[LIVE] Software tool to install XBMC Live to USB flash drive without booting to CD

My media PC doesn't have an optical drive. Weird, I know, but it usually streams everything from a network drive.

Is there an easy way to install XBMC Live to USB stick without booting from CD?

TA!

if you are familiar with Linux and have a working linux machine you will be able to transfer the install script out of Live and run it on the other box.
If not, borrow a PC with optical drive for 10 minutes and you will be done.

Moving to the feature suggestions forum.

There are two ways to create a bootable XBMC Live USB disk using Windows:

1. Use Virtualbox

With the latest Virtualbox you can boot from the ISO image and access an USB disk mounted on the host computer.

2. Use Unetbootin

Start unetbootin, select disk image and choose the file XBMCLive.ISO.
Once the process is finished open the file syslinux.cfg on the flash disk and replace all occurrences of "boot=cd" with "boot=usb".

Due to the lack of the required tools in Windows, unetbootin cannot create the "permanent storage file", ie the flash disk will start in read-only mode.
If you want to have a permanent system storage boot the flash disk in safe mode, logon at console prompt and type:


(replace 600 with your preferred size in MB).

After a reboot you will have a complete XBMC Live bootable disk.

Would be cool if we could modify "GeeXboX Win32 Installer" and the "GeeXboX ISO Generator" installer software tools to work with XBMC Live, I believe that they are open source and licensed under the GPL:

http://geexbox.org/en/downloads.html

Quote:GeeXboX Win32 Installer
http://geexbox.org/en/doc.html

This package is for Windows (32-bits) only. It is a regular Win32 application that allows you to easily install/uninstall a GeeXboX ISO on your current hard-disk (or any USB key) without need to partition (or format) it again. It makes use of internal Windows bootloader to allow you choosing between different OSes to boot from.

Quote:GeeXboX ISO Generator
http://geexbox.org/en/generator.html

With this package, it is easy to modify GeeXboX in a few seconds without having to build the sources. The generator produces ISO image of the GeeXboX, ready to be burned on disc, that you may have customized to fit your needs. The software is multi-platforms, working currently under both GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows 9x/NT/2k/XP systems. It is able to produce ISO images for both x86_32, x86_64 and PowerPC targets.

Thanks to the GeeXboX ISO generator, it is possible to build a bootable image of the GeeXboX that will fit your needs, just from the binaries, without need to compile the whole distribution from sources. This lets you build the GeeXboX after slight changes in the configuration files, for example, with no need to build the full sources. The GeeXboX ISO FLTK generator works under both Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux distributions and Apple MacOS X. It can be used to generated both x86 and PPC versions of GeeXboX.

GeeXboX's customization is interesting in many ways, such as :
* Include a movie : You just have to put your movie or sound files and the playlist into the iso directory of the generator and regenerate the image. The GeeXboX will then boot off the CD and will automatically play the provided list/file.
* Add non-free extra codecs.
* Add non-free firmwares for your drivers.
* Add extra fonts for Asian users.
* Add extra themes.
* Configure the network settings.
* Configure audio related options.
* Configure video related options.
* Configure the remote control and receiver to be used.
* Configure a LCD display.
* Change theme, fonts and charset encoding.
* Choose the services to be started with GeeXboX (like UPnP and SHOUTcast).
* Modify MPlayer's startup options : You just have to edit the contents fo the file iso/GEEXBOX/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf and to generate the new ISO.

For now, just start the FLTK generator binary :

* generator.exe under Windows 9x/Me/2000/XP
* linux-i386-generator under GNU/Linux
* macosx-generator under MacOS X

Alternatively if we could make something similar that works the same way?