USB booting :: Making a custom DSL on USB drive

I currently have a 1GB Sandisk USB drive, and since DSL is so tiny, I wanted to add a few linux goodies to my copy so I don't have to config the OS everytime I use it. Could I save .dsl applications like bittorrent or gcc to my USB drive, so that when I boot or qemu into DSL it auto loads these programs? I found out quickly that /tmp is a virtual folder

Put them into the root or /optional.

Just put the *.dsl , .tar.gz or .uci files into the top level of your thumb drive.

IE: if your drive is "E:\", then put them into "E:\" and reboot into linux and they will be autoloaded.

If you want to load-on-demand and not autoload, create a new folder called "optional", IE: E:\optional\ NOTE THE LOWER CASE LETTERS and put your optional extension files into this folder.

However, these files won't be loaded into a QEMU session.

If you want to save them for your embedded system, boot DSL in QEMU and go to the menu and choose Emelfm as Super User

Then go to the /mnt directory

Then right click on "hdb" and choose "Mount" from the menu.

Then copy your extension files over to /mnt/hdb or to /mnt/hdb/optional/

Good Luck.

Quote (cbagger01 @ April 20 2005,23:23)

If you want to save them for your embedded system, boot DSL in QEMU and go to the menu and choose Emelfm as Super User

Then go to the /mnt directory

Then right click on "hdb" and choose "Mount" from the menu.

Then copy your extension files over to /mnt/hdb or to /mnt/hdb/optional/

That looks SO simple, so the fact that it doesn't work must mean I am missing the point...

Using DSL1.0, booted from within QEMU hosted on WinXP.

In /mnt/hdb I have a file lynx.dsl, retreived from the DSL repository.

If I invoke MyDSL on that file from within the FileManager the app installs and I can run it from the shell as dsl@box: lynx

If I then reboot my DSL in QEMU session the file
/mnt/hdb/lynx.dsl
is restored, but the lynx application is not installed.

Can you gently tell me what it is that I haven't understood? Am I right to expect to be able to run dsl@box: lynx from the shell after a reboot, without invoking the .dsl loader myself?

[EDIT]
A follow-up, having had a break and a shower! I haven't tried it, but I think that what I overlooked, which is documented elsewhere, is the need to pass a MyDSL argument at boottime which points to the stored .dsl files.
For the DSL-Embedded package, I think that means editting the dsl-windows.bat script to add an appropriate MyDSL= to the Append string which currently reads
"qemu sb=0x220,5,1,1 frugal quiet"
I think this needs to become
"qemu sb=0x220,5,1,1 frugal quiet mydsl=harddisk"
[/EDIT]

Thanks
DeeJay

I'm not sure, but I believe that would be mydsl=/dev/hdb because you're appending arguments to the kernel at boot time; the qemu/harddisk file shows up as /dev/hdb at that point. I haven't tried it yet, though.

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