iB::Topic::Writeable root fs on USB stick

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Topic: Writeable root fs on USB stick, Installing DSL to a writable fs on usb

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Bob489

Group: Members
Posts: 15
Joined: June 2005

Posted: June 21 2005,18:01

Hi,

I just came back to DSL from Feather, I have been hearing that the (Feather) distro will no longer be updated.

Anyway... I started this thread to discuss installing a writeable DSL usb pen drive distro.

I do know there are installs for making USB installs that boot up the KNOPPIX cloop image, but none appear to be writeable.

I have looked all over the forum for info reguarding this topic, but can't seem to find anything.

I have found in the script where the KNOPPIX fs image is mounted as cloop.

My first question is, is there another module required to mount a regular writeable loopback file system at boot? (for example... cloop.o is required to mount the KNOPPIX image)

Any feedback would be great.

Thanks,
Bob

roberts

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Posts: 4983
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: June 21 2005,18:43

Having a writeable filesystem on a USB device would quickly wear out the device.
I suggest that you try the exiting installation scripts for pendrives, there is very little you cannot do given the DSL/myDSL way of doing things.

Bob489

Group: Members
Posts: 15
Joined: June 2005

Posted: June 21 2005,19:00

I never heard of using a usb pen drive in a way to "wear out the device". Do you mean running out of room on the device? Because it will deff be an issue, I will prob be using a 512 mb or 1gb device to start with. I am not sure what the uncompressed dimensions of the provided KNOPPIX filesystem will be, but I think i can get it to work with a 500mb fs.

Bob

roberts

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Posts: 4983
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: June 21 2005,20:30

USB flash drives as well as Compct Flash have limited number of "writes" before failure. Running a live filesystem, or even some extensions that use "disk" cache can quickly lead to this situation. There is even a new filesystem that is being developed to work with these devices. Running read-only compressed filesystem is so much easiler on these devices. Yet we do allow writing of backup files which is far less intense than that of a operating system.

Bob489

Group: Members
Posts: 15
Joined: June 2005

Posted: June 22 2005,00:05

The current sandisk usb drive doesn't support syslinux, so i am using the usb boot floppy to get it to look at the usb drive just till i get my hands on another one.

whenever i boot i get the following

"Accessing DSL Linux at /dev/sda1... cat no file /KNOPPIX/etc/ld.so.cache"

it then goes into a panic

any one ever see this? I have the file system at /dev/sda1/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX

Bob

5 replies since June 21 2005,18:01

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