Multiboot on USB disk

WARNING : this example is for USB key present as /dev/sdc WARNING : if you follow this howto, you will wipe the disk (make backups before)

1. Plug a USB key in your computer
2. Erase your USB disk

• Windows : use http://www.diskwipe.org/
• GNU/Linux : dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=128M

1. use Easy2Boot to make a multiboot disk : http://www.easy2boot.com/make-an-easy2boot-usb-drive

• On windows, use usbit in order to make a zip compressed raw image of the multiboot USB key (http://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool)
• On GNU/Linux, use dd : dd if=/dev/sdc of=./image.raw bs=128M (and compress it with gzip for example)

1. copy the image on the server, in rescue mode under ubuntu

• Windows : use filezilla : https://filezilla-project.org/
• GNU/Linux : use scp

1. connect the server, in rescue mode under ubuntu, with ssh

mv multiboot.imz  multiboot.raw.zip
unzip -e multiboot.raw.zip

If not enough place in ramdisk, mount a disk (not the USB one on the server) and move the compressed image file and uncompress it

1. Dump the image to the USB drive (/dev/sdc) : dd if=./image.img of=/dev/sdc bs=128
2. Boot the server on the USB drive :
3. run IDRAC, go to boot menu (R220 II : press F11 when prompted)
4. chose the USB hard disk and… voila !