Any experience running Linux off a USB flash drive?

elasticdog · 2006-03-12 00:07:19

I just got a new/bigger flash drive, and would love to dedicate a portion of it to use a bootable Linux distro. I've looked at Slax, Feather Linux, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, and read the instructions on Installing Debian onto USB flash media with everything encrypted.

I wondered if anyone has any experience working with USB-based distros or any other good advice on the matter? I'm leaning toward Slax for the modularity aspect, but am also intrigued by the Debian-based article and customizing a normal distro to run on it properly. It's a 2GB drive that will also need a FAT16 partition to make transfering files to/from Windows easy. I plan on making part of that data partition encrypted using TrueCrypt. Beyond that, I'm fairly open to ideas...

Dusty · 2006-03-12 02:11:46

I know nothing about how its done, but I'd want an arch-based distro so...

http://www.kotek.net/minimax/

Dusty

rayjgu3 · 2006-03-12 05:17:40

i was able to get arch installed onto a usb drive a while ago
you need to get usb modules loaded in initrd26.img
dont try to compile kernel with usb drive it didnt work
i believe i even mknod /dev/sda1 so that you have that block device there when the system went looking for it .
you also want to get mdadm installed before you boot into it
check out
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … highlight=

that work was a awhile ago thelast time i tried to boot my pen it wouldnt so i gave up
i may start back at that but i doubt it my intrest right now is arch64 with my new pc

Arch Linux

#1 2006-03-12 00:07:19

Any experience running Linux off a USB flash drive?

#2 2006-03-12 02:11:46

Re: Any experience running Linux off a USB flash drive?

#3 2006-03-12 05:17:40

Re: Any experience running Linux off a USB flash drive?

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