DSL on a USB flash drive

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: DSL on a USB flash drive
started by: pbrams

Posted by pbrams on Dec. 21 2006,15:51

I installed embedded DSL on a 2 GB Memorex traveldrive. The procedures went pretty smoothly, although I've noticed a few glitches/issues:

1) Some How-To's out there recommend using an HP USB drive utility to format the drive. Windows XP can do this natively also -- no need to get that util if you're installing from a Windows PC.

2) I can't boot to my embedded DSL drive. I've changed the boot device order and get the initial DSL penguin splash screen. vga normal, failsafe, etc. all hang or fail. Ultimately it says it cannot find the Knoppix system and drops into an extremely limited set of commands (like half a dozen). Is it even possible to boot into the embedded DSL distro -- or do you need the regular DSL distro?

3) When running through the QEMU environment in Windows XP (be sure to enable Win 98 compatibility), I noticed that ssh, apt-get, and sftp all fail beyond about 500-1000K filesize or so. Everything stalls. It's not a network issue. Something else is not quite right, either with the RAM drive setup, caching or something along those lines. Anyone else notice this? Any fix?

4) Would be nice if embedded DSL could be launched natively without a .BAT file. Why? Because a lot of public access PC's are locked down against running CMD.exe and command.com -- and this effectively kills the processing of .BAT files also. Has anyone figured out a way to run the embedded QEMU DSL without resorting on the .BAT script?

Public PC's are mainly locked down because the sysadmins don't want viruses, spyware, files deleted, etc. But they often allow flash drives, and executables on them. So this seems like a good compromise: you get more freedom online, you borrow their hardware, unplug when you're done and nobody's setup is harmed.

In any case -- this is pretty cool.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Dec. 21 2006,17:52

1. It's known to set the geometry and formatting correctly.

3. Could be memory issue. You can pass -m <size> to qemu (default is 64 afaik). Or store the files in a permanent place.
4. Use a shortcut or another program.

Posted by Jhereg on Dec. 21 2006,21:40

3. I get the same problem, only a little earlier. It gets about halway through some transfer (any size) and then stalls.