USB Boot: Undoable Stack Boot

Boot DevStack from a USB disk into a RAM disk.

Hardware

This guide covers the creation of a bootable USB drive. Your computer BIOS must support booting from USB and You will want at least 3GB of RAM. You also will need a USB drive of at least 2GB.

Software

Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) is required on host to create images.

Set Up USB Drive

• Insert the USB drive into the computer. Make a note of the device name, such as sdb. Do not mount the device.
• Install the boot system:

  tools/build_usb_boot.sh /dev/sdb1

  This calls tools/build_ramdisk.sh to create a 2GB ramdisk containing a complete development Oneiric OS plus the OpenStack code checkouts. It then writes a syslinux boot sector to the specified device and creates /syslinux.

• If desired, you may now mount the device:

  mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/tmp
  # foo
  umount /mnt/tmp

Now return to the RAM disk Guide to kick off your DevStack experience.