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Re: Making a Debian Bootable USB Pen Drive



On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 07:33:23AM -0700, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> Nuno Miguel dos Santos Baeta wrote:
> 
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I want to install Debian in a USB pen drive. 
> 
> Don't! Nothing should be installed on a flash drive. A traditional
> install was meant for hard drives, not flash drives. Browser cache,
> /tmp, syslog and so on will damage the device.

I have only loosely been following this thread, but am curious about
this sort of thing in general. so what if you mount /tmp on tmpfs
(thus putting it in memory or swap dependingon memory loads) and I
wonder, can you change where syslog puts its logs (like into tmp) and
then build some script to save it off when you shutdown? I assume you
are trying to avoid the damage caused by longterm heavy writing which
"wears out" flash memory, right? Likewise, what about putting together
a file on whatever harddrive exists (a la knoppix and dsl use of a
swapfile) as a place to mount /var and /tmp while running the system
and again, copy it off to the usb drive during shutdown so that the
info is archived, but the writes to flash are minimized.




> 
> If you want to run a distro from a usb device, like I do, use a so
> called 'frugall install': partition your drive in two (you can use
> loop files if you prefer), put a live iso in the first partition and
> save you data onto the second partition when you are done.
> Knoppix, live.debian.net or damn Small Linux will do the job.
> 

I agree that this is a much better solution.

just my .02

A

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