F8t3 on a USB stick

[Doncho N. Gunchev]

On Monday 2007-10-15 15:56:07 Stelian Iancu wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> As per written here:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/USBHowTo it is possible to
> have a live Fedora CD/DVD USB stick.
> 
> However, as Will Woods points out in the following post:
> http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2007-May/msg00308.html
> 
> It's a *lot* faster than the LiveCD, too. But it still works just like
> the LiveCD - changes you write to the filesystem while running will
> *not* be preserved.
> 
> My question now is if it's possible to make the changes written to the
> filesystem while running persistent. Basically to some how have the OS
> "installed" on the USB stick _without_ the actual installation part
> :-).
> 

I'm testing (and running now) FC8 from USB disk, but it's almost the
same situation. I just installed it there (created LVM and /boot).
The only problem is that you will have to update grub:
root (hdX,0)
setup (hdX)

and run mkinitrd with a couple of options (recreate the initrd file):

mkinitrd --preload=ehci-hcd --preload=usb-storage --preload=scsi_mod --preload=sd_mod /boot/initrd-$1.img.new $1

where $1 is the kernel version (uname -r). This is for USB hdd, but
I think it will work for USB stick too. To boot from the USB device
you can use your BIOS's boot menu (F12 for my laptop) or set the
boot order. In my case my USB disk becomes sda and the normal disk
goes to sdb. If I boot normally they are reverse.

If you keep the compressed image and save the changes to the FS in
rawhide the installation will soon eat more space than the normal
uncompressed one (if you are updating).

-- 
Regards,
  Doncho N. Gunchev, GPG key ID: 0EF40B9E, Key server: pgp.mit.edu