Howto: Backtrack 3 on SD Card for the EEE PC 901 and 1000H PDF Print E-mail
Written by Andrew Chapman   
Wednesday, 24 September 2008 20:09

With the advent of people installing a myriad of operating systems on their EEE PC's, I recalled a fairly popular distro of Linux in my travels, Backtrack 3. Because of the unique resolution of the EEE (1024x600 for the 900's and 1000's) it is sometimes difficult to get a live Linux distro to boot into X. I realised a need to combine some really useful net resources to show eee users how simple it is to install backtrack3 to SD Card on the eee. So... here we go!

First step is to get a copy of Backtrack 3 USB edition, it can be downloaded here. (You need to get the USB Version - Extended)

The file downloaded is an iso file, don't let this bother you, you can simply use Winrar to extract the two folders Boot and BT3 to your SD or SDHC Card (This tute will let you install to a USB Stick as well)

bt3-1

Next step is to download a small lzm file which contains the settings for a 901 or 1000H graphics etc, this file can be found here, this is not my creation, I simply found it in my research at the BT3 Forums 

You need to put this lzm file in the /BT3/Optional Folder

bt3-2

Next is the tricky (not really!) bit, you need to edit the /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg file to load BT3 incorporating the instructions in the lzm file

bt3-3

Simply open the file with notepad (right click -> open with....) and edit it so that the first item in the list of options looks like this:

LABEL EEE
MENU LABEL BT3 EEE Mode
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=785 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw load=901_net_gfx

Here is a screen grab showing the position of the (highlighted) code:

bt3-4

The final step after all this hard work is to make your SD Card bootable, to do this simply double click the bootinst.bat file in the /boot folder (IF you are using vista, be sure to run this as the Administrator) this will open a dos box and make your SD Card bootable.

bt3-5

 

Now, reboot your EEE press F2 to go into BIOS and set the SD Card as the boot drive (or press ESC on bootup and select itt from there) your Backtrack OS will boot and present you with a list of options, the top one is your pre configured option

It will autoboot the top option for you in a few seconds, the final pic for today is Backtrack 3, loaded and EEE friendly!

backtrack-eee

There we go, all done and dusted, have fun with your BT3 and EEE! If you have any suggestions, or other tutes you'd like to see, drop me a line!



Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
Reddit! Del.icio.us! Mixx! Free and Open Source Software News Google! Live! Facebook! StumbleUpon! Yahoo! Free Joomla PHP extensions, software, information and tutorials.

Comments

avatar Jason
+1
 
 
good job... i can't wait to try it out... thanks
Name *
URL
Code   
ChronoComments by Joomla Professional Solutions
Submit Comment
Cancel
avatar Michael T
0
 
 
It worked really well for me, I just can't seem to get my wireless card to see all the access points... Good guide!
Name *
URL
Code   
ChronoComments by Joomla Professional Solutions
Submit Comment
Cancel
avatar Didier Stevens
0
 
 
Thanks for this, I got BT3 working on my eee pc 901.

First I used unetbootin (per these instructions http://pauldotcom.com/wiki/index.php?title=Episode114&printable=yes) to make a bootable BT3 usb stick. Worked, except for graphics and networks.

Then installed the lzm as you suggested, and got my hardware correctly recognized.
I added autoexec=startx to the end of the APPEND line to boot automatically in graphics mode.

As expected, the ralink wifi coesn't support monitor, but I plugged in my alfa network usb wireless adapter and airodump is capturing packets!
Name *
URL
Code   
ChronoComments by Joomla Professional Solutions
Submit Comment
Cancel
avatar Andrew Chapman
0
 
 
Thanks for the tip re autostart. I think you are right with regard to the wireless too, a USB wifi card seems to be the way to go.
As for making your USB auto boot, you can just use the batch file in the BT3 folder, if using Vista, it is best to 'run as administrator'.
Name *
URL
Code   
ChronoComments by Joomla Professional Solutions
Submit Comment
Cancel
avatar Jak
0
 
 
Hey,
I have a NC10 and am wondering if I can boot from the internal SD card reader (at the front of the netbook) instead of using a seperate USB memory card reader I'm using. Have given it a try and doesn't seem to for me, but I could have been a retard in the BIOS.

Any know if it's possible?
Name *
URL
Code   
ChronoComments by Joomla Professional Solutions
Submit Comment
Cancel
Name *
URL
Code   
ChronoComments by Joomla Professional Solutions
Submit Comment
Last Updated on Sunday, 23 November 2008 20:16
 
Banner

Syndicate

Tag Cloud

RocketTheme Joomla Templates