Usb Key Linux Distro Options

[Capn_Fish]

I'm looking to run Linux off of a USB drive (512MB). I would like to have:

-A 2.6.x kernel
-Hardware detection so I can use it on any machine
-The ability to uninstall whatever came with the distro
-GCC readily available
-Some space left over so I can actually use it as a USB drive

Any suggestions?

[adf]

I'm looking to run Linux off of a USB drive (512MB). I would like to have:

-A 2.6.x kernel
-Hardware detection so I can use it on any machine
-The ability to uninstall whatever came with the distro
-GCC readily available
-Some space left over so I can actually use it as a USB drive

Any suggestions?

damn small linux not (DSL-n)? looks like it might suit

[Capn_Fish]

I'm looking to run Linux off of a USB drive (512MB). I would like to have:

-A 2.6.x kernel
-Hardware detection so I can use it on any machine
-The ability to uninstall whatever came with the distro
-GCC readily available
-Some space left over so I can actually use it as a USB drive

Any suggestions?

damn small linux not (DSL-n)? looks like it might suit

Can you uninstall whatever you want? It looks good otherwise.

[adf]

I'm looking to run Linux off of a USB drive (512MB). I would like to have:

-A 2.6.x kernel
-Hardware detection so I can use it on any machine
-The ability to uninstall whatever came with the distro
-GCC readily available
-Some space left over so I can actually use it as a USB drive

Any suggestions?

damn small linux not (DSL-n)? looks like it might suit

Can you uninstall whatever you want? It looks good otherwise.

It is so small I never bothered, But I think there is a roll-your-own method (not sure, though)

[Capn_Fish]

I'll give it a try with Bochs and check it out...Any other suggestions are still welcome, though.

[adf]

I'll give it a try with Bochs and check it out...Any other suggestions are still welcome, though.

ran into a recommendation for pclinuxos when I was checking to see if there was a dsl roll your own. No idea what it actually does. Might be worth a quick look, though

[Capn_Fish]

I'll give it a try with Bochs and check it out...Any other suggestions are still welcome, though.

ran into a recommendation for pclinuxos when I was checking to see if there was a dsl roll your own. No idea what it actually does. Might be worth a quick look, though

PCLinuxOS seems to be a full distro (it says it needs 5GB of disk space)

[adf]

I'll give it a try with Bochs and check it out...Any other suggestions are still welcome, though.

ran into a recommendation for pclinuxos when I was checking to see if there was a dsl roll your own. No idea what it actually does. Might be worth a quick look, though

PCLinuxOS seems to be a full distro (it says it needs 5GB of disk space)

LMAO told you I didn't know what it did sorry.

If you are desperate you can do a knoppix remaster yourself.. just strip it out and put back the stuff you need. Might take more time (especially if you did addional compression), but it would certainly work

[Capn_Fish]

I'll give it a try with Bochs and check it out...Any other suggestions are still welcome, though.

ran into a recommendation for pclinuxos when I was checking to see if there was a dsl roll your own. No idea what it actually does. Might be worth a quick look, though

PCLinuxOS seems to be a full distro (it says it needs 5GB of disk space)

LMAO told you I didn't know what it did sorry.

If you are desperate you can do a knoppix remaster yourself.. just strip it out and put back the stuff you need. Might take more time (especially if you did addional compression), but it would certainly work

Any chance of just installing some "regular" (eg not live-CD) distro onto USB instead of a hard disk? Would it work without hardware detection?

[adf]

never tried it. is this for multiple computers? how similar are they if so?

If it were me, I'd give a shot at dsl-n. If I couldn't make that do what I wanted, I'd strip down knoppix and do a remaster. If I thought that was going to take too much time, I'd have a quick peek at what I might do with Slax. If none of the above worked, I'd use my zaurus

[Antikx]

Any chance of just installing some "regular" (eg not live-CD) distro onto USB instead of a hard disk?

I've heard of people doing this but the concern is that some non-live distro's will do a lot of writes to the Flash and wear it.

[craigtyson]

Asked this before but. is it possable to boot a PC off of a Zaurus?

ie Zaurus in the USB port looking like a disk, turn PC on boot off of a live Linux distro on the Zs SD card.

Use the same files and I386 versions of apps used on the Z.

Turn off, walk off with the Z and all the days work in your pocket.

Possible?

Comments?

Cheers

[Da_Blitz]

yes to the PC off the zaurus thing, however itwill stuff up your Z's ability to read the 3rd drive partion, or if you dont want to share files between your Z and the PC then you can do it with a file backed block device

basically its a matter of playing with the modprobe cmdline args, then pulgging it in and setting it up like a regular usb distro

instead why not use PC-net and VNC or X11, run samba to copy the files from theZ such as an xserver or vnc viewer and then run the apps on the Z, not the best solution if you are running the stock firmware but if you are using pdaXrom or OZ it can be quite nice. then you dont have to worry about keeping you settings in sync. i relise there may be a HP issue there

as for turning a normal distro into a usb one, the teqnique is not that hard and the "lots of writes to flash" is simple to evercome, in fstab make /tmp a tmpfs, depending on if you want logs or not you can do it for /var as well (not recomended). the real flash wearer is syslog, so if you have /var as tmpfs you dont need to worry otherwise you might want te tell it to not flush the buffers to disk so results get cached for awhile, that and enable laptop mode which will delay it even futher

if it crashehs you dont get the logs but i rarley use syslog logs to fix a computer that crashehs at random, i normaly use it for setup and config problems, so tmpfs is probely all right

noatime is somthing you might want to add as well, if you are really brave you could hack the OS to be mainly RO, but this requires in depth knowlage of the file system hiracy and how the prgrams you run interact with the system, before i orget, /dev can be tmpfs because it only gets written at boot and its contents are dynamically rebuilt

that said some distros work better than others, debian and gentoo are probelly 2 of the best to convert (knoppix is bassed of debian) but YMMV

app selection is important, did you know zsh syncs on every command, i didnt at first and couldnt work out why my HD kept spining up when testing laptop mode on the Z

the other option you have is to load the FS into a tmpfs then piviot root, ifyou have home as a seperate partion then you can mount it to keep your settings however this can make things like program updates hard to do

if you want more info just post what you need

[Capn_Fish]

I'm thinking I'll burn DSL-N to a CD and give it a shot...Worst case I just manually remove all of the extra stuff I don't want.

[Antikx]

Asked this before but.  is it possable to boot a PC off of a Zaurus?
ie Zaurus in the USB port looking like a disk, turn PC on boot off of a live Linux distro on the Zs SD card.
Use the same files and I386 versions of apps used on the Z.
Turn off, walk off with the Z and all the days work in your pocket.
Possible?
Comments?
Cheers

It is a great idea.
But just adding on to what Da_Blitz said... one other consideration is that it will be kinda poky because of the limited speed you get from the Zaurus's USB host mode. You will probably want to consider a light distro.
I have run windows apps off a usb 1.1 connection using MojoPac. Lets just say I remember how fund twiddling my thumbs was.