Making an USBbootable stick

http://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/UserDoc:How_AmigaOS_Works
Describes the procedure to make a stick bootable

MTB does not show the USBdisk.device when booting from,OS4.1 F
Is this device absent from the DVD? I do see a kickstart/usbsys.device in the kickstart drawer. Isthisthesame? I

Edit: the device showed up after all , am following the procedure now

@JosDuchIt

The "usbdisk.device" is not a separate file but part of the "massstorage.usbfd" driver which should be in your Kicklayout to allow booting from USB.

It won't be visible in MTB unless you have a supported mass-storage device inserted.

If it still doesn't show you can try forcing it by setting the DEVICE tooltype to "usbdisk.device" on the MTB icon.

@salass00
Thanks for replying: Ithe Device showed up.
After a week of struggling to get a workable system back, I am getting tired and stressed. And don't see the obvious anymore' I guess the device does not show up if you don'have an USB stick connected

I have tried to make a bootable stick a few times now, folowing Elwoods directives
The procedure is quite similar to an installation of OS4.1FE on a hd partition. This hd partition install i have done now for more than ten times (not achieving a stable OS due to HD problems described in other threads but) succeeding in the partition being bootable.

I have tried now 3 times for the stick, twice insstalling from OS4.1FE DVD, once copying the OS from a backup.
The icons of the stick show up as a typical boingball sys volume, but don't boot.

U-boot indeed gets in a loop does a scan, detects the usb stick, spits out the content of some sectors, then restarts

there is a uboot env variable "scan_storage"like that i set to 0, but uboot still gets in the loop :((

@JosDuchIt
I would be quite surprised if it was possible to boot AmigaOS4 from a USB stick, as that requires a number of special things to be supported.

Maybe the Wiki is mistaken, and the user who added that info to the Wiki was actually loading Kickstart from their internal HD, and ONLY THEN loading the remainder of the OS4 files from the USB stick. (I can imagine that would work.)

Or maybe there is some specific Amiga model whose firmware specifically added support for booting from USB sticks? (Although that would still require that Kickstart's USB stack specifically supports booting from USB, which I am doubtful is supported as it's such an obscure use case.)

What Amiga are you trying to boot with?
And why do you want to boot from USB? (Maybe someone can suggest an alternative solution...)

@ChrisH
I am using 1a Sam460ex
My HD died.
I have bought a new one WD5000AZLX 500GB and installed OS4.1FE on several partitions, but they are always buggy: read errors and very sensitive to mouse and keyboard usage, although when retested in shop no errors were detected after a reformat.

So trying to have a bootable stick is my last idea on having a usable OS

Is it possible that a HD performs ok under windows but not under OS4.1?
For USB sticks that seems to be the case:
I just bought two 8 Gb USB sticks and they are recognised on a PC but not on my Sam. I have older 8Gb sticks that are recognised on Sam.

Others seem to have had HD problems resembling mine on the SAM460ex
I

@JosDuchIt Quote:
I remember reading about such issues YEARS ago, in the days of OS4.0 & the original AmigaOnes, so yes it is *possible*. BUT I haven't heard about such issues in recent years, so I presume that most such issues have been resolved, and I think it's very unlikely (but still possible).

HAVING SAID THAT, I notice that your new HD (like most HDs recently made) is an Advanced Format drive. I do not have any experience with those drives, although I do know that OS4 does not directly support them... BUT that should not be a problem AS LONG AS the drive comes with an automatic backwards compatibility mode (which it should do, otherwise they would not work with Windows XP & other old OSes, which some customers may still want to use).

Quote:
OS4 compatibility problems with USB memory sticks are much more common, so I am not so surprised to hear this. (Usually the USB memory sticks in question do not fully stick to the USB standard, but happen to work with Windows because that's what they were tested with.)

@JosDuchIt

Your USB stick should be 2GB or less in size.

For what you are trying to do
Your OS MultiBoot Options should look like this :

Boot Device 1 :USB HD
Boot Device 2 :3x12 SATA DVD
Boot Device 3 :3x12 SATA HD



This is the sorted output of the nvgetvar command on My Sam460ex :

baudrate=115200
boot_method=boota
boot1=usb
boot2=ssiicdrom
boot3=ssii
boota_timeout=2
bootargs=root=/dev/sda6
bootcmd=menu; run menuboot_cmd
ethact=ppc_4xx_eth0
ethaddr=00:50:C2:80:D5:00
hostname=Sam460ex
hush=0
ide_cd_timeout=20
ide_doreset=on
ide_reset_timeout=15
ipaddr=192.168.1.15
loads_echo=1
menuboot_cmd=boota
menuboot_delay=2
menucmd=menu
os4_commandline=serial debuglevel=0
pciconfighost=1
pcie_mode=RP:RP
scan_usb_storage=1
serdes=pci-e
serverip=192.168.1.14
stdin=usbkbd
stdout=vga
usb_enable_4x0=1
usb_ohci_power_down_before_reset=1
usb_retry=1
ver=U-Boot 2015.a (May 16 2015 - 14:20:11)
video_activate=pci
x86emu=3

