boot from USB stick possible with old mb?

[alcyone]

Hi,

Sorry if this is the wrong forum, I don't know where to put this question, so I choose the one with the Linux gurus. ;-)

I have an old pc with a motherboard that doesn't support booting from a USB device. Would it be possible to use grub or something installed on my harddisc, so I could still use USB for booting? I know it's not really booting from a USB device, but this way I can install an OS on a USB stick.
Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[IRudebwoy]

Off the top of my head, NO. The BIOS has to be aware to the device before it can boot from it. Try a LiveCD to boot. You then might be able to chroot to the OS on a USB drive. Better still, use the USB for storage and run the OS off the LiveCD. Dynebolic, puppy, DSL, vector and various other distros are tailored for just that.

Have Hun!

 

[alcyone]

Thank you for your answer, IRudebwoy. So, it seems the only solution will be a LiveCD (or buy another pc, hehe). I will have a look at the distributions you told me about.
Thanks again!

 

[shauber]

Not sure I agree with that, IRudebwoy. Once GRUB loads, the BIOS is out of the picture. You should be able to add a section for GRUB to boot from the device/partition that is your USB stick instead of hda1 or whatever.

I can't think of the syntax right now.

shauber

 

[geirendre]

Maby I'm totaly out of line here shauber, but...
When the GRUB-menu is shown neigther the kernel
nor any other module/driver that can access the USB-bus
are loaded (as far as I know).
So how can then GRUB read anything from the USB if the BIOS dosn't support it???

 

[shauber]

Try this.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromUSB

It talks about using GRUB to access the USB. The BIOS has to support talking to USB but doesn't have to support booting.

 

[zeland]

@shauber

So, how do we get around these inherent limitations in the computer's boot system? The answer is that we can't. Instead we must add another layer to the bootup procedure by adding a piece of software which the BIOS can access, and which in turn can access the USB drive for us.

So now we know how Ubuntu can be booted from CD into a USB drive in theory, it is time to put it into practice.

You say you don't agree but yet you link to what IRudebwoy was trying to from the beginning.


--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--

 

[gb0mb]

I just want to ask the one obvious thing,

Is there a bios update for the motherboard available?

Gb0mb

........99.9% User Error........

 

[IRudebwoy]

It depends on your motherboard. My guess --> If your mobo can't boot from a usb device a BIOS update may not fix that.

 

[gb0mb]

I actually don't know if a bios update ever allowed a usb stick to be a boot device, just a thought.

Booting off a usb stick is not a hardware thing it is whether or not the Bios has the driver to be able to see the usb device.

What model motherboard is it?

Gb0mb

........99.9% User Error........

 

[alcyone]

Hi everybody,

Thank you for all the answers and help, I appreciate it a lot! In GRUB I tried to access the usb as described in the link from Shauber, but it didn't seem to work. The latest BIOS update for my motherboard is from july 2003, and I have this one installed. So I guess the only option is make a bootable cd and use the USB for the rest.