[NTLUG:Discuss] Installing Linux on USB Disks?

[Stan Gatchel]

Chris,

Good info all 'round. I would be interested seeing you writeup when it's
finished.

Thanks

Stan

Chris Albertson wrote:
> Stan,
>
> I've just gone through an exercise of getting Debian to install on a 
> Compact Flash card, so I could run it on an embedded device. (Single 
> Board PC) I'm in the process of writing up how I got it to work. When I 
> finish, I can get you a copy if you'd like. I think it might help answer 
> some of these questions.
> The first thing that's going to be a deal breaker or maker for you is if 
> your bios can boot to the USB drive. If you don't get that option, 
> you're going to be out of luck before you even get started.
> If you can boot from USB in bios, then it's really just a problem of 
> getting the image onto the USB drive. I don't use grub, so I can't speak 
> too much to that. I use lilo.
> Here is pretty much the steps I took to get debian on a CF card:
>
>    1. Build base filesystem to a local directory (Using debootstrap)
>    2. Prepare CF Card for the goods (Partition,make partition bootable,
>       mkfs.ext2)
>    3. Copy the base filesystem into the CF card
>    4. Mount --bind proc, sys, and dev into the CF card
>    5. CHROOT into the CF card
>    6. Install the Kernel Image (apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.x.x.x)
>    7. Alter fstab, network, hostname, resolv.conf files (Root in your
>       fstab would probably point to /dev/sda1 since it's a usb mass
>       storage device)
>    8. Put LILO into the MBR of the card  (You could just use grub here
>       if you're comfortable with that)
>    9. exit chroot
>   10. Unmount proc, sys and dev from the flash card
>   11. unmount the card
>   12. Finished
>
> As I said, I'm in the process of detailing all these steps so they make 
> more sense...
>
> I know the USB boot drive is becoming a popular item now. You "may" be 
> able to google this subject and find some pre-built images that you can 
> just burn onto the USB drive. I could not find anything that met my 
> needs/desires, so I had to build from scratch.
>
> Chris
>
> Stan Gatchel wrote:
>   
>> I found this interesting article about preloading Linux on USB disks. I
>> was just wondering, if I bought a blank USB disk and tried to install
>> Linux, would it work? Has anyone done this? Does it show in Grub? What
>> happens when the disk is unmounted? What happens if you mount it on a
>> different machine? What hardware similarities are required for it to run?
>>
>> Maybe this is a way to test new distributions.. just partition a USB
>> disk? Can it be that easy?  ;-)
>>
>> http://people.ofset.org/~ckhung/a/c073.en.php
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Stan
>>
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