[Discuss] linux on usb stick

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Stephen Adler wrote:
> I'm working on building a linux system running off a USB memory stick.
> ...the overlay partition or whatever the file system is which holds
> the read/writable root partition is limited to only 4 gigabytes, which
> makes doing updates to the OS rather frustrating.

Presumably you're using a drive that is larger than 4 GB?

I'm not familiar with this "overlay partition" you refer to or why it is
limited to 4 GB. This sounds like something that is specific to a
particular technique for installing a Fedora distribution on a Flash drive.


> I'm using the command line tool livecd-iso-to-disk tool.

Try a different tool?

Is there a reason why you need a tool at all? Can you use the target
system or a donor system with an optical drive or 2nd USB drive to boot
the installer, and then install to your target USB drive the same as you
would any internal hard drive?

I've had situations where using the target system was not possible or
inconvenient, and I've used VirtualBox with the USB drive set up as a
raw pass-through device, then booted the installer ISO in the VM and
installed to the USB drive. This approach has worked fine for Ubuntu and
Ubuntu derivatives.

More recently I've tried UNetbootin:

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

which I think I posted about a few months back. Same idea as
livecd-iso-to-disk. If I recall, it worked for what I used it for.
(Which I think was to create a bootable FreeDOS drive.)

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/