Install to jump drive?

[John Austin]

On Sun, 2008-02-03 at 13:41 -0600, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> Knute Johnson wrote:
> > Can anybody explain to me in terms that a Linux blivet can 
> > understand, why you can't do a regular install to a USB jump drive?
> > 
> > Thanks very much,
> > 
>  From what I remember, you have to use the expert mode to install to 
> a USB storage device. I didn't check when I did the install of F8, 
> but with earlier versions, the installer would not see the USB drive 
> in the normal install mode.

I have an F7 memory stick in my hand that boots fine.
As suggested install using expert mode.
grub.conf may need to vary depending on how the BIOS sees the drives.  I
have two machines that see the stick as a hard drive when you hit Esc
during boot
and select the boot device and make this hd0

> 
> It sort of makes sense, because you have to know a bit more to do a 
> USB install. If you are going to boot from the USB drive, using the 
> BIOS option to boot from a USB drive, then you have to tell Grub 
> that the drive will be hd0 when you boot, even though it will be 
> some other drive during the install. This is because most BIOSs will 
> map the internal drive(s) before the USB drives when booting from 
> anything but the USB drive.
> 
> You may also run into problem of shortened life on the jump drive 
> with a normal install. (There has been a lot of debate on how much 
> of a factor that will be.)

The latest memory sticks have wear levelling that solves this problem.
Corsair Flash Voyager (GT) 8GB runs very well with F7 and KDE.
It has static wear levelling and a 5 year warranty.
I don't get the quoted 33MBytes/sec when simple test with hdparm. More
like 25MB/s

I just haven't got round to trying F8 but assume that it would be OK


> 
> As another option, you can install a live CD image to a jump drive. 
> I don't have the link handy that gives the detailed instructions. It 
> gives you the advantage of lower ware on the jump drive. You can 
> also install to a smaller drive, because of the compressed file 
> system used in the live CDs. The disadvantage is that you have a 
> hard time updating or adding packages.
> 
> Mikkel
> -- 


John