0.6.3 USB install

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: 0.6.3 USB install
started by: libretto

Posted by libretto on April 16 2004,10:49

Hi there,

Just tried o.6.3 using toram option. Brilliant distro as always, like al the new little scrpits being made to make this an excellent distro.

Right, now I understand that a USB image file has been made, so that I can run DSL off a USB mem stick. How does this new file change the USB stick faq on the damnsmalllinux.org page?

Any help appreciated

Posted by zenit on April 16 2004,13:11

I'm interested in this topic too, so pelase help libretto.

Posted by roberts on April 16 2004,16:50

We have a boot floppy image that will detect and run DSL from a USB device. It is very simple. Copy over the KNOPPIX folder onto your USB device. Note it must be the folder not just the single file. Then download the new boot floppy image and make the floppy. Upon boot from floppy it will search and then run from USB. Make boot floppy as usual. dd if=bootusb.img of=/dev/fd0H1440 Check mirrors for the boot floppy image. It seems that it did not make it to all download sites.

Posted by libretto on April 17 2004,19:45

Oh so i need to attach a FFD to my miniPC, that defeats the point slightly. But I suppose its useful for every other machine I'm lilely to encounter. Thanks for the info! :laugh:

Posted by Rapidweather on April 17 2004,22:04

About the format of the USB memory device. I went through a phase where I thought that I needed to format the USB device as ext2.
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My question is, do I need to reformat it to vfat, and then, when running off the cdrom, copy the /KNOPPIX folder to it, and then boot using the special usb floppy? It is possible, I suppose, to partition the USB device, so the backup and restore files are located on the other partition. I wonder if at boot time, one could do knoppix restore, and have that partition discovered somehow. Probably not yet. Might have to mount that partition, and then restore. I have made some restore floppies that had all three files in them, filetool.lst, backup.tar.gz, and the filetool.sh, which I modified a little.
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At one time there were cautions issued about running off the USB device, as it
might have limited read-write ability, before giving up the ghost, so to speak.
So many have wanted to run off the USB stick, I guess it is time to give it a try.
---

Posted by roberts on April 17 2004,22:49

libretto, It may work when embedded in cdrom, I actually haven't had time to check that out yet. Not enough hours in a day.

rapidweather, yes it is still not a good idea to run a live filesystem off a usb device. But the KNOPPIX folder is a read only compress image file. That should be OK.

The boot floppy will work with both a vfat pen drive and a partitioned ext2 pen drive. I have also tested with restore=/dev/sda2 and it worked. So KNOPPIX in sda1 and backup in sda2.

USB 1.1 speed is not impressive. USB 2.0 is pretty good.

And DSL is so small, you can have DSL and a fair sized backup on a 64MB USB pendrive.

Posted by xlynx on May 10 2004,03:09

what about bootable usb?

Posted by roberts on May 10 2004,03:27

Read this thread: < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....5;t=177 >