USB booting :: Okay, not about booting but still USB drive
I'm brand new to Linux and am having fun with it so far (played with the liveCD on my cousin's comp... it freaks out upon detecting my SATA drives).
Anyway, here's my situation:
I have, for the moment, a 128mb Lexar JumpDrive USB flashdrive (121mb usable, no indication on where the other 7mb went) and no systems that will boot to the usb drives.
1) I was wondering if there's some way that I can still make DSL portable, but load it within the windows environment?
2) Is there something I can do (aside from unplugging my SATA drives) to get it to work on my comp? (I already run dsl nofirewire)
And I suppose my last question is contingent on #1.. If that works, I'm hoping I can still fit OpenOffice and maybe a song or 2 on it for working at school. Would there be any 'special' things I'd need to do to make this particular setup work?
A little info on my current system:
AMD AthlonXP 2500 @ 1.8Ghz
1024MB PC2700 RAM
WinXP Home SP2 (which is why I'm wanting to run DSL from USB)
Hard Drive 1: 80GB Western Digital SATA
Hard Drive 2: 120GB Maxtor SATA
Nforce2 Motherboard, BFGTech 6800GT OC, SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS
DVD and DVDRW drives, floppy
I *think* that's all the important stuff...
Thanks in advance for any help!
~Skittle~
P.S. If worse comes to worse, I'm looking at buying a new USB drive of at least 512MB.
Hmmm... 60+ views....
Well, here's an update:
I found the embedded dsl and put that on my drive, but now I've read and am a little worried about it becoming unusable relatively fast because it saves my settings after every shut-down, so I'm looking for an easy way to stop this so I can have one version that can run from within windows without screwing up my drive.
I gave up on openoffice for now since it takes 300MB according to the site, saving that one for later.
My current 'big' problem is with running the liveCD, it only works in failsafe mode so far which won't let me access USB ports... I know firewire won't load, dsl freaks out because it tries to mount all 11 hard drive partitions, floppy, USB Drive, the DVD, and the DVD RW.
But what really gets me is that it continues loading without waiting for a prompt (it just gives a short message stating it's not mounting a partition, but continues to the next step without waiting for me to press anything). When it gets done mounting it loads a couple more things that go by too fast to read, the screen goes blank, and stays like that... in failsafe, this is where the desktop comes up. I've tried several combinations of commands, and even tried 'expert' a couple times, but so far it's a no-go.
I would really like to have a bootable USB OS that I can configure once and not write to that drive again (I'm rather fond of the 'perfect blue' theme 
) as it would come in handy working with my uncle (he tinkers a lot with computers, so his OS's aren't always in working order, heh).
Anyway, as before, thanks again for any help!
~Skittle~
DSL does not currently support SATA drives.
DSL embedded is using the virtual machine provided by Qemu so should not be a problem. The OS is not running from USB pendrive, only the backup. That would be like using the pendrive as a big floppy. It will not wear out fast using this default setup. However you can choose not to have any backup. Just clear out the /opt/.backup_device file and remove or rename the backup.tar.gz file. This will result in no auto backups. Note however, the virtual machine provided by Qemu needs several startup features not normally needed by the liveCD, hence the reason for a starting backup.tar.gz. In there is the soundblaster for sound and mounting uci for the virtual machine. So, you may want to rename the backup.tar.gz to something like myconf.tar.gz and then it will be only be read and loaded upon each reboot.
Okay, a couple days later and I now have a 512MB USB drive (Apacer Handy Steno... package said 'compatible with linux kernel 2.4.0 and newer' so I thought why not?) . I read the mkmydsl document ( http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/talk/node/113 ) but I was wondering... Since I don't want to sacrifice a windows partition, is there some way I can do this entirely from the ramdisk? I have 1024MB so space isn't really much of an issue (my install shouldn't be more than 350MB at most anyway); I wouldn't ask except the walkthrough doesn't mention whether it's possible.
Now, to kind of test my understanding, the img that mkmydsl creates includes all apps, extensions, fluxbox styles/backgrounds, games, etc that I've installed, right? Does this include what I have in the ramdisk? I've been trying, without success, to add files to the fluxbox styles and backgrounds directories (in the ramdisk, if that makes a difference) and it keeps giving me "permission denied" , but if I try it in /KNOPPIX/usr/share/fluxbox it gives me "read-only file system" any way around this or do I have to do it after I install to the USB?
Any clarification on these issues is greatly appreciated!
~Skittle~
::EDIT::
Okay, maybe it'd help if I stated my goals a little more clearly.
I have 512MB to 'play' with, I want to put on it:
DSL (everything that's on it by default, plus...)
OpenOffice
http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/lovehinafluxboxtheme/ (for the default theme, love that series!)
and something to watch movie files (whatever supports the most formats in dsl)
After getting these on the drive, I don't need to write to it again.
The easiest solution to store your fluxbox theme is to put it in your home directory (/home/dsl). There's a hidden directory for that purpose (.fluxbox/styles I think ?). Then you've got to reference your style in the .fluxbox/init configuration file.
All those files will be saved on shutdown in backup.tar.gz.
Hope this helps,
Phil
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