Installing to USB as HD ?

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Installing to USB as HD ?
started by: vishnu

Posted by vishnu on Aug. 18 2006,09:16

Right now i am using dsl-n, but i guess its the same for dsl.

I have a 1gb usb stick i want to install dsl to, but im not sure how to set it up the way i want.

I want to boot from the usb, have the filesystem as a regular write-enabled system (do i need ramdisk?) so that if i install a package, it's not reset when i reboot.

I'm going to use it on different computers, so i still want "livecd" features like scanning for hardware etc.

now, to my question, do i "install to usb stick" or "install to hd" ?

(or something in between?)

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 18 2006,12:30

I suppose you could "install to hd", but I don't recommend it at all. You will kill your stick very quickly using it this way. A harddrive installed linux is constantly writing to its filesystem, and the stick is not made to accomodate that.

Posted by xkill on Aug. 20 2006,08:59

I've had the same thoughts too. How can I manage then to have a write-enabled filesystem on an usb-stick without reset at reboot?

Posted by humpty on Aug. 23 2006,23:16

vishnu, xkill,
I'm told that boot code 'frugal' makes the partition write-enabled for user dsl (although I don't have this problem as I seperate the knoppix partition).

True, a usb-stick (frugal) install will reload/remount all your dsl apps at every boot. Some parts of the O.S are also
reloaded to ram and other parts can be overwritten by ram substitute. Files that you need to save will be automatically backed up to backup.tar.gz, again reloaded at every boot. The rest of system is a fresh copy at every boot. To some of us, this is a dream come true, the OS never gets corrupted with traditional installs or general use.

So I ask you, Is there a good reason why you need to save everything permanently on hard disk? I've seen some pretty good reasons on this forum in the past, but I've a feeling your's is not one of them.