Install BeleniX (OpenSolaris Live CD) into a USB thumb drive

BeleniX Live CD works just fine. But when you try to install it into a USB thumb drive following the installation instruction, you may get frustrated. The installer doesn't work! At least it doesn't work for me. I had to debug the installer script step by step to see where the problems result from. Finally, I worked out and successfully installed it into a USB drive. There are two places in the script to which you need to pay attention.

• the command at line 211

# rmformat -s /tmp/slices /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0p0

This command simply doesn't work in my case. Maybe the slices information in /tmp/slices generated by the script are not correct, maybe not. Since there was no error returned, I have no idea why it failed. After running this command, 2 slices are supposed to be created and labeled. However, if you run the following command

# newfs /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 < /dev/null

You will get error "no such device" sth. like that. In this case, you can run the command below instead to create the slices and label them based on /tmp/slices

# format -e

It's interactive. You just follow the instructions to do so.

• The command at line 281

# installgrub -mf stage1 stage2 $devs > /dev/null

You will get error "can not read stage1 file stage1" if you follow the provided installer. The reason is there is no such a file called stage1 in /boot/grub directory. Where you can get the required stage1? Don't run

# umount /mnt/belenix

at line 274. You need to run the commands below first:

# cd /mnt/belenix/boot/grub
# installgrub -mf stage1 stage2 /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 > /dev/null
# umount /mnt/belenix
# lofiadm -d $BELENIX_ISO_PATH

All the required files to run installgrub are in /mnt/belenix/boot/grub.

A successful installation! You can enjoy the LiveUSB boot from now on!