On 12/28/2015 04:08 PM, Ross Boylan wrote:
I have a diskless machine and figured it would be quicker to get it
running off a USB thumb drive than PXE boot. I'd appreciate any
suggestions or advice.
That's one of my favorite tricks. I typically boot and install from an
optical disk to avoid confusion. I prefer SanDisk Ultra Fit 16 GB USB
3.0 flash drives because they are compact, fast, and inexpensive. I use
the d-i to partition them manually -- 0.5 GB ext4 boot, 0.5 GB random
key LUKS swap, and 13.4 GB password LUKS ext4 or btrfs root.
On some machines:
1. You may need to go into CMOS setup after the Debian installer runs
and configure the BIOS to boot from the USB flash drive (details vary by
vendor and revision).
2. Not all the USB ports are created equal. If the one you installed
to won't work for boot, try another.
I stuck Debian live on the thumb drive but discovered changes I made
in that environment were not persistent.
There are specific methods for persistence on Debian Live:
https://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/live-manual/html/live-manual.en.html#556
David
