We will see in this article how to create a live Mandriva 2009 usb pendrive and how to install it on an Asus Eee Box.

I was in search of a good operating system for my Eee Box, and as the new Mandriva 2009 came out recently, I decided to give it a try.
I ran into problems with the live usb I created at first. It would freeze at boot, and issue the following error:

Cannot run ‘ect/init.rd/rcS’
No such file

After experimenting for a while, I did resolve the problem with the following pendrive creation method.

Creating the Mandriva 2009 live usb pendrive

The following process will solve the previously mentioned problem.

1. Download the Mandriva 2009 ISO file from the official site.
2. Format your USB pendrive or SD card with a FAT32 filesystem, and set the Volume label to MANDRIVAONE (do not skip setting up the label).
3. Create a linux pendrive from the ISO file, as explained in this guide.
4. Dowload this kit (Right click / Save as), unpack it and paste it on your pendrive’s root, replacing the existing files. The kit is provided by ordikc, who wrote a great and extensive article about Mandriva One’s installation. Update: to create a Mandriva 2009.1 live usb, you will have to use this kit instead.
5. Your Mandriva pendrive is now ready and bootable.

Installing the system

You will find on Mandriva’s desktop a live install icon.

After setting up your language and keyboard, you will get to the third step, disk partitioning.
The Mandriva live installer provides four solutions.

• Use Existing partitions.
• Use the free space on a Microsoft windows partition.
• Erase and use entire disk.
• Custom disk partitioning

The easiest would be to erase and use the entire disk, or use the free space on the windows partition, and mandriva will do the rest.
If you choose a customized disk partitioning, you will have to create a main partition for mandriva and a second one as SWAP.

In my example, I created a 30GB partition with an EXT3 filesystem and set the mount point to /, and a second smaller partition with the SWAP mount point.
The final part will be the bootloader installation.

GRUB with graphical menu couldn’t work in my case. The Eeebox would start the windows preinstallation environment at the next boot and replace GRUB by windows’ bootloader.
I tried a few times, and I ended up installing LILO with text menu. It may not be nice looking as GRUB, but it works fine in my case.
The last important choice is to set /dev/sda as the boot device.

I hope you will enjoy your new mandriva system.