On Fri, 2008-12-12 at 10:53 -0700, Phil Meyer wrote: > Anne Wilson wrote: > > Much has been said about the ability for a linux distro to be carried around > > on a usb stick, making any computer into your familiar desktop. Does anyone > > actually do this? > > > > I ask because I installed F9 and Mandriva 2008 onto sticks for tests with my > > EeePC. Today I put the Mandriva stick into the Acer netbook, and watched the > > messages scroll on, as it detected and set up the webcam, then the mouse, then > > I got to > > "Marking TSC unstable due to: TSC halts in idle > > Time: hpet clocksource has been installed. > > > > Then a loonng pause, after which > > > > Wait timeout. Will continue in the background. [FAILED} > > Non-volatile memory driver v1.2 > > > > and it has been sitting there for 15 minutes. > > > > I confess I have always wondered about such hardware changes. If this is > > typical, then this is another dream that is far from reality :-( > > > > Just to satisfy my curiosity, I'll try the F9 stick. I won't bother reporting > > back if the result is very similar. > > > > Anne > > > > Yes, done this a lot. > > Current best method is to roll a livecd will my favorite apps, a package > containing my login (adds me to sudoers as well). > > Then convert the iso to a usb bootable livecd on a stick. During this, > I add a system overlay, and a /home overlay. > > My current thumb drive is a 64GB DataTraveler. > > It has two partitions. The first is 20GB, and the remainder is in the > other. > > Both partitions are formatted as ext3, thus allowing overlays greater > than 2GB and also allowing me to use rsync to keep my music up to date > on the larger slice. > --home-size-mb > here is the command I used to make the first partition bootable: > > # /usr/bin/livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr --overlay-size-mb 4000 > --home-size-mb 8000 --unencrypted-home Fedora_Developer.iso /dev/sdb1 > > Fedora_Developer.iso is my custom roll of F10-x86_64. > > I made the label of the second partition "music" so it would always > mount as media/music. > > Next, I booted from the thumb drive in text mode on my primary machine > and logged into the console as root. > > # mount /dev/sda3 /mnt > My home is on there. > > # cd /mnt/home/pmeyer > > # cp -a .ssh .tcshrc .login .mozilla .thunderbird .g* /home/pmeyer > As an example, but very close to actual -- YMWV > > # ln -s /media/music . > > # init 0 > > Remove the thumb drive. Its all done! (except I rsynced my music > collection to the second partition) > > Now I can plug the thumb drive into virtually any system and have all my > favorite stuff just how I like it!. The only differences between > systems are video. > > The difference between running a live USB vs an installed USB are many. > > 1. Live CDs by nature have A LOT more modules installed into the > initrd.img, thus allowing them to run on a variety of hardware. > > 2. Hardware setting are not saved. > > 3. Space! About 1/3 in my experience. > > The advent of persistent storage for the OS and for /home mean that you > can make changes to startup scripts, config files, and whatnot, and your > changes are preserved over reboots. All the benefits of Live CDs, with > persistent storage! It can't be beat. > > The best part of all, is that its installable to disk, as well. What > else could you ask for? :) Great post. Thanks for sharing. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
