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Create bootable USB with Grub2. #grub #grub2 #boot #usb
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README-bootable-usb-with-grub2.md

README - Create bootable USB with GRUB2

Let /dev/sdb be the USB device. Create 1 VFAT partition at /dev/sdb1 and mount at /mnt/usb0.

Install GRUB on the device:

grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/usb0/boot /dev/sdb

Now, all files needed by GRUB (e.g modules for filesystems) are under /mnt/usb0/boot/grub.

No menus are present and we only have a terminal interface. We can add a menu by adding a grub.cfg file under /mnt/usb0/boot/grub. We can use the menu confifuration generated by our OS (using configuration from /etc/grub.d ans placed at /boot/grub/grub.cfg) as a starting point. Be carefull because hard disk devices will not have the same numbering when boot device is the USB!

A minimal example of a grub.cfg:

set timeout=15
set default=0

menuentry "Debian 9 (4.9.0) @somewhere" {
	insmod gzio
	insmod part_msdos
	insmod ext2
	set root='(hd1,msdos5)'
	echo	'Loading Linux 4.9.0-11-amd64 ...'
	linux	/vmlinuz-4.9.0-11-amd64 root=UUID=91702617-9014-4e87-a852-0aa8f2b672ea ro quiet cgroup_enable=memory swapaccount=1
	echo	'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
	initrd	/initrd.img-4.9.0-11-amd64
}

Some good articles on this:

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