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Creating SLES 11 USB install media

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After having reviewed openSUSE 11.2 for my Acer Aspire Revo (which b.t.w. runs great on this box!), I've decided to go for SLES 11 due to having two applications that don't run stably (yet) on 11.2.

To my surprise SLES 11 supports the Acer's hardware just fine 'out of the box'. The challenge so far was getting SLES installed on the Acer. As it does not have a built-in CD/DVD drive, I needed to install from USB.

What's needed:

  • The SLES install DVD 1 - 32 or 64 bit
  • A USB flash drive with at least 2.6 GB free
  • A system, Linux or Windows, to create the media on

    • Note: If you have access to SUSE Studio, you can use that to quickly build a custom USB install. Sadly :) I don't have access yet, but managed to create a USB bootable stick quite easily following these two guides:

    http://en.opensuse.org/SuSE_install_from_USB_drive

    http://www.novell.com/support/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externa...

    The openSUSE page holds a modified mkbootdisk script that you'll need to build the boot part of the media with. The script supports FAT32 partitions.

    With the Novell TID, I was getting different errors when trying the steps with SLES 11. Using the steps mentioned in the openSUSE wiki gave me a good result.
    The Novell TID also indicates how to build the install media on a Windows machine.

    ~

    In a nutshell, this is what I had to do to create the USB media on an openSUSE 11.1 workstation:

  • zypper install syslinux #install package syslinux
  • mount -o loop [sles install media].iso /mnt #mount the SLES media to the /mnt directory
  • plug in the USB media #must be prepared with an empty FAT32 partition
  • cp -L -R /mnt/* /media/[mounted USB drive path] #copies all files from dvd to the usb device

    • Then after the copy has run:

  • umount /media/[mounted USB drive path] #or just dismount from the DE (GNOME/KDE)
  • run the mkusbboot as stated in the wiki # places the correct boot files etc
  • fdisk /dev/sdX # sdx being your USB device - check if and/or make the partition active/bootable

    • ~

    Installing from USB:

    When booting the SLES bootloader came up, but just before the installer would kick in i got the expected 'Make sure that CD number 1 is in your drive.'. After entering the correct install source using the text based menu the install when on normally.

    One thing to note is that the Acer was presenting the USB boot device as primary disk (sda) during the first portion of the install. My internal drive was set as sdb.

    In my case this was only for the first portion of the install. After the packages were installed and the system rebooted for the final configuration, my internal disk was seen as sda -and setup accordingly.
    After entering the correct install source, now sdb, a couple of more times the install completed successfully.

    In the situation that the boot drive is not setup correctly it could mean having to adjust the menu.1st and fstab to get the system booting correctly. So far this seems to not be a problem as SLES uses the disk-id rather then it's device name.

    Now the Acer is happily running as Groupwise, Webaccess, iFolder, FTP and Samba & print server.. without even breaking a sweat.

    Nifty little machine, this Acer!

    Submitted by willem on Mon, 10/12/2009 - 09:17
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    Can not duplicate

    Submitted by Guest on Tue, 07/06/2010 - 23:12.

    I have followed several sets of instructions including the ones you refer to. I get a stick that says "unknown keyword in configuration file" I even have access to SUSEStudio an let me tell ya, there is no sunshine there either. could you "dd" to a file so I can restore to my stick?

    »

    Are you using the LiveCD?

    Submitted by willem on Fri, 07/09/2010 - 21:41.

    Have you tried this on different PC's? Haven't hit that issue myself, but the error can have something to do with the PC BIOS not reading/booting correctly from USB.

    There are some other tools available to create bootable USB media from iso files, like UNetbootin (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/)

    A tip for UNetbootin (taken from the Novell forums in regard to creating a bootable imaging USB stick - but steps should be more or less the same):

    1. download the latest bootcd.iso (driver update or shipped with ZCM), click here for the June 2010 imaging files

    2. download unetbootin. UNetbootin

    3. open unetbootin. select the Diskimage/ISO option. Browse and select the bootcd.iso. select the appropriate usb drive and click ok. This automatically takes care of making the usb drive bootable and copying the proper files over.

    NOTE: It's best to have the USB on a FAT-32.

    4. After the above process is complete, open syslinux.cfg in the usb key.
    Add the install=xx root=xx options.
    For example, if your USB drive will be recognized as the second hard disk in the bios (sdb1), you need to change

    append initrd=/boot/i386/loader/initrd ramdisk_size=67584 splash=silent mode=5 CDBOOT=YES showopts vga=0x0314
    to
    append initrd=/boot/i386/loader/initrd ramdisk_size=67584 splash=silent mode=5 USBBOOT=YES showopts vga=0x0314 install=hd:/dev/sdb1 root=/dev/sdb1

    *in all the entries*.

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