USB demo/installer

From Info Wiki
Revision as of 20:58, 4 February 2021 by Rpeters (talk | contribs) (→‎rEFInd)
Jump to navigationJump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Getting Technical

rEFInd

This very flexible product has three prerequisites:

  • computer having modern, UEFI, firmware
  • user having modicum of command line skill
  • USB flash media, of at least 8 GB (USB3 preferred)

The product is available from: USB-image

  • (caution) insert USB media and run "lsblk" to ascertain it's drive letter - sd(x)
    • getting this wrong can result in the existing OS being overwritten
  • (advisable) clear the USB drive - "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd<your drive USB letter> bs=1M count=8"
  • unzip <refind...zip>
  • dd if=refind-flashdrive-<.n.n.n>.img of=/dev/sd<your USB drive letter> bs=4M
    • test boot this on any UEFI computer
      • it should display pretty icons - including one for "shutdown"
      • if not, have you disabled "CSM" & "secure-boot", in UEFI ? (essential)
  • return the USB device to a booted Linux computer
  • use GParted (preferably) to create additional partitions, one for each distribution ISO
    • oversize each partition a little, to allow for later releases being larger
    • format each partition to (preferably) "unformatted"
    • give each partition both "label" and "name" relevant to the distro ISO to be placed there
  • copy one disto ISO to its relevant partition:
  • "dd if=<required-distro.iso> of=/dev/sd<your USB drive letter><partition-number> bs=4M"
    • test boot this on any UEFI computer
  • as required, copy additional ISO, to separate partitions
  • for more detailed guides, see:

RodsBooks site