preparing a bootable USB Flash drive: grub-install, what else?

[Ivan Shmakov]

        I guess I may be missing something overly simple here.  I need
        to prepare a bootable USB Flash drive, and have done it like:

$ /usr/sbin/grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdc 

        (GRUB is as of the 1.99-22.1 version currently in Debian
        Wheezy.)

        I've also followed the Debian Live's example and applied
        parted(8) to the media as follows (I don't know if it's really
        necessary):

$ /sbin/parted /dev/sdc set 1 boot on set 1 lba off 

        Unfortunately, the net result is that the target hosts reboots
        instantly while trying to boot from this media.

        Also to note:

        • this image successfully boots under KVM (QEMU), like:

$ kvm -m 64 -hda /dev/sdc 

          (however, ISTR that there were some subtle differences between
          booting HDD images and USB Flash ones);

        • I've tried to boot another USB Flash (which I've prepared
          earlier and with an older version of GRUB), and it boots
          correctly on the same hardware; (however, that media uses GPT,
          copied to MBR via gptsync(8).)

        Anything else I should've taken care of?

        TIA.

$ /sbin/sfdisk -uS -l -- /dev/sdc 

Disk /dev/sdc: 6794 cylinders, 128 heads, 9 sectors/track
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *        56   7826687    7826632   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sdc2             0         -          0   0  Empty
/dev/sdc3             0         -          0   0  Empty
/dev/sdc4             0         -          0   0  Empty
$ 

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