Any Particular Success with USB Linux Distro?

**flipjargendy** · 03-03-2008

I'm just curious if anyone has had an easy time setting up a distro to boot from a USB stick. If so which one? I'm just looking for an easy one, preferably Debian based. I've done a lot of reading but I'm curious to see what users here have been successful with.

**devils casper** · 03-03-2008

Hi flipjargendy !

I have installed Slax in USB Stick several times and installation preocess is pretty easy. Slax supports most of proprietary media formats ( mp3, DVD/VCD ) out of box.

**ryptyde** · 03-03-2008

I have used Fedora's "livecd-creator" and enabled 3rd party repos and then used "livecd-iso-to-disk" and have created my own personal "usb distro" to satisfy all of my audio-video needs.

The first time I ever installed to a usb drive was with DamnSmallLinux and that was a few years ago and it worked well also.

**flipjargendy** · 03-03-2008

Originally Posted by ryptyde

I have used Fedora's "livecd-creator"... and then used "livecd-iso-to-disk"...

I was trying to get Damn Small Linux to work. It looks like it's a similar process for Fedora as I was trying. I'll have to look into livecd-creator. Is it easier to use an ISO on a USB stick rather then straight up system files?

I was thinking of just putting a live-cd on the stick and see if it boots. My BIOS are set to boot from removable device before anything else. No success for me though with the guide at the Damn Small Linux website.

**ryptyde** · 03-04-2008

IIRC DamnSmallLinux had an iso just for installing to a usb device so that it was bootable. The Fedora "livecd-iso-to-disk" writes the iso to the usb device and when it is on the device there are two directories.

1. LiveOS containing "squashfs.img"
2. syslinux containing "boot.cat isolinux.bin memtest syslinux.cfg vmlinuz0
initrd0.img ldlinux.sys splash.jpg vesamenu.c32"

.

**ryptyde** · 03-05-2008

Originally Posted by flipjargendy

I was thinking of just putting a live-cd on the stick and see if it boots. My BIOS are set to boot from removable device before anything else. No success for me though with the guide at the Damn Small Linux website.

I burned the dsl.iso to a mini-CDR and booted from that, then when you get to the DSL desktop navigate to "Apps>Tools>USB-HDD Pendrive Install" and answer a few questions about your usb device etc.

I installed DSL-4.2.1 to a Lexar 256MB thumbdrive and booted it from my Acer laptop.

**flipjargendy** · 03-05-2008

Awesome, I'll try that. Thanks for posting again! I just tried another way of installing to a USB stick using two partitions on the USB drive and the DSL iso. It didn't work.

Hopefully that will. Thanks

**flipjargendy** · 03-05-2008

I just tried the DSL live CD. It boots and everything loads but my CPU goes upto 45-65 percent used and everything gets super slow... it pretty much locks up. It will probably do this from the USB drive as well.

I've run it with noapic nolapic toram noicons just to see if it would help. It didn't seem to make a difference. I also tried an older version of DSL but it happen the same way. I've got an Alienware Area 51m Laptop, it has a 3.2 Ghz Processor. This shouldn't be happening. I've run Knoppix before but I didn't like it much. But I'm off to search for a new USB distro. I'll probably try Slax first.

Thanks for the help.

**ryptyde** · 03-05-2008

I have run DSL over the years on various hardware and have had very good results. I have never had the misfortune of a slowdown, my experience has always been a noticeable quickness especially running from ram. Give some other live distros a try and see if you get that slowdown or go to the DSL forum and explain your problem along with your hardware specs and maybe there's an easy fix.

**flipjargendy** · 03-06-2008

I decided to try Slax 6.0.2 LiveCD first. It works fine. The only thing I have a problem with is that when I run the bootinst.sh (located: /mnt/slax-6.0.2/boot/bootinst.sh) I get the following readout after starting the installation:

Code:

Flushing filesystem buffers, this may take a while...
Setting up MBR on /dev/sda...
./bootinst.sh: line 53: ./boot/syslinux/lilo: No such file or directory

But ./boot/syslinux/lilo does exist on the USB drive and on the LiveCD.

I've posted on the Slax forums to see if anyone would know the problem. If I figure it out I'll post it here.

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