sdvid

OBJECT: To use USB Thumbdrive as HD for laptop w/o HD. Surf Net/Check email....

Here's what I have:

Panasonic Toughbook CFM-34 (small one w/ no cdrom)
-700 mhz
-1 USB1.1 port
-1 PCMCIA slot
-1 RJ45
-1 RJ11
-1 Serial
-NO HARD DRIVE (HD was bad, so I removed it)

I'm using a DLINK DWL G630 wireless PCMCIA card for my network (doesn't work)

Installed Knoppix LIve CD 5.0 on my 1 gig thumbdrive. boots up fine, but can't write any files to it. I did try to 'create a persistent image' this still didn't allow me to write files? I followed the directions HERE

The only difference is, I used another computer to create the HOME dir, because the laptop has NO CDROM or HD.

Any ideas on how I can get this to work, my plan here is to get the working enough to check email and surf the net, that's all I care about.

thanks,
James Strickland
Misawa Air Base, Japan

UgoDeschamps

Hello
Here's the tutorial ou need

http://ethicalhacking.end0.net/USB.html

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bigtomrodney

Your USB port is USB 1.1 , so I hate to say this but it will be unusably slow. The transer rate of USB 1.1 is a theoretical 12Mbps, so you'd be lucky to see performance of 1MB/s. When you consider the cheapest 7200rpm IDE hard drive will provide 6MB/s + you'd have to question if this will be worth your whilegetting data writing back to the disk.

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techieMoe

Does your PCMCIA slot support 2 cards at once? You can buy PCMCIA Serial ATA adapters that you might be able to use and give the laptop a proper harddrive. It wouldn't be a very elegant or portable solution... but the transfer rate would be better.

You might also consider a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card, since as bigtomrodney noted, USB 1.1 transfer rates are unbearably slow if you want to use something as a harddrive.

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TechieMoe's Tech Rants

sdvid

Nope, only 1 PCMCIA Card, Serial ATA is an option. That's the expensive way out. USB 1.1 is slow, but works. With Knoppix, once it loads up, it's not too bad. Just need to get internet working and I would like to be able to write my settings to the disk.

unclebubbles

Well, to start with, the link that you posted gives instructions for creating a persistent directory on a usb drive, after booting from cd. Live Knoppix wont let you write back to the boot media on the same partition its on, but it will let you create a persistent dir on a seperate partition. Partition the flash drive with 750 for the boot partition, and the rest for the persistent dir, and it should work. I have 4 and 5 on flash, and they work great. Also, i dont know what method you used to get it on the flash drive, there are alot of em and ive tried several, but only got a couple to work without snafu`s . Have a look here, this is the simplest and best method i found, and it has good instructions on how to create the persistent directory:
http://www.howudune.com/knoppix.php

Also, if you just want to email and surf a little, give Puppy Linux a try. Its one of the best little distro`s ive found, and my favorite so far. Its small, around 70mb, depending on which version you get, has alot of features and programs for such a small package. It loads into ram, so you can free up your usb port, and copy files or downloads to another flash drive. I have it on cd and dvd, but i havent tried the flash version yet. But with the cd/dvd version, you can burn it as a multisession disk, and save sessions back to the boot disk. I think the flash version works the same, but im not positive . Have a look here if you want to check it out:
http://www.puppyos.com/
You can load knoppix to ram too, but it takes almost 1gig. Puppy will work with 128, but without a hd for the swap partition, youll need around 256.

sdvid

I downloaded the pupply distro, and it didn't work. I also tried partitioning my 1 gig thumbdrive, and I couldn't get that to work either. Any suggestions on partitioning the flash drive, then it will work with knoppix.

I'm probably going to have to order a new HD for it and get it over with, or get off the pocketbook and get a new laptop.

xxqq

Perhaps you can try UnionFS:

http://www.am-utils.org/project-unionfs.html

http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/...pix_Tricks.pdf

On Kanotix distro, there is a cheat code "unionrw" or "unionfs"

http://kanotix.de/module-pnWikka-his...ileSystem.html

Linux on pendrive:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

unclebubbles

Ok, you should be able to use the Qtparted partition manager in knoppix to partition the usb drive, i just use fat32 and it works fine. If not, try this little utility:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
Its the partitioning editor from the Gnome desktop in some distros, thats been made into a live cd. Its small, around 30mb i think, works great, easy to use, and you can create, change, move, resize....partitions in most any format. Download the iso file, and burn it as an iso image. Its a handy tool to have, thats all i use anymore for partitioning.
Now, back to the top:
Give us a few details, what have you tried, what did/didnt work. When you say puppy didnt work, what didnt work? I assume you know that for knoppix, puppy, or any other live cd to work, you have to burn it to disk as an iso image to make it bootable. If you can burn a working copy of puppy, you can use the Gparted partitioning tool in it to partition the usb drive. However, if you have the flash drive where it will boot Knoppix, you should be able to use the QTParted partitioning tool in it to resize the partitions on the flash drive.

sdvid

Ok, here's what I have tried:

First, I formatted my 1 gig thumbdrive with the FAT32 FS. then I copied the contents of the knoppix 5.0 CD ISO to my thumbdrive. Renamed the ISOLINUX.CFG file to SYSLINUX.CFG, then used the syslinux utility to make it bootable. Also deleted ISOLINUX.bin

This worked fine but I wasn't able to write to the partition. I would like to be able to save files and/or settings if need be.

So, now I am trying to partition the drive. I use VMWare Workstation and booted a Knoppix 5.0 DVD image, plugged in the usb drive, tried using fdisk, didn't work. Then tried using CFDISK, didn't work. CFDISK gave the following error.


Also tried QTParted, it didn't work either. I tired two different brand 1 gig thumbdrives... still a no-go. QTParted just froze up when I tried to resize the partition. I also tried to delete the partition (this was successfull), but when I tried to create a new FAT32 partition, it didn't work. QTParted in the Knoppix 5.0 DVD, running under VMWare WorkStation. I made sure the drive was not mounted. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Anway, I get knoppix to boot fine, the only problem is, I can't get my wireless card to work, think this may be a hardware(pcmcia slot) problem, haven't even investigated this problem yet.

As far as the error with Puppy OS. I don't remember the error, and now my Thumbdrive don't have a partition. I'm still working on that. I don't think this would be an issue, but I'll actually boot up Knoppix instead of running it thru VMWare WS. Maybe that's it. I'll post more as I know it, I'm working on restoring the partition in my thumbdrive now.

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James Strickland
Misawa Air Base, Japan