Install Backtrack 5 on USB stick

[sparrow03]

Thanks Strife for the details, this is similar to Unetbootin as it only boot Backtrack from USB stick when first switch on the machine.

It doesnt boot Backtrack directly from Windows 7 ?

There are 4 folders and some files in USB stick, folders such as .disk, casper, preseed, syslinux. Is there a boot file to boot Backtrack 5 from Windows 7 ?

[Raymen]

You have to restart your machine and boot directly from usb

[kabuum]

Something is not working here.

I´ve downloaded the BT5R1 Gnome 32b version (md5 is ok) and tried to make a LIVE USB by three ways:
a) Unetbootin – with and without persistence,
b) Universal USB Installer,
c) VMware, exactly as described at BT5 WIKI (link)

I did NOT download the .ISO directly through unetbootin or Universal USB Installer. Does it matter?


All the methods booted apparently ok, but at the same point they gave me the following error:

Begin: Loading essential drivers…
Done.
Begin: Running /scripts/init-premount…
Done.
Begin: Mounting root file system…
Begin: Running /scripts/casper-premount…
Done.
Done.
/init: line 3: can´t open /dev/sr0: No medium found
/init: line 3: can´t open /dev/sr0: No medium found
/init: line 3: can´t open /dev/sr0: No medium found
/init: line 3: can´t open /dev/sr0: No medium found
/init: line 3: can´t open /dev/sr0: No medium found
/init: line 3: can´t open /dev/sr0: No medium found
/init: line 3: can´t open /dev/sr0: No medium found
/init: line 3: can´t open /dev/sr0: No medium found

And so on, until it opens a bash from initramfs with the following message: “Unable to find a medium containing a live file system”


Typing "exit" returns this:

cp: cannot create 'root/var/log/'': Is a directory
Done.
Begin: Running /scripts/init-bottom...
mount: mounting /dev on /root/dev failed: No such file or directory
Done.
mount: mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount: mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init.
No init found. Try passing init= bootarg.

Ok. The system is trying to locate the live system somewhere under /dev/sr0, the DVD-CD drive, but there´s nothing there. It makes sense, once the .iso meant to be at the cd-dvd is located into the usb pendrive.

I´ve noticed people in Ubuntu Forum had the same problem and managed to solve it altering syslinux.cfg file. (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1345125&page=2). They change the string “file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed” to “live-media-path=/casper/” and it seems to work. I´ve tried it, but nothing happened. “Can´t open /dev/sr0” came up again.

I´m now stucked here. I can´t find the live system anywhere under initramfs, in order to provide the correct location to syslinux.cfg. I´ve tried to mount almost every device from '/dev/' but none of them seems to be my pendrive. It should be there somewhere, right? If initramfs can see my cd-rom drive, it should also be able to see the usb pendrive, or do I miss something here? dmesg command returns the following data, but it wasn´t very helpful to my limitated linux abilities:

ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned number 2
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver
uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
(...); 
new high speed USB device number 2 using ehci-hcd
hub 1-1:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-1:1.0: 6 ports detected
(...)
hub 2-1: new high speed device number 2 using ehci_hcd
hub 2-1:1.0: USB hub found
hub 2-1:1.0: 8 ports detected 
(...)
usb 1-1.2: new high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd
(...)
ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 Scontrol 300)
ata1.00: ACPI cmd f5/00:00:00:00:00:00 (SECURITY FREEZE LOCK filtered out
ata1.00: ATA-8: TOSHIBA MK5056GSY, LH503A, max UDMA/100
ata1.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA
ata1.00: ACPI cmd f5/00:00:00:00:00:00 (SECURITY FREEZE LOCK filtered out
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct Access	ATA 	TOSHIBA MK5056GS LH50 PQ: 0   ANSI:   5
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 976773168 512-byte logical blocks: (500 GB/465 GiB)
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata2.00: ATAPI: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7710H, 1.V0, max UDMA/100
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM	Optiarc DVD RW AD-7710H  1.V0 PQ: 0  ANSI:  5
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 24x/24x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver revision: 3.20
sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5

Thats my /dev/ under initramfs:

cga_arbiter
mem
null
port
zero
full
random
unrandom
kmsg
oldmem
tty
console
tty0
vcs
vcsa
vcs1
vcsa1
tty1
(...)
tty63
mcelog
snapshot
ecryptfs
fuse
ptmx
ttyS0
ttyS1
ttyS2
ttyS3
hpet
ram0
(...)
ram15
loop0
(...)
loop7
pktcdvd
ppp
net
usbmon0
usbmon1
bus
usbmon2
input
psaux
rtc0
mapper
cpu_dma_latency
network_latency
network_throughput
pts
char
rtc
sg0
sda
sda1
sda2
sda3
bsg
sr0
sg1
scd0
disk
dri
fb0
vcs2
vcsa2
vcs3
vcsa3
(...)
vcs7
vcsa7

More: Even if I found the correct location of the live file system, the string “live-media-path=” doesn´t seem to be a valid kernel parameter for appending to syslinux.cfg...


What now, guys? How do I manage to solve that?
Does someone have a clue about whats happening?
Thanks in advance.

[kabuum]

Curious thing...

I've tested the pendrive on another computer and it worked fine.

Afterwards, burned the same ISO into a DVD and tested on my noteboook. Sweet.

Hence, if my pendrive is ok and my computer can run bt from DVD, the problem is making the computer understand the usb live install...
I'm running a brandnew Vaio (VPCF1390 Usb 2.0 + 3.0) that normally is able to boot from a pendrive... I've done it before...