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boot gentoox from usb-drive

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 8:24 pm
by yasuo
hi,

may it be possible to boot gentoox from a usb-stick (or usb-2-ide-converter)?
in that case it would just need the kernel with implented usb-storage, scsi-emulation etc. on harddrive...

anyay, i dont know if xbox uses usb1.1 or 2.0 ^^

greetings :)

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 9:37 pm
by vplayer
do you think M$ would give you usb 2.0 in the first xbox :)
and gentoox needs 4.5GB for its installation, so usb-stick hmm

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 11:03 am
by cheesyboofs
I have a USB v1 and or v2 9gb Laptop HDD/caddy and have been meaning to try and see if cromwell will boot off it if I copy Gentoox to it.
The xbox is USB 1 by the way...

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 11:22 am
by yasuo
hm ok usb1 is a bit slow ^^

i think cromwell will not boot from usb - i suspect a minimal rootfs on the fatx-partition with the needed modules would be needed.

maybe it would be a nice idea to support that "install mode" for xbox360° if it uses usb2 :)

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 7:17 pm
by cheesyboofs
Shallax,

Image
How hard would this be to code?
To get the boot loader to support a memory stick, it would be well handy to copy Restoox to it rather than dodgy CDR's that take about three attempts to boot. Also I could remove the CD Drive altogether if I could boot from a pen (for recovery only)

Regards

Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 5:56 pm
by ShALLaX
Getting cromwell to talk directly with a USB device such as this would be very tricky indeed. Making an initrd pivotroot to it (after being loaded from the hard drive) wouldnt be too hard... but would then be pointless (since you would already have needed to access the hard drive).

Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 8:10 pm
by cheesyboofs
Making an initrd pivotroot to it (after being loaded from the hard drive)
Sorry but I don't understand the Hard Drive reference, surly a 1Gb memory stick is quite large enough to run Resctoox isn’t it?

Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 11:10 pm
by ShALLaX
Which is why I said it was pointless.

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 10:08 am
by cheesyboofs
Nope! you lost me...

I can see that work also.

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:19 am
by murraykj
Think back to a Stock Console for a sec,

I can see that work also, that is if the user can get the files needed into the memory stick with all the files including the distro.rar

to be honest its not much different than the method thats used to flash under raincoat, except you have the extra space to contain the installation files as opposed to just the smaller size of a standard memory card for the console.

it should be simple.

just preformat the memory stick the same way the stuff works for the mech or 007 raincoat loader. just add your own files in there, remember that you prob cant run the actual gentoox loader xbe directly unless its signed, although you could load another program then run the XBE from that.

if memory serves me correctly the phoenix loader was originally intented for a small linux installation loader but because u have additional space obviously larger than 32megs you could do a install.

I dont know if there are any limitations of the formatted size of a memory stick and how the system would recgonize it.

have a look at the stuff that they did back in the day for the Mech and 007 install of raincoat. the utilities and files required may provide more additional answers after disection.

I would think that you may be able to replace the kernel that they were using for raincoat linux boot for the gentoox, I havent got a large memory stick to try it so i cant say for sure.

Hope that helps, or dont confuse you more (-:

Best Wishes,


Kenny Murray
Newfoundland
Canada

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 1:47 pm
by ShALLaX
Its not "simple" at all. You have to write your own USB mass storage device drivers - go do that yourself.

I beg of you, don't press "New Topic" or "Reply" before you think through what you are about to say.