Can Raspberrypi boot initially from USB stick

Hi,

As i usually install software via USB stick i wonder, will RaspberryPI also install when bootable USB stick is inserted into the USB slot?

E.g. can i bypass in this manner the creation of the bootable SD card.
And just have the install process of the image do the job for me, just like an average installation on a disk. In this case it will be a SD card.

Thanks for sharing.

Former Member over 13 years ago

No. It only boots from the SD card.
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Former Member over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

Any easy way to just create the SD card setup. Read the PDF file how to.....not that easy for newbies i assume.
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fustini over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

Check out this tutorial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3sr9Nwt3IY

The Debian image can be downloaded from the link on this group overview:

http://www.element14.com/community/groups/raspberry-pi
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Former Member over 13 years ago in reply to fustini

Thanks. That will do it.
Already downloaded the image when it was released and am seeding it still via p2p for the community (100Mb glasfiber upload capacity)

Will look for the used tools and give it a try.
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Former Member over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

how do disable this messages?
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Cylon over 13 years ago

This only lets you install to the SD card the video tutorial. You will have to do some sort of post boostrap to boot from a usb device.
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Former Member over 13 years ago

Most modern BIOS chips allow / can be updated to set a USB port device as bootable.
I can't see any reason why this should be any different.
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Former Member over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

One very clear and obvious reason why this is different is because the Raspberry Pi's architecture does not have or need a BIOS chip at all. There are *no* choices about the initial boot, no "BIOS settings" to be made or altered at all - the GPU powers up and has a very very small set of hardcoded instructions that say "Go initialise the SD card and look for the first FAT32 partition and look for a firmware file there". That firmware then kickstarts the ARM processor, which loads a kernel from the SD card. After that, the standard distributions will typically mount a root filesystem from the SD card as well, but it's possible to mount a root filesystem from some other USB device instead - no choice in the matter till this point though, and absolutely impossible to boot initially without an SD card with the right firmware files on it.
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Former Member over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

Raspberry PI doesn't have a bios. It doesn't have even a real time clock.
Even if it had a bios, it could not remember the settings because it doesn't have a battery to keep power to the memory.
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Former Member over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

Hmmmm interesting - BIOSlessness...............
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