Test systems for booting USB flash drives

[Rich Simms]

When you complete Lab 2 you will have begun to build your own personal Linux distribution on a pen drive. To test your pen drive you will need to find a system that can boot from USB.

We have 9 systems to use for CIS 191 labs. All the systems are no-name "white boxes". White boxes are custom made systems built by computer shops from standard parts. Of the nine systems, 5 are brown "white boxes" (the system on the left) and 4 are white "white boxes" (the system on the right).

[img]http://simms-teach.com/images/lab-systems.jpg[/img]

The browns have Intel D945GTP motherboards and the whites have Intel D845GLVA motherboards. All these systems have USB slots on the front for easy access. For CIS 191 students we have three browns in the CTC, 2 browns and four whites in the CIS Lab (room 2504). The four whites are located in the lower right positions of the four system pods in the back of the room.

The browns BIOS can be configured to boot from USB however they don't seem to boot all USB sticks. The whites BIOS can also be configured to boot from USB and have booted all sticks so far. I configured the white in Pod 4 (next to the exit door) to only boot from USB. It has a small sign taped on the front that reads: "USB Flash Drive Boot Test System". You can use this system to test your pen drive.

When you boot into your Linux you will only have the built-in commands in bash (see [url]http://linux.about.com/od/bgb_guide/a/gdebgb16t01.htm[/url]). To do a ls, use echo *. To shut down, hit control ctrl-alt-del, then power-off at the GRUB menu.

If any of you get one of the browns to boot your USB stick, reply to this post with your brand of USB stick. At this point the only USB drive I've observed booting from in a brown was a Sony stick.

Have fun!

- Rich