HOWTO: Create a GParted LiveUSB which actually works WITHOUT LINUX

EDIT:

Turns out there is a windows version of syslinux, to be found HERE.

If I'd kept reading for about 2 more minutes I would have found that out and managed to avoid pretty much all of the timewasting I did last night. Sigh. At least the other people trying to make it work using loadlin indicates I can't have been the only one to get it wrong :-(

Also, the graphics card thing is a non-problem. Just chose Mini X-vesa in the gparted boot menus and it's fine

Moral of the story? Just because you've found a solution doesn't mean it's the best one. Keep looking until you can be sure it is!

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So, I wanted to repartition my hard drive tonight. I've used GParted before and it was brilliant, so off I went to download the liveCD again.

Once at that site, I saw the LiveUSB option from the left-hand menu, and thought "Brilliant, I don't have to waste a CDR and it will be much quicker anyway!"... Little did I know that PAIN and DESPAIR awaited me. I'll publish how I resolved this in the hope that less other people will have to.

Step 1: Download the GParted LiveUSB distro

I clicked 'Downloads', from the navigation, followed the liveUSB links, and wound up here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=195292
I downloaded gparted-liveusb-0.3.1-1.zip, and unzipped it. Hooray, now what?

Problem 1: The GParted LiveUSB documentation is crap!

The GParted LiveUSB information here says firstly I need to download a shell script, then I run it and copy some files to my USB key... Apart from a link to one forum post here that's it. Documentation? Instructions? Why do we need those? What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Problem 2: Running shell scripts on windows doesn't work too well

The above shellscript invokes syslinux, and just about everything else on the net that talks about creating bootable floppies/USB keys also sooner or later invokes syslinux also. This seems to set up the boot record on the USB key so that you can boot linux off it. DOS used to have a utility like this called 'system' or 'sys' or somesuch but I can't remember. Seems simple enough, except I NEED LINUX TO RUN IT. Actually no I don't... see above. oops

In my humble opinion, if I was running linux already, I wouldn't need the liveUSB, I'd just apt-get install gparted and run the damn thing. Yes some travelling sysadmins might have a linux box at home and also need a usb key to take around, but I'm not one of them. The entire reason I'm trying to get this liveUSB to run is because I DON'T have linux.

So, I read that forum post, and noticed at the bottom someone using loadlin to load linux from a DOS system. Aha!

Step 2: A whole crapload of google searching and researching...

As I can't make my USB key linux-bootable without linux, I need to make it DOS-bootable, then get loadlin to load the linux kernel that comes with the gparted liveUSB. I'm going to skip all the boring details as it took me frickin ages and just explain what to do...

Step 2.1: Download a DOS bootdisk so we have DOS

Goto http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm and download the "Windows 98 SE Custom, No Ramdrive" boot disk. This gets you an executable which expects to write to your floppy drive... except I don't have a floppy drive. BAH.

Step 2.2: Extract the DOS bootdisk image with WinImage

Goto http://www.winimage.com/download.htm. I went for "winima80.zip" as I just wanted to run it once without the installer guff.

Run winimage. Do File->Open, and point it at the boot98sc.exe file you downloaded in step 1.

Once this is open, chose Image->Extract, and dump all the DOS system files somewhere

Step 2.3: Make your thumbdrive bootable

Goto http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/20306.html and download the HP Drive Key format utility. As far as I can tell this is the easiest way to make your USB key bootable. It works with pretty much everything not just HP keys.

Make sure your USB key is plugged in

Run the HP program, and format your USB key using FAT (FAT32 should work too, but I didn't try it). Make sure to select "Create a DOS startup disk", and in the "using DOS system files located at:" box, enter the directory you dumped the DOS system files from winImage earlier

Hit start, and wait for it to finish. JUST IN CASE YOU FORGOT, THIS WILL ERASE ALL THE FILES ON YOUR USB KEY, SO BACK THEM UP FIRST, K

Step 2.4: Get loadlin

Goto http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/startcom/DL-3.0.0/os/i386/dosutils/ and download "loadlin.exe" to somewhere on your PC

Step 2.5: Copy files onto your USB key

Unzip "gparted-liveusb-0.3.1-1.zip" if you haven't already, and copy all the files into the root of your USB key. Your USB key should now contain those files, COMMAND.COM, IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and nothing else. No directories etc.

Also copy loadlin.exe into the root of your USB key

Step 2.6: Make loadlin run automatically

Note: This is like in the forum post here, except it actually works. I think that's out of date.

In the root of your USB key, create a new file called "loadlin.par"

Open it with notepad or something, and put this in it: linux noapic initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk_size=65000 (for those interested, those are the kernel boot parameters which I stole that out of syslinux.cfg from the gparted liveUSB distro. If that file changes, so should your loadlin parameters)

In the root of your USB key, create a new file called "autoexec.bat"

Open it with notepad or something, and put this in it: loadlin.exe @loadlin.par

Step 3: GO GO GO

Reboot your computer! If you've set up your BIOS properly to boot off USB keys, your computer should now boot the GParted liveUSB. HOORAYZ!!!!1111

Step 4: cry

That's as far as I got, because the version of X.org on the liveUSB doesn't seem to like my NVidia 7600GT, so I'm stuck with a command prompt. Those of you with other graphics cards however should be fine. Whether the liveDistro includes command line partitioning tools I dunno, I might go look at that now.

If anyone would like to copy/distribute these instructions, or edit copies/etc, you are free to, as I am putting this particular blog post in the public domain under the creative commons public domain license.