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Topic: a USB HD install, yes you read thatright: HDinstall onUSB!

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winjimmy

Group: Members
Posts: 22
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Jan. 30 2006,18:05

I've been trying to do a DSL hd-install to a USB drive. Yes, a flash drive. No, I don't want the USB-pendrive or USB-zipdrive install. I don't want the CD image or compressed file to boot from my USB drive. I want a for-real ext2/3 partition on my USB drive, with a for-real DSL file structure and hierarchy. And yes, I read your (or someone else's) dire warnings about doing this over here http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;hl=usb . The gist of the warning is

Quote

Don't do an hd-install of DSL on to a USB flash drive or thumbdrive.

Flash memory only allows a limited number of write commands before the memory will fail (10,000 writes or so).

If you install DSL to the USB drive and perform disk-intensive operations like SWAP file/ SWAP partition, or when you create LOG files or database files, many writes are peformed against the same area of your flash drive and it will fail soon.

Know what I say to this warning? Big hairy deal. Big, fat, hairy, friggin' deal. I will have paid about $25 for this flash drive after rebates. If this drive only lasts me 6 months to 1 yr., but allows me to tote around my work and use a real Linux filesystem and directory structure during that time, I don't care. It will have been $25 well spent, if it allows me to do that. You know, I got ready access to an ftp server and various web storage schemes. I can back up all crucial data there, and if the $25 drive gives out, I'll just chuck it in the trash and get another. But, since my project should be finished within 6 months, another one prolly won't even be necessary.

So, now that you've got the point--the point being I want a real hd install on a USB flash drive and I dont care if it means the drive won't last until the year 2010--let's talk about how I can do that. I know ways of doing this--old-fashioned ways that involve installing to a real HD, then moving all the files over to the USB drive. But that's kinda convoluted. If worse comes to worst, that's what I will do, though. Cuz the install-to-hd script built into DSL ain't workin'. I can create ext2/3 filesystem, but copying over the files fails. Why? Is there some protection built into DSL that won't allow it to complete a HD install to a USB drive? Is there some bug (version 2.1b, btw) interfering? This is the first matter I gotta address. I'd rather not use the old-fashioned method, but would like for DSL's install-to-hd script to do this. Input on getting the routine to work on my USB flash drive will be appreciated.

Second matter is about booting. I plan on creating a GRUB boot floppy and using it to boot from the flash drive. I have some experience with creating this floppy and booting a system with it--though that project involved a regular IDE drive. But for now I anticipate I'm not going to have major problems with the floppy boot scheme.

So, hows about some help with getting the instal-to-hd script to work on my flash drive, eh? You know, save me havin to install to HD, reboot, copy everything over and so forth. It'd be much appreciated.

Thanks, James

cbagger01

Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Jan. 30 2006,18:22

So you can you just use the regular HD install script but choose /dev/sdaX for your partitions instead of /dev/hdaX? (where "X" is the partition number)

If your BIOS supports USB HDD booting, then no grub floppy will be needed. Otherwise, you will need some way to boot the USB device like GRUB or similar.

winjimmy

Group: Members
Posts: 22
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Jan. 30 2006,18:45

Quote (cbagger01 @ Jan. 30 2006,13:22)

So you can you just use the regular HD install script but choose /dev/sdaX for your partitions instead of /dev/hdaX? (where "X" is the partition number)

I guess it wasn't totally clear from my post that the hd-install script is failing? Read it over again and see. I get through the step of creating the ext2/3 partition fine. But it won't copy over any files. It just sits there forever, acting like it's going through some step. But no files ever appear on the USB drive. Do you have a USB drive you'd careto test this on? I know it's not working for me (again, version 2.1b): I tried it 2 or 3 times and it always fails. I deduce that either the install script is buggy or some sort of protection has been written into the script that won't let it copy to a USB drive (e.g., to sdX). So, given this failure, how might I make it work? Use another DSL version or something?

Quote

If your BIOS supports USB HDD booting, then no grub floppy will be needed. Otherwise, you will need some way to boot the USB device like GRUB or similar.

I think it does. But it's not my computer, so I don't want to go fiddling in the BIOS and would rather use a floppy. If I can make this work, I'll write up a how to, since there must be others who would want to do something like this too.

James

winjimmy
Unregistered

Posted: Jan. 30 2006,23:00

I got the dsl-hdinstall to work for my USB flash drive. It must'a been somethin about the computer I was trying, cuz it worked first time on this other machine I have at home. Now I'm on to the boot problems. The directions I read for booting DSL with GRUB that made me think I could get this working with a GRUB floppy presume a machine that can boot from USB drives. Because the BIOS allows this, it can apparently represent the USB flash drive to GRUB as a hard drive. On the computer where I've gotten the dsl-hdinstall script to work, however, there is not BIOS option for booting from USB, so GRUB can't see the USB drive and thus boot it. Maybe I'll try it on the real target computer, where booting from USB is possible (I think). I decided to try DSL's bootfloppy-usb on the non-USB-booting machine just to see what would happen. Like I expected, it kinda goes up in flames cuz it can't find the KNOPPIX image. But oddlly, what it does do is boot a an ext2 Linux partition I have on the HD of this machine, but using the DSL kernel! So it does boot to a working system--just not the DSL one I want. It seems like it's pretty close to working though. Some minor tweaks to key files might make it finally boot the flash drive--or maybe unhooking the HD so it has to find the USB flash would do it. We'll see. More experimentation needed, it seems.

James