crazy thought: boot gentoo from iPod

FcukThisGame · l33t Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 776 Location: /lost+found

When choosing a bootmenu in my bios, I noticed that my 30gb iPod video was a boot option (this was in the bios, not GRUB). So I've been looking over posts about booting gentoo off USB flash drives, and I think the iPod could probably work the same; it is, after all, a 5400-rpm, 30gb USB-attached scsi.

Needless to say, I'm way too inexperienced with linux (and lazy, for that matter), to even think to screw around with my $300 iPod, but I'm pretty sure that it's FAT32, and that writing to the root of the drive won't screw with the iPod system.

I don't know much about building livecd's or anything, but I think that would be a great idea for geeks (okay, bad word choice in here), if they needed a livecd for recovery or some other purpose. I think it'd be great if I could boot a live session on any computer from my iPod and still be able to listen to the music (I mean, not simultaneously.)

Okay, maybe I sound like an idiot trying to boot gentoo from an iPod, but hey, I think it's worth a try.
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PaulBain · Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 11:03 am Post subject:

I think its totaly possible, I have got my iPod nano working as a hard drive in gentoo.
If it is an iPod formatted from an Windows machine, it is most probably FAT32, or Mac it will be HFS.

Either way you can get it working.
You could easily use one of the live cd's and configure the kernel options as shown in http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Using_an_iPod_With_Gentoo_Linux
An away you go!

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20583

Moved from Other Things Gentoo
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