.img downloadable files are USB images to be copied onto a USB stick/key.
How to copy the .img file to a USB stick (under Windows):
Please follow this USB imaging guide from Ubuntu or this one from ArchLinux.
How to copy .img to USB stick (under Linux):
fdisk -l will list your USB drive - usually /dev/sdx ("x" representing letter like sda, sdb etc.), double check with dmesg.
dd if=webconverger-image.img of=/dev/sdx
Detailed description on Debian wiki.
- Just as fast as a hard drive in many cases
- USB boot works generally only with newer computers (since 2004)
Almost any cheap generic USB stick should be fine. Feel free to use the usb image also with embedded boards and Compact Flash cards (they behave like /dev/hda usually).
Install the USB .img to a hard drive
The same principle applies. You copy the "image" to you hard drive using dd.
In order to do this you typically need to put the USB version of Webconverger
into debug mode (remove nosudo from boot). Or boot with an Ubuntu Live CD
and image from there to your hard drive (typically dd if=webc.img
of=/dev/sda). Apologies for not providing a GUI at this point in time.
Booting your USB stick
Different machines have different ways of Entering the boot menu. However it's usually the [Esc], [F8] or [F11] key or at least configurable in the BIOS menu.
Appending arguments to boot loader
When the bootloader (syslinux) initially loads, you'll have a few seconds to type in something at the toboot: prompt. For example to get boot with i18n French support simply add:
live locale=fr
Hacking the USB boot
Plug your Webconverger USB stick in and mount the USB stick, for e.g.:
x61:~% sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
Edit the live.cfg. Alter elements like the homepage.
x61:/mnt/usb% sudo vim syslinux/live.cfg
Unmount and boot up your system:
x61:/mnt/usb% cd
x61:~% sudo umount /mnt/usb
You can edit the image without first flashing the physical drive using http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/Howto/USB as a guide:
sudo mount -o loop,offset=512 webconverger.2010-01-06.5.6-usb.img /mnt/myusb
And from there you would typically edit sudo vim /mnt/myusb/syslinux/live.cfg to remove nosudo for debugging.
Developer notes
In config/binary:
LH_BINARY_IMAGES="usb-hdd"
And grub does not work, so you must use the syslinux bootloader.
Tests on various hardware
USB image boots work on most hardware nowadays.