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#1 2010-03-13 21:41:50

jhong
Member
Registered: 2007-10-13
Posts: 8

How to reinstall Debian on USB

I've got native debian installed on HD by uploading netboot.img, and it's been running fine.  Now i wanna reinstall debian again on a usb drive to allow the hard drives to spin down.  How do I start the installer again since there isn't a place where I can upload the img again?  Thanks.

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#2 2010-03-14 14:21:27

bernd123
Member
Registered: 2010-03-07
Posts: 12

Re: How to reinstall Debian on USB

I have not tried all this. Do not try it on your own unless you have a working serial console.

Uploading netboot.img does only flash a kernel and an initrd for the debian-installer, so
you should be able to used [1] to split netboot.img into kernel and initrd. Please note,
that those images already have the uboot-header, so do not use flash-kernel, but
instead write them directly to correct flash-partition. [2] has a small instructionset
how to restore the original firmware, but this applies for you too.

If you do have your serial console, you can also upload those two images to U-Boot
so you wont have to fiddle with flash.

But: you are running debian, so you should be able to just copy / to /mnt/new_usb_stick,
chroot there, build new initrd, flash that one, et voila.

[1] http://hezmatt.org/~mpalmer/darcs/dns32 … itdns323fw
[2] http://www.cyrius.com/debian/orion/d-li … stall.html

Last edited by bernd123 (2010-03-14 14:22:45)

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#3 2010-03-14 17:35:34

jhong
Member
Registered: 2007-10-13
Posts: 8

Re: How to reinstall Debian on USB

Thanks very much bernd123, I'll try it shortly.

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#4 2010-03-14 22:50:21

jhong
Member
Registered: 2007-10-13
Posts: 8

Re: How to reinstall Debian on USB

followed instructions here http://www.cyrius.com/debian/orion/d-li … stall.html to split netboot.img, reinstalling debian now!!

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#5 2010-04-01 09:41:46

rasto
Member
Registered: 2009-07-17
Posts: 17
Website

Re: How to reinstall Debian on USB

jhong wrote:

I've got native debian installed on HD by uploading netboot.img, and it's been running fine.  Now i wanna reinstall debian again on a usb drive to allow the hard drives to spin down.  How do I start the installer again since there isn't a place where I can upload the img again?  Thanks.

If You already have debian installed and only want to place it onto USB, its as easy as copying debian installation to USB stick and changing /etc/fstab link for Your root directory to point on USB.

I'm actually using this solution and instead of /dev/ link in fstab I have LABEL=root

LABEL=root      /               ext3    noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1

This way, if something happens  to USB root filesystem I rename label on my HDD root filesystem to root and boot like before.
I have cron job to sync root fs from USB to HDD.

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#6 2010-04-03 18:42:52

jhong
Member
Registered: 2007-10-13
Posts: 8

Re: How to reinstall Debian on USB

thanks rasto, I'll try that as well.

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