Booting Linux off iPod

[nathanielreindl]

Originally Posted by MikeWasHere05

Heh, I just wanted the bragging rights of saying "I booted Linux off an iPod" Figuring out how to do something is half of the fun.

Aha. Just like I liked having bragging rights about booting my old ThinkPad 560Z off CompactFlash. I thought that's what you were going for, but I thought I'd prod some and make sure.

Originally Posted by MikeWasHere05

Here's a tutorial I found on partitioning the iPod, unfortanetly he does it via linux.

Actually, that's OS X (or Darwin) from the looks of it. Linux doesn't have device names like /dev/disk2s2; they're usually something along the lines of /dev/sdtX or /dev/hdtX, where t is [az] and X is any unsigned integer [1,255]. And pdisk is PowerPC-specific.

Mind you, this is all true unless you're running udev on top of Linux; then, you're dealing with an altogether different beast...

Originally Posted by MikeWasHere05

So maybe I'll boot knoppix off a CD, partition my iPod, load the knoppix image on my iPod, set BIOS to go to my USB drive, and try to boot from the iPod... who knows, it might be crazy enough to work.

You're going to have to install an MBR on that hard drive in order really to boot from it, I think. Or set a partition under 1024 cylinders bootable.