compiling kernel / booting from usb

[Haidut]

See my answers below. I just don't have the time right now to write it
into a wiki but if something is better than nothing right:-)
On 12/23/06, walt <wa1ter at myrealbox.com> wrote:
Haidut wrote:
> I've had no trouble installing Dfly directly on a 512MB USB memory
> stick just as I would on a normal HDD and it booted fine.
Excellent work.  I think a feat like that should be explained in
the DragonFly wiki.  I know I would like to try it :o)
I'm curious about things like:  did you use the DFly Installer, or
just copy an existing installation to a mounted USB stick?
I used the Dfly installer. Basically I installed Dfly just like a
normal install will proceed - downloaded the ISO image for 1.6.0 and
booted from it and used the installer it provides.
Did you
need to change any BIOS settings for changing boot devices or listing
alternative boot devices?
I did not change any BIOS settings, just did a vanilla install and it
booted fine.
Did you re-format or make a new filesystem
on the USB stick before installing?  (If yes, how did you do it?)
How did you partition that tiny little 512MB, and did you make a swap
partition?
I just created one partition under root "/", so there is just one
partition of about 500MB.
As far as formatting, yes I did format the drive since the installer
asked me if I want to, so I just configured it to make one big
partition and it formatted the USB stisk and created one partition. I
did not create a swap partition.


Did you put a generic kernel on the USB stick, or a custom
kernel?
I used the GENERIC kernel that came with the installation CD. That
kernel booted fine, but I also compiled other kernels later and used
them and they all worked fine too.
BTW, for the record my machine is Dell Optiplex SX260 - it's a very
small and compact machine (SFF) with P4 at 2.8GHz and with 2GB of RAM.
After I created the bootable Dfly USB stick I also tried it on several
laptops (Dell Inspiron 8600, IBM X31, IBM T60) and again it worked
without a glitch.
These are the little things that can use up hours of trial-and-error
even for people who have experience installing to normal hard disks,
and I would be grateful if you would create a wiki entry explaining
how you did it.
Thanks!
I hope this is helpful. Like I said I just don't have the time right
now to write a wiki but at least this info could be helpful to people
that are trying the same thing.