Anyone have Ultimate Arch USB here ?

ash · 2012-10-18 21:32:26

For those who made a bootable Arch USB drive :

What usefull/cool stuff do you include in your USB Arch installation, which is especially usefull in there (ie stuff not normally present on the desktop). I'm looking for what else can be done in aa Arch USB to make it even more ultimate tool than it allready is, how to make it boot faster, and other tips and tricks

Calder · 2012-10-18 23:25:57

These are kind of silly things, but:

Use a good USB 3.0 flash drive. I have Arch running on a drive that I've benchmarked at around 100Mb/s read, and Arch starts up (from BIOS to GDM) in 22 seconds. Which, coincidentally, is the same amount of time it takes my mofo mobo to finish with BIOS.
Turn down the grub timeout time.

Last edited by Calder (2012-10-18 23:26:22)

JLloyd13 · 2012-10-18 23:39:10

Calder wrote:

These are kind of silly things, but:
Use a good USB 3.0 flash drive. I have Arch running on a drive that I've benchmarked at around 100Mb/s read, and Arch starts up (from BIOS to GDM) in 22 seconds. Which, coincidentally, is the same amount of time it takes my mofo mobo to finish with BIOS.
Turn down the grub timeout time.

lol. bought an SSD, swapped over to systemd... arch boots in seconds, but my bios/uefi takes so long it was kind of pointless

EDIT---

sorry for off topic

Last edited by JLloyd13 (2012-10-18 23:39:24)

DSpider · 2012-10-20 11:01:41

USB 3.0... Lol. Here you go: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US … O_from_RAM

This is ten times faster than a USB 3.0 stick (except for the initial part, of course). It can be combined with the instructions from here if you're on Linux.

Here's my current setup with Arch Linux, Parted Magic and Windows 7, all on a 4 GB FAT32 partition:

UI vesamenu.c32
PROMPT 0
MENU RESOLUTION 1280 1024
MENU BACKGROUND background.png
MENU WIDTH 90
MENU VSHIFT 20
MENU HSHIFT 48
TIMEOUT 600

MENU COLOR border         *    #00000000 #00000000 none
MENU COLOR sel            *    #FF000000 #00000000 none
MENU COLOR unsel          *    #80000000 #00000000 none
MENU COLOR help           *    #00000000 #00000000 none
MENU COLOR timeout_msg    *    #00000000 #00000000 none
MENU COLOR timeout        *    #FFA926FF #00000000 none
MENU COLOR tabmsg         *    #00000000 #00000000 none
MENU COLOR cmdmark        *    #FFFFFFFF #00000000 std
MENU COLOR cmdline        *    #FF000000 #00000000 none

 LABEL arch
   MENU LABEL Arch Linux
   LINUX memdisk
   INITRD /Boot/ISOs/Arch_Linux_2012.10.06.iso
   APPEND iso

 LABEL pmagic
   MENU LABEL Parted Magic
   LINUX memdisk
   INITRD /Boot/ISOs/Parted_Magic_2012.10.10_(x86_64).iso
   APPEND iso

 LABEL windows
   MENU LABEL Windows 7
   COM32 chain.c32
   APPEND fs ntldr=bootmgr

 LABEL exit
   MENU LABEL Exit
   COM32 chain.c32
   APPEND hd1

Note that there are just two folders on the stick: "Boot" and "Sources" (I chose to deliberately remove the EFI stuff).

Have fun.

ash · 2012-10-20 18:10:35

SO you boot a squashfs image (or something similar) with Syslinux ?

How did you pack the image and is it read-only like live CD or can be modified from within itself when the USB is booted ?

DSpider · 2012-10-20 18:28:24

Try the method and you'll understand.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US … O_from_RAM

The ISO images are the original, untouched ones. I can see how they may be confusing. They're just renamed (because I felt like it).

Arch Linux

#1 2012-10-18 21:32:26

Anyone have Ultimate Arch USB here ?

#2 2012-10-18 23:25:57

Re: Anyone have Ultimate Arch USB here ?

#3 2012-10-18 23:39:10

Re: Anyone have Ultimate Arch USB here ?

#4 2012-10-20 11:01:41

Re: Anyone have Ultimate Arch USB here ?

#5 2012-10-20 18:10:35

Re: Anyone have Ultimate Arch USB here ?

#6 2012-10-20 18:28:24

Re: Anyone have Ultimate Arch USB here ?

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