Owl on USB drive

Some of modern servers lack optical drives or require additional kernel modules and features to be compiled in. This article describes how to settle Owl there.

How to create Owl USB Live Flash

Prerequisites
Installation

Make sure only optical drive and USB flash are connected to the mainboard (just in order not to ruin the data on hard disks), then turn the power on. If you are using Qemu, run:

qemu -hda /dev/sdf -cdrom owl.iso -boot d

(here /dev/sdf is your flash drive and owl.iso is the installation disk image).

Then install Owl as usual, but don't enter to “Install bootloader”. Before this you'll need to change the bootloader configuration.

Configuring the bootloader

Select “Run shell” in the menu and edit /owl/etc/lilo.conf (using vi) and make it look like:

boot=/dev/hda
read-only
lba32
prompt
timeout=600
menu-title="Openwall GNU/*/Linux boot menu"
menu-scheme=kw:Wk:kw:kw
append="rootdelay=10 panic=10"

image=/boot/linux-2.6.32.x86_64-ovz
        root=/dev/sda1
        label=sda

image=/boot/linux-2.6.32.x86_64-ovz
        root=/dev/sdb1
        label=sdb

image=/boot/linux-2.6.32.x86_64-ovz
        root=/dev/sdc1
        label=sdc

image=/boot/linux-2.6.32.x86_64-ovz
        root=/dev/sdd1
        label=sdd

image=/boot/linux-2.6.32.x86_64-ovz
        root=/dev/sde1
        label=sde

image=/boot/linux-2.6.32.x86_64-ovz
        root=/dev/sdf1
        label=sdf

image=/boot/linux-2.6.32.x86_64-ovz
        root=/dev/sdg1
        label=sdg

image=/boot/linux-2.6.32.x86_64-ovz
        root=/dev/sdh1
        label=sdh

(The line boot=/dev/hda is right: this is device to install lilo in qemu environment.)

Now, re-install the bootloader:

chroot /owl lilo -b /dev/hda

How to make USB Live Flash the installation media

Just run

cp -a /rom/world /owl/usr/src

before halting the virtual machine.

How to install Owl from USB Live Flash

Boot from it selecting device name corresponding to your flash device. Log in as root. Change to /usr/src/world directory. Run settle. Have fun.

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