Gentoo minimal CD on USB stick

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[edit] Building a Minimal Install Gentoo USB - Option 1

download Gentoo minimal CD ISO 

mkdir /downloads
cd /downloads
wget http://bouncer.gentoo.org/fetch/gentoo-2008.0-minimal/x86/

emerge the necessary tools 

emerge syslinux

Find your usb flash drive 

fdisk -l

Unmount if mounted 

umount /dev/sdb1

Clear disk partition table and boot sector 

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb count=1024

create a primary partitions of type 83 - ext2 with fdisk and make it bootable 

fdisk /dev/sdb
n p 1 enter enter
t 83
a 1 
p
w

Device     Boot      Start        End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1        1009      500433   83  Linux

Formate the partition ext2 and tune it 

mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdb1
tune2fs -i 0 /dev/sdb1

install the mbr 

equery f sys-boot/syslinux | grep mbr
cat /usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sdb

mount the usb flash drive and disk image 

mount -t ext2 /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk/
mount -t iso9660 -o loop,user /downloads/install-x86-minimal-2008.0.iso /media/cdiso

install the system files 

cd /media/usbdisk/
cp -r /media/cdiso/* /media/usbdisk/
mv isolinux extlinux
mv extlinux/isolinux.cfg extlinux/extlinux.conf
rm extlinux/isolinux.bin
rsync -av extlinux

install the bootloader 

cd /mnt
extlinux -i /media/usbdisk/extlinux
umount /media/usbdisk

Note: Some older machines will not boot a usb formatted in ext2.

[edit] Building a Minimal Install Gentoo USB - Option 2

Gentoo can be installed using SystemRescueCD on a usb flash drive, which has many tools not available on the gentoo minimal install. SystemRescueCD is a gentoo distro.

This howto used gentoo, a sandisk cruzer skins 512MB and systemrescuecd 1.1.4

point a browser at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/systemrescuecd select the latest version and download 

mkdir /downloads
cd /downloads
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/systemrescuecd/systemrescuecd-x86-1.1.4.iso

emerge the necessary tools 

emerge dosfstools
emerge syslinux
emerge ddrescue
emerge ms-sys

Comment out line 3 of the syslinux config file /etc/mtools/mtools.conf by prefixing it with a hash mark (#). 

nano /etc/mtools/mtools.conf
#SAMPLE
ctrl X

find your usb drive 

fdisk -l

unmount if it is mounted 

unmount /dev/sdb1

Windows writes something weird to the boot sector of usb flash drives so erase the first 512 bytes with a string of zeros 

ddrescue /dev/zero /dev/sdb -s512

create a primary partitions of type e - W95 FAT16 LBA with fdisk and make it bootable 

fdisk /dev/sdb
n p 1 enter enter
t e 
a 1 
p
w

  Device   Boot      Start        End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1        1009      500433    e  W95 FAT16 (LBA)

formate the partitions in fat16 

mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/sdb1

mount the boot partition and cd image 

mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk/
mount -t iso9660 -o loop,user /downloads/systemrescuecd-x86-1.1.4.iso /media/cdiso/

install the system files from SystemRescueCd 

cp -r /media/cdiso/* /media/usbdisk/
mv /media/usbdisk/isolinux/isolinux.cfg /media/usbdisk/isolinux/syslinux.cfg
mv /media/usbdisk/isolinux /media/usbdisk/syslinux

install the bootloader 

umount /media/usbdisk
ms-sys -s /dev/sdb
syslinux /dev/sdb1
sync


Note: Not all usb flash disks are equal! The sandisk 512MB is an old flash drive and won't boot on all machines (it hangs mounting the drive). The same process with a Sony Micro Vault Tiny 1GB is more compatible.

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