Add SystemRescueCD capability to your USB stick

For Linux users: Creating a bootable SystemRescueCD USB stick. The SystemRescueCD is an invaluable resource and should be in every techs toolkit. Kudos and much thanks to the developers!

This is a modified version of section D) at:
How to install SystemRescueCd on a USB stick
Please see this page for other details.

Also this assumes grub and not grub2 is in use on your system. You most likely will have to modify for a grub2 install. One big difference is that partition numbers in grub2 are "1" based and not "0" based as they are in grub.

One reason for this additional material is that the grub-install method did not work at all for me, I needed to manually run grub. The other is that I wanted most of the USB stick to be usable for transferring files between various devices/OS's - the common file system for such purposes is FAT32.

Unlike Linux, Windows, myopic as it is, can only see the first partition on a USB stick (out of the box). And for added safety I wanted the SystemRescuCD code to reside on a non-Windows usable file-system, in this case ext4. So we make the first partition FAT32, for portability, and the second partition, which Windows doesn't see anyway, ext4.

WARNING - running these commands will destroy data - be absolutely sure you are working with the proper device!

When you see "sde", substitute the "e" with the drive letter of your target device, do not blindly type it in as is. When you see hd4 substitute the "4" with the corresponding 0 based number as e is to 4 (notes below). In my actual system, with 4 hard drives (sda, sdb, sdc, sdd), the flash drive is sde and grub's syntax refers to it as hd4.

Become root or use sudo, whatever your style is.

Prepare (erase) the flash drive by writing all "ones" (not zeroes) to it:

• tr '\000' '\377' < /dev/zero | dd bs=16384 of=/dev/sde

* The "erased state" for flash is when it is filled with all 1's. People regularly make the mistake of filling flash based storage devices with all zeros (as is typically done with real disks) without every realizing what they are doing. See: Bootable Installation From USB Flash Sticks

Write a new blank partition table (if your distro's fdisk doesn't turn DOS compatibility mode off, turn it off as well - the "c" command):

• fdisk -H 224 -S 56 /dev/sde
• o
• w

Create 2 new partions, a primary of type "c" (FAT32 LBA) for data sharing, sized to leave about 1.5GB remaining at end of drive, example is for an 8GB flash drive:

• fdisk -H 224 -S 56 /dev/sde
• n
• p
• 1
• (accept default)
• +6500M (~capacity of your stick minus 1500M)
• n
• p
• 2
• (accept default)
• +800M
• t
• 1
• c
• a
• 2
• w

The above will leave a bit of free space on the device (don't fret). The ending sequences: t,1, c - set's partition 1 to FAT32 LBA and a, 2 toggles the bootable flag for partition 2.

Make sure your OS sees the new partition layout:

• fdisk -l /dev/sde

If not run "partprobe" or remove/reinsert the USB stick and try again.

Format partition 1:

• mkfs.vfat /dev/sde1

Format partition 2 (disabling journal):

• mkfs.ext4 -O ^has_journal /dev/sde2

Check the file system integrity:

• fsck /dev/sde1
• fsck /dev/sde2

If above is fine then mount this /dev/sde2 to /media/usbstick (as example - if your OS automounts you can use that mountpoint - but stay consistent) and copy the files from your SystemRescueCD into this directory. (cf normal instructions)

• mount -t ext4 /dev/sde2 /media/usbstick
• cp -a /where.your.System.RescueCD.files.are/* /media/usbstick/*

Copy GRUB staging files from an existing GRUB installation:

• mkdir -p /media/usbstick/boot/grub
• cp -a /lib/grub/<distro-specific>/* /media/usbstick/boot/grub

Create a menu.lst in /media/usbstick/boot/grub/. Note that we use hd0 here instead of hd4 as grub will see the usb stick as hd0 when we boot from it.
===============================================
timeout 10

title SystemRescueCD 32bit
kernel (hd0,1)/isolinux/rescuecd
initrd (hd0,1)/isolinux/initram.igz

title SystemRescueCD 64bit
kernel (hd0,1)/isolinux/rescue64
initrd (hd0,1)/isolinux/initram.igz
===============================================

Original page recommends to run:

• grub-install --root-directory=/media/usbstick/ /dev/sde
• **(this did not work for me)

Alternate to above "grub-install" (properly replace hd4 with the correct data, see below):

• grub
•  grub> find /boot/grub/menu.lst  (will verify the proper root location)
• grub> root (hd4,1)    (specify where your /boot partition resides)
• grub> setup (hd4)     (install GRUB in the USB stick's MBR)
• grub> quit

Grub's syntax is zero based, drive sda would be hd0, drive sdb would be hd1 and so on, therefore drive sde is hd4. The same goes for partition numbering, the first partition is 0, the second is 1. Our SystemRescueCD data is on the 2nd partition of sde, hence (hd4,1) in the example.

You should now be able to boot into the SystemRescue OS as well as use the first partition for transferring files between various OS's.

Please comment on whether you find this information useful or what might be done to improve it. Thank you!