@Spectre660
Only thing I did not respect (af first glance) was using a 4 Gb stick.
In my first try I made 2 partitions, one smaller than 2 GB

I'll dig up a less than 2Gb stick and try again

The two 2Gb USB sticks i did find were 1) not showing up,
2) was full of read error
Lost a fewhourstofindtatoutcopyingitscontent :(
In the general store they only have 8 GB and higher :(
My neighbour could not help me out either :(

I managed to identify the controller:

Syba Low Profile 2 Port SATA II PCI Card

Did not find more info on it yet

Yesterday I did get another 1GB USB stick and succeeded to make it bootable using the OS4.1 FE DVD
Sort off' it boots and opens on a DOS shell.

The install took very long,as it progressed , and shows a limited list of directories
Prefs
MUi
Locale
Liibs
L
Kickstart
Internet
Fonts
Emulation
Documentation
Devs
Classes
C

using the shell, i copied more files from the DVD. That went fine, lots of room on the stick

I copied from the DVD the ladking sys: files & directories.

The USB boots, but LoadWB asks for a lot of info: the startup-sequence is very short and there is no user-startup
Could anybody post a basic example for both?

@JosDuchIt Quote:
I wouldn't bother, as I think you're going to spend all your time trying to get an incomplete OS4 installation to partially work.

A more important question is why half the files are missing in the first place. If files have been lost due to issues with the USB stick, then you're never going to get it working right.

Which filing system did you use with the USB stick? If you used FFS, try changing that to SFS (and if SFS then try FFS), and then try reinstalling OS4 from the DVD. Also check the MaxTransfer/etc in MediaToolbox. (You could try reducing MaxTransfer to 1FE0000, which will be even slower, but might work if data is being written too quickly to the USB stick.)

@JosDuchIt
Quote:
Why did you copy files by hand?????
Just run the installation script and that's all.
From what you say, I think you copied the files from the CD (small startup-sequence) which are only for the CD!

@ChrisH
The stick is ok now I copied the startup-sequences from an install on the old 80 GB HD(see report inFormat thread)the WB works ok. :)
,,I just need it to have a fallback sys , it wIll spare me time using it instead oft the DVD WB

@Elwood
As explained above the install slowed down very very much, the following morning I was surprised & happy to see that the install was done and that i could finish it

The system files were not complete though and I had no intention to try the super long install again.
Words fine now, copied startup-sequence from a buggy sys partition.

@JosDuchIt

You should be able to do a copy sys:#? all clone to the USB drive and it should only take minutes if you are using a SFS/00 partition on the USB device .

Thanks to all
USB stic works fine now.
I will buy the u-boot update which allows sticks larger than 2 GB.
I bought 2 GB sticks that are recognised on my wife's PC but not on the Amiga. :((
Could i do something to make that haên ?

BTW i am writing this with Odyssey rom the old 40 GB HD :))
a big progress

@JosDuchIt

Are those stick FAT/FAT32 formatted? If not try to reformat them to FAT/FAT32.
IIRC there is a tool "HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool" to reformat USB pendrives.

About latest UBoot.
It has some issues with some USB keyboards, they don't work under UBoot (you can't enter in Uboot menu/prefs) but when it loads AOS4 no problems.
I upgraded UBoot and had such issue, solved by buying another USB keyboard (Microsft Wired Keyboard 200), with my previous one (unbranded TLTC4USB) I couldn't go into UBoot prefs or choose from UBoot loading kicklayout menu.

I created a bootable USB doing the following:
1)Insert USB pendrive (8GB system shows it as it was NTFS formatted) and using MediaToolbox to reinstall/recreate partitions.
2) MTB shows usbdisk.device on its startup window. Clicked on 'Edit RDB/Reinstall...' and installed/added L:slb_v2 (I'm using a SAM460ex).
3)Click on 'Edit partitions....' and created 1GB as UDH0: (SFS\00; blocksize:512) checked Automount and Bootable, Boot pri. 0 . Rest of space UDH1: (NGF\00; blocksize:2048) checked Automount.
4)Reboot system and from Shell/CLI formated: "SFSFormat drive UDH0: name USB_SYS norecycled". Formatted UDH01: using SYS:System/Format icon.
5)From Shell/CLI: "c:copy SYS: UDH0: all buf=5000"
6)Removed/BackedUp from UDH0:Prefs/Env-Archive/Sys/ wbstartup.prefs, ringhio#?, workbench.prefs.
7)In UBoot prefs changed boot devices list to USB_HD,SII_3x14 DVD, SII_3x14 HD

@ChrisH

"I would be quite surprised if it was possible to boot AmigaOS4 from a USB stick, as that requires a number of special things to be supported."

Do you mean OS4 or OS4.x?

It is certainly possible to boot 4.1 from USB; AmigaKit supply a bootable USB FOC with the X5000. I've never tried it with any other model of AmigaOne/SAM though.