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Replacing Rescue CDs with USB Keys?
Dan asks: "For several years now I have been working on the ultimate rescue CD, being able to load many disk images, Windows XP PE, all from CDROM while having a nice graphical menu as the main interface during bootup (I would post a nice screenshot, but I like my bandwidth) and I mainly used the ISOLINUX bootloader. I recently received a SanDisk Mini Cruzer 256 USB 2.0 keychain drive, and I am really eager to put some sort of multi booting system on my USB key drive to achieve the same goal. I haven't seen anyone having any success with ISOLINUX or something similar, but the drive is bootable for sure. I have exhausted all options, I searched, I posted on many forums, I never get any useful replies. Since Slashdot readers mostly share the same interests, I am hoping you guys can help me out!" How would yo u configure a USB Key drive to boot multiple operating systems?
Ghosting from your CD to the USB dongle?
Upgrading your BIOS? I know that's even becoming an obsolete reason with online updates to the flash bios from motherboard makers like MSI. Run a Windows app, flash the bios, reboot and voila. I suppose you could also create a bootable CD with the image on it. Programming classes at schools also like getting floppy disks. All my professors insisted on floppy disks even when I suggested a CD would be cheaper for me since I'd probably never see it again. Nope, they want a floppy disk.
Yes, sounds workable with kexec.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Do not ghost to a flash USB device. I think that the repetitive rewriting of the directory information will burn the directory portion of the disk. Make a ghost image, then copy it to the flash disk. Supposedly, ghost 8 supports usb devices. Also, a co-worker of mine has had problems copying between usb hdds. He has to copy from usb hdd1 to local drive then to usb hdd2. - Geccie
Apparently you don't understand why Dr. Knuth needs his time --- he's _got_ to finish writing _The Art of Computer Programming_ before he passes away (and still keep up w/ errata for his books, other books he needs to write and the odd TeX update).
In case you're not familiar w/ TAoCP, when he was first asked about writing it, he knocked out ~600 pages of manuscript for the first chapter and submitted that --- his editor then asked in a humble and subdued voice, ``Don, just how long is this book going to be?'' (That first chapter then became most of Volume 1).
He's running behind on it, 'cause publishing changed from hot metal type to digital typesetting and the early systems were either clunky or awful (Penta wasn't too bad, but it was expensive, proprietary and there wasn't a reasonable means for authors to provide input). Dr. Knuth then saw it as his observation to provide a good solution to this (he thought he'd be finished over an up-coming sabbatical, ~20 yrs. and three versions / re-writes later we had TeX _and_ his ``Literate Programming'' system).
Lest you think TeX is moribund, its H&J (with extensions developed by URW w/ Prof. Hermann Zapf, their ``HZ'' system) is used as the basis for Adobe's InDesign page layout program. TeX then got much of these capabilities when Han The Thanh created pdfTeX (his studies were in part funded by Adobe Systems). In addition to pdfTeX there're Omega (Unicode-aware variant), e-TeX (more registers &c. needed for modern formats), Aleph (blending of the two) as well as NTS &c.
In addition to Plain TeX, LaTeX and TeXinfo (you may know the latter better as the basis for GNU's documentation format) there're new systems such as Hans Hagen's ConTeXt, Lollipop &c., as well as way cool extensions to LaTeX such as Memoir (v1.6 was just announced), Komascript (typesetting to the standards Jan Tschichold upheld at Penguin Books), NCC-LaTeX and enough more to almost fill a _DVD_ w/ free software and support tools. Plus Frank Mittelbach's second edition of _The LaTeX Companion_ is almost done, after which he'll be freed up to work on LaTeX3.
And all that came from a small detour in his writing of TAoCP --- the text itself is just as important.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.