics

Creating a Live CD