Gyaan Sutra On entrepreneurship and technology

Introduction

So you are one of the Linux geeks and are wondering why would somebody want to do boot linux from your Ipod. Maybe people might try to boot windows off a USB, but why linux, why not give it the damn hard disk. Well, unluckily this article is not for you.

This article is for those of us who just can’t get over windows. Like me. No matter how much I try to get rid of it, I keep coming back to it. Sometimes my Ipod won’t work, and sometimes skype can’t read my speaker, but it all tends to work so beautifully on windows.

Anyways, the point here is that if you like to keep windows on your machine, and there is just not enough place left for Linux on the machine, you would like to have your machine boot up Linux from an external device, which you can remove and then everything would be the same.

For obvious reasons, that external device would have to be a USB. Now it so happened that the only USB device that I had lying around was a Ipod Shuffle. So here, in this tutorial, we learn how to make linux boot up from a USB drive.

The tutorial finally begins

Okay, so your Shuffle is in your hand and you are raring to go. So let’s begin.

First of all, plug in the Ipod, and download this software (Link) and install it. After installing it, run the software and format the ipod, and remember to keep the filesystem as FAT. ( Oh sorry, that’s the cat, get this instead.)

Now start downloading the Damn Small Linux from here. Then go and take a walk or light up a cigarette because the download size is 49.8 MB (Damn, it’s small). I don’t know about you, but with my connection I can download at 30kb/sec, which means it takes me about half an hour to get it down on the hard disk, but if you live somewhere in America, or one of the similar countries which have blazing fast connections, you would be back here sooner.

So I guess you are back now and that long download has completed. So now you see the zipped file which you have downloaded. Take that file and unzip it to the USB (duh).

Now, for some more downloads. Get this. (1.6 MB). Now create a new folder on your C drive and call it Syslinux and unzip all the files to that folder.

Now open up the command prompt, go to the Syslinux\win32 folder (cd C:\Syslinux\win32) and type

syslinux -f E:
(where E: is your USB drive)

Now keep the Ipod plugged in, and reboot your machine. During reboot go to the BIOS setup, and choose to boot first using USB (if you don’t have this, you’ve just wasted a lot of time and bandwidth) and start the machine.

You should now see the Damn Small Linux booting up…….

…. this is it. Linux on the Ipod.