Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
Phil Meyer wrote: Anne Wilson wrote: On Friday 12 December 2008 17:53:33 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? snip 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. snip The best part of all, is that its installable to disk, as well. What else could you ask for? :) Wow! that sounds great :-) However, mine is 8GB only. Anne 8GB is fine, even for my outrageous custom build, which is over 7GB unpacked. - ls -lh LiveOS total 3.0G -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7.9G 2008-12-10 14:22 home.img -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 20K 2008-12-10 14:19 osmin.img* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.0G 2008-12-10 14:19 overlay-Fedora-x86_64-9d595a3a-4b1e-40c7-b16d-3da0f21f698e -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2.5G 2008-12-10 14:19 squashfs.img* You can see, that with less agressive overlays, this would easily fit on 8GB. The stuff that makes it bootable is only 7.6MB. If you would like to see the stuff I used to make that livecd, I would be happy to share. Fun! Phil, I would take you up on the sharing. I assume you used a kickstart file to set up the custom spin. How did you set the root password for it, how did you set yourself up as a user and how did you set up the sudo capability? I've looked at the standard Fedora LiveCD kickstart files but I'm not sure how to do those things. Would be grateful for comments/help. Thanks, Alex -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
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 have F9 on a 4gb usb stick. (not-live installed to) As long as the Box is usb-bootable there's no problem so far. Have used it at school and home. FRank -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
Frank Murphy 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 have F9 on a 4gb usb stick. (not-live installed to) As long as the Box is usb-bootable there's no problem so far. Have used it at school and home. FRank I tried several times to load F9 on a 4GB stick but it ran out of space and wouldn't load. Did you do anything other than just run the install? -- Knute Johnson li...@www.knutejohnson.com -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
Knute Johnson wrote: I tried several times to load F9 on a 4GB stick but it ran out of space and wouldn't load. Did you do anything other than just run the install? I just ran the install, but had another usb-stick (4) marked as sswap during the install Frank -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
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? :) Good Luck! -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
On Friday 12 December 2008 17:14:35 Frank Murphy 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 have F9 on a 4gb usb stick. (not-live installed to) As long as the Box is usb-bootable there's no problem so far. Have used it at school and home. My F9 was a live install - I'll not do it that way again, as it introduces complications better avoided, IMO. However, watching F9 attempt to run I saw some very long pauses as before, and maybe some clue as to the problem. I saw that it said it was running an eeepc kernel. Maybe both F9 and Mandriva were set up with kernels specific to the eeepc? F9 did actually manage to bring up a desktop eventually, so I thought I would try updating, to get a newer kernel. It ran into the problem of the repos and signatures being changed. No matter. I'll attach a usb drive and do a clean install when I have time. Maybe I'll even try installing onto the stick from this laptop, to see whether that can handle the change in hardware. Hmmm Anne signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
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). with my favorite apps 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 cut and paste error! 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? :) Good Luck! I have a bad cold today and my brain is even less functional than usual! :( -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
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@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
On Friday 12 December 2008 17:53:33 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? snip 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. snip The best part of all, is that its installable to disk, as well. What else could you ask for? :) Wow! that sounds great :-) However, mine is 8GB only. Anne signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
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 I have used the Live CD installed to a memory stick with persistent overlay, and extra storage. I have also used a standard install to a USB hard drive. I have had few problems when booting on other systems. The Live CD works almost everywhere. The full install works as long as you have a compatible video driver for X. You can run into the same problems you run into booting on some machines, where you have to add extra parameters to the kernel boot line, but you don't run into that too often. Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup! signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
Anne Wilson wrote: On Friday 12 December 2008 17:53:33 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? snip 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. snip The best part of all, is that its installable to disk, as well. What else could you ask for? :) Wow! that sounds great :-) However, mine is 8GB only. Anne 8GB is fine, even for my outrageous custom build, which is over 7GB unpacked. - ls -lh LiveOS total 3.0G -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7.9G 2008-12-10 14:22 home.img -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 20K 2008-12-10 14:19 osmin.img* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.0G 2008-12-10 14:19 overlay-Fedora-x86_64-9d595a3a-4b1e-40c7-b16d-3da0f21f698e -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2.5G 2008-12-10 14:19 squashfs.img* You can see, that with less agressive overlays, this would easily fit on 8GB. The stuff that makes it bootable is only 7.6MB. If you would like to see the stuff I used to make that livecd, I would be happy to share. Fun! -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
On Friday 12 December 2008 18:11:20 Phil Meyer wrote: Anne Wilson wrote: On Friday 12 December 2008 17:53:33 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? snip 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. snip The best part of all, is that its installable to disk, as well. What else could you ask for? :) Wow! that sounds great :-) However, mine is 8GB only. Anne 8GB is fine, even for my outrageous custom build, which is over 7GB unpacked. - ls -lh LiveOS total 3.0G -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7.9G 2008-12-10 14:22 home.img -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 20K 2008-12-10 14:19 osmin.img* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.0G 2008-12-10 14:19 overlay-Fedora-x86_64-9d595a3a-4b1e-40c7-b16d-3da0f21f698e -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2.5G 2008-12-10 14:19 squashfs.img* You can see, that with less agressive overlays, this would easily fit on 8GB. The stuff that makes it bootable is only 7.6MB. If you would like to see the stuff I used to make that livecd, I would be happy to share. Fun! Thanks for the offer. In truth I can't see me having sufficient time to devote to this before Christmas, but I'll be marking up your mail, and may contact you again on that :-) Anne signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
Knute Johnson wrote: I tried several times to load F9 on a 4GB stick but it ran out of space and wouldn't load. I'd suggest using the liveusb-creator with one of the live images, that will copy the compressed live image to the USB stick and you'll have plenty of space left for the overlay with additional packages and files. (That said, updates are going to consume a significant amount of overlay space, it's the drawback of that way of doing things.) Kevin Kofler -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Anne Wilson an...@kde.org wrote: On Friday 12 December 2008 17:14:35 Frank Murphy 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 have F9 on a 4gb usb stick. (not-live installed to) As long as the Box is usb-bootable there's no problem so far. Have used it at school and home. My F9 was a live install - I'll not do it that way again, as it introduces complications better avoided, IMO. However, watching F9 attempt to run I saw some very long pauses as before, and maybe some clue as to the problem. I saw that it said it was running an eeepc kernel. Maybe both F9 and Mandriva were set up with kernels specific to the eeepc? F9 did actually manage to bring up a desktop eventually, so I thought I would try updating, to get a newer kernel. It ran into the problem of the repos and signatures being changed. No matter. I'll attach a usb drive and do a clean install when I have time. Maybe I'll even try installing onto the stick from this laptop, to see whether that can handle the change in hardware. Hmmm Anne I have only tried this with F10 KDE, and the experience has been nothing short of amazing. I did have some file corruption at one point which prompted me to reimage it. -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com ) -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Arthur Pemberton pem...@gmail.com wrote: I have only tried this with F10 KDE, and the experience has been nothing short of amazing. I did have some file corruption at one point which prompted me to reimage it. Is http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB the best reference? I am starting at 0. Dave -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: OT: your desktop on a stick
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 1:47 PM, David Burns tdb...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Arthur Pemberton pem...@gmail.com wrote: I have only tried this with F10 KDE, and the experience has been nothing short of amazing. I did have some file corruption at one point which prompted me to reimage it. Is http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB the best reference? I am starting at 0. Dave I used this specifically: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB#Graphical_Interface_-_Windows_and_Linux Successfully on both Windows XP and Linux (F9). If I had more time I'd try to find out more about the dev behind the tool myself. -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com ) -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
