USB Installs

Introduction

Many new hardware boxes come with no CDROM Drives but they will generally have USB connectors and possibly hard disks in them. Many distros now come in hybrid formats and can be installed from USB storage devices by "dd"-ing the iso across. SME upto and including version 8 does not have a hybrid iso as yet.

SAIL ISO USB Install

The name of the iso should follow the SMEServer ISO naming format like smeserver* ending with -i386 or other architecture. This is imperative for the default boot img to work. If the grub loader fails copy the grldr file to the root of the boot drive like sda1. To do so, use any linux live distro like Knoppix, PuppyLinux, CentOS Live, etc.,.

Prepare the USB Installer

RMPrepUSB will install grub4dos into a USB pendrive making it bootable and capable of running the SMEServer ISO. The SME8FA18V311-22.ISO file may have to be suitably renamed and used.

Many boot options in the original SMEServer v8.0 ISO are absent but were present upto SMEServer v8.0 Beta 7.

• Format a USB Drive to FAT / FAT32
• "Install Grub4DOS" to the correct USB Drive using RMPrepUSB
• Copy the appropriate SME ISO to the USB Drive
• Copy this [Media:SME8_menu.lst.zip}menu.lst] file onto the USB Drive and alter it's contents to suit your ISO name.
• Safely remove the USB drive and use it to install SMEServer and it's derivatives like SAIL into the target machine. Make sure the target machine bios sets the SATA Mode to IDE / Compatible and and for smaller installs (and Test Virtual Machines), install with sme raid=none nolvm for easy management.
• After install if the SME does not boot and throws up a grub error, copy the grldr file onto the installed drive (like sda1).