Arch Linux

poopship21

Member

Registered: 2009-05-13

Posts: 177

USB 'hitchhiker stick'

what is the best way to make a usb stick that would either boot up a running arch installation as a windows application or automatically create an X client ssh session to a remote host?  im envisioning an 'hitchhiker stick' that could be inserted in any machine with or without a network connection and make the most of the situation.  could also be used with grandmothers who need an assistant with access to their computer but dont know how to open those doors
TIA

Berticus

Member

Registered: 2008-06-11

Posts: 731

Re: USB 'hitchhiker stick'

I was gonna try to do something like what you want, but unfortunately there really isn't solution that'll work on all computers. There's a virtualization program that you can fit on your USB, and you can install arch on it. However, it requires a priveleged user, so I decided against even trying.

So far what I have set-up is just to autostart explorer, and store certain values in the configs:

Autorun.inf:

[AutoRun]
Open=bin\setenv.bat
Icon=usr\tux.ico
Action=Set-up environment
Label=Portable Environment

bin\setenv.bat:

@echo off
for /F "delims=\: usebackq" %%i in (`cd`) do SET USB_DRIVE=%%i
echo USB driveletter is %USB_DRIVE%
set config_file=%USB_DRIVE%:\usr\console2\console.xml
set original_file=%USB_DRIVE%:\usr\console2\console_working.xml
%USB_DRIVE%:\bin\sed.exe "s/[a-zA-Z]:\\/%USB_DRIVE%:\\/g" %original_file%> %config_file%
start explorer %USB_DRIVE%:\bin\

This of coures requires you to have the sed program, which I got from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/

I was going to have it auto connect to my ssh server, but colors don't work nicely with console2 (was going to have it start with plink), and resizing the console window in Windows is sort of ugly.... Plus, cmd.exe doesn't have tab support, so working with vim means I need yet another window open.

What I'll probably end up doing is just start cmd.exe with the plink program to my ssh server through a wrapper batch file so I can resize the window.

So just some ideas; just modify setenv.batch or your autostart.inf to suit your needs.