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Prepare the USB flash drive

Boot Linux with the drive connected (I’ve used a live Knoppix 3.6 CD)

Switch to root (not required if you boot “knoppix 1”)

# su

Check the current geometry on the drive (most likely recognized by the kernel as /dev/sda)

# sfdisk -l /dev/sda

Mine showed the following results:

63488 cylinders, 1 head, 32 sectors
Multiply the three to obtain the total number of sectors:
63488 x 1 x 32 = 2031616

Supposedly, the boot partition should be less than 1024 cylinders, and 32 sectors per cylinder. So, I’ve adjusted the geometry as follows:

total number of sectors / 32 / 1024 = # of heads
        2031616 / 32 / 1024 = 62

And so, I’ve adjusted my geometry using sfdisk

# sfdisk -f -C1024 -H62 -S32 /dev/sda

sfdisk will next ask for the partition info. I’ve decided to have everything on one partition:

sda1:0 1024 e *
Press <ENTER> for all the others, (sda2, sda3, sda4)

Basically, this sets the first primary partition (/dev/sda1) to start with cylinder 0 and end with cylinder 1024, it’s of type “e” (Win95 FAT (LBA)), and bootable (“*”)

Reboot to reload with correct partition table for the USB flash drive

Format the USB flash drive

Boot Linux with the drive connected (I’ve used a live Knoppix 3.6 CD)

Switch to root (not required if you boot “knoppix 1”)

# su

Format the drive

# mkdosfs /dev/sda1

Make the USB flash drive bootable

Boot Linux with the drive connected (I’ve used a live Knoppix 3.6 CD)

You will need to download the bootusb and the DSL image files. I’ve used bootusb-0.8.img and dsl-1.0.1.iso, and put them in my /home directory. If you’re not able to copy the DSL image file to the /home directory, then store it at another location on your hard drive(s) and use that instead of “/home” below.

Switch to root (not required if you boot “knoppix 1”)

# su

Write the boot sector

# syslinux -s -o /home/bootusb-0.8.img /dev/sda1

Now, mount the drive

# mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1

Create a temp directory and mount the bootusb image file

# mkdir /mnt/tmp
# mount -t vfat -o loop=/dev/loop0 /home/bootusb-0.8.img /mnt/tmp

Copy files over to the drive and unmount the bootusb image file

# cp /mnt/tmp/* /mnt/sda1
# umount /mnt/tmp

Mount the DSL image file

# mount -t iso9660 -o loop=/dev/loop0 /home/dsl-1.0.1.iso /mnt/tmp

Copy files over to the drive and unmount the DSL image file

# cp -r /mnt/tmp/KNOPPIX /mnt/sda1
# umount /mnt/sda1