[RndTbl] isostick - the optical drive in a usb stick

[Adam Thompson]

You don't have to burn an (arbitrary) ISO image onto optical media before 
booting it.  Yes, ISOLINUX-based ISO images can be converted to USB easily 
enough, but it's not generally possible to do so with arbitrary El Torito 
images.

I don't always have a burner, blank media, a USB CD-ROM drive, and enough 
(or high-power-enough) USB ports to plug said drive in.  This lets me boot 
any ISO image with nothing more than any standard USB1.1+ port, assuming 
the computer can boot off a USB CD-ROM drive in the first place.

When re-provisioning an older Dell server recently, for example, this 
would have saved me almost an entire day's worth of time.

-Adam Thompson
 athompso at athompso.net
 (204) 291-7950 - direct
 (204) 489-6515 - fax


> -----Original Message-----
> From: roundtable-bounces at muug.mb.ca [mailto:roundtable-
> bounces at muug.mb.ca] On Behalf Of John Lange
> Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 12:23
> To: athompso at athompso.net; Continuation of Round Table discussion
> Subject: Re: [RndTbl] isostick - the optical drive in a usb stick
>
> I'm kind of confused; if the system can't boot from USB, how does
> this make any difference?
>
> Or maybe I'm just not understanding what problem this is solving...
>
> --
> John Lange
> www.johnlange.ca
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