It's practical to dump an image to a Pendrive ?

[jordi_pujol at telefonica.net (Jordi Pujol)]

Hello,

About testing the procedure described in DebianLive/Howto/USB, 

working from a Debian GNU/Linux system,

I have downloaded the image USB for the KDE desktop and I have dumped it to 
the PenDrive using the dd command.  

Inconvenient,

- As it was predicted, the complete formatting of the Pendrive is produced 
- the Pendrive starts syslinux but then this does not find the files of kernel 
and ramdisk. To start is necessary do a syslinux reinstall. 
- Some versions of Windows are capable of recognize only the first partition 
of the Pendrive, the other partitions cannot be shared with Windows, and here 
is where the user should save their documents.  
- Casper gives errors of synchronization with the Pendrive, cannot write or  
read some sectors, the operating system does not work correctly.

After that unsuccessful experience, I have downloaded the ISO and installed 
manually the files,

create the following partitions on the Pendrive
1- vfat, to store user documents and share with other operating systems
2- ext3, with label "home-rw"
3- ext3 or vfat, containing the system files
4- swap, 

copy manually, from the ISO package, the system files and install the boot 
manager, 

Observe that this operating system works without problems, does not give 
errors of synchronization and shares the documents with the user of Windows.

Conclusion,

- The USB image is valid only for certain models of Pendrive, in some models 
produces an incorrect file system 
- is not practical to dump an image to the first partition of the Pendrive, 
the user should be able to choose the partition of installation and do an 
advanced formatting of the Pendrive. (as if was a procedure of installation of 
a real Debian). It's necessary a more accurate installation procedure for an 
USB Pendrive, meanwhile a manual install gives good results,

I wrote an article about this experience in:

http://gilug.org/?q=node/301

It's in Catalan language, I supose latin origined language speakers should not 
have problems to understand,

A question :
There is an article for a manual installation of the "Debian Live" system 
files on USB ?
if not, I could translate that article to English as a first try to create 
one,

Best Regards,

Jordi Pujol