We will show how to set up the memory stick to use the first partition, instead of the entire device. In order to start the kernel after booting from the USB stick, we will put a boot loader on the stick. Although any boot loader should work, it's convenient to use syslinux, since it uses a FAT16 partition and can be reconfigured by just editing a text file. Any operating system which supports the FAT file system can be used to make changes to the configuration of the boot loader. First, you need to install the syslinux and mtools packages on your system. Since most USB sticks come pre-configured with a single FAT16 partition, you probably won't have to repartition or reformat the stick. If you have to do that anyway, use cfdisk or any other partitioning tool to create a FAT16 partition now Don't forget to activate the bootable flag. , and then install an MBR using: # cat /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr/mbr.bin >/dev/sdX Now create the filesystem using: # mkdosfs /dev/sdX1 Take care that you use the correct device name for your USB stick. The mkdosfs command is contained in the dosfstools &debian; package. Having a correctly partitioned USB stick (now), you need to put syslinux on the FAT16 partition with: # syslinux /dev/sdX1 Again, take care that you use the correct device name. The partition must not be mounted when starting syslinux. This procedure writes a boot sector to the partition and creates the file ldlinux.sys which contains the boot loader code. There are two different installation variants to choose here: The hd-media variant needs an installation ISO file on the stick, to load installer modules and the base system from. The netboot installer however will load all that from a &debian; mirror. According to your choice, you have to download some installer files from the hd-media or netboot subdirectory of debian/dists/&releasename;/main/installer-&architecture;/current/images/ on any &debian; mirror: vmlinuz or linux (kernel binary) initrd.gz (initial ramdisk image) You can choose between either the text-based version of the installer (the files can be found directly in hd-media or netboot) or the graphical version (look in the respective gtk subdirectories). Then mount the partition (mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt) and copy the downloaded files to the root directory of the stick. Next you should create a text file named syslinux.cfg in the root directory of the stick as configuration file for syslinux, which at a bare minimum should contain the following line: default vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz Change the name of the kernel binary to linux if you used files from netboot. For the graphical installer (from gtk) you should add vga=788 at the end of the line. Other parameters can be appended as desired. To enable the boot prompt to permit further parameter appending, add a prompt 1 line. If you used files from hd-media, you should now copy the ISO file of a &debian; installation image onto the stick. (For the netboot variant this is not needed.) You can use either a netinst or a full CD/DVD image (see ). Be sure to select one that fits on your stick. Note that the netboot mini.iso image is not usable for this purpose. When you are done, unmount the USB memory stick (umount /mnt).