Intrepid portability question

[Qqmike]

Re: Intrepid portability question

Yeah, this is tough. A great opportunity to learn something, though, if you have the time.

Your existing permanent install probably will not work on another PC (?).

A Live persistent flash drive is good, except it's not clear how to get Adept updates to it over time (which may not be a problem for you as most people rebuild their flash drives now and then).

dibl's idea may work, but you'll have to really work at solving (1) the persistence, and (2) the grub boot.

I keep a Live persistent Kubuntu flash drive handy. It is Live as it only runs in RAM--just like the Live Kubuntu CD. It is "persistent" because it has an extra partition on it (casper-rw) that keeps your settings, your browser bookmarks, your email stuff, special, custom Desktop settings, /home documents, settings for apps, etc.
I would, for now use 8.04 for that, though.
Here's how:

Build a LIVE Kubuntu Flash Drive, How-To
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...089474.new#new
Step-by-step
-- with Persistence -- using GRUB all the way (i.e., no Syslinux): Reply #7
and NEW posts to it, too. usb-creator is only available in 8.10 repos. Otherwise, the step-by-step old-fashioned way works with 8.04 and with 8.10 (if you go the 8.10 route).

Another thing about a live flash drive, persistent or not: you can, of course, always use another flash drive plugged in to save data and/or import stuff to your live session (e.g., bookmarks, email address books, etc.).

[tomcloyd]

Re: Intrepid portability question

Well, nuts. Sounds like I can't do this 'after the fact', which is that that I already am running 8.10 from my USB HD.

df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb5 14G 4.2G 8.9G 32% /
tmpfs 1013M 0 1013M 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 1013M 104K 1013M 1% /var/run
varlock 1013M 0 1013M 0% /var/lock
udev 1013M 2.8M 1010M 1% /dev
tmpfs 1013M 12K 1013M 1% /dev/shm
lrm 1013M 2.0M 1011M 1% /lib/modules/2.6.27-9-generic/volatile
/dev/sdb6 124G 28G 90G 24% /home
~$

I don't know if it's possible to nondestructively move things around and repartition things. Can QParted do that? I can check, but after going almost two week with no Kubuntu access at all due to an inability to recover from some kind of problem with my 8.04 install on my internal HD, I'm mostly wanting to leave things alone, now that they're working. I DO have work to do with this thing.

Mike - just saw you new post. Yeah, that's the way to go, I think - a couple of flash drives, set up as you describe. That can keep me going while traveling, and leaves my main HD alone. I like that.

Interesting discussion. My thanks to you all. I've very grateful for your help

t.

[Qqmike]

Re: Intrepid portability question

Good. Personally, I like the Live persistent flash drives. Nothing is perfect, and everything has limitations/requirements/constraints (e.g., extreme-case, no electricity/battery => no PC). On a 4 GB flash drive, maybe 1 GB for root system and the rest for persistent casper-rw. Even better on an 8 GB, and prices are dropping all the time (esp in USA during xmas season). Let us know how it goes. I think post #10 (EDIT: That's #54, NOT #10) is my new 8.10 post, then toad contributed the idea of usb-creator after that (his idea; I was the secretary & tester).
Build a LIVE Kubuntu Flash Drive, How-To
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...089474.new#new

[Qqmike]

Re: Intrepid portability question

That's REPLY #54 at Build a LIVE Kubuntu Flash Drive, How-To
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...089474.new#new
The #64? is usb-creator

[toad]

Re: Intrepid portability question

Okay, time to take bets I gonna lean out of that window and hope there is no tunnel in sight.

I think you are home and dry, tom. My bold claim: there is no difference between a live CD and an installed system. In your case grub is in the mbr of the usb drive and knows only of those systems which are on its own drive. This means you can install 8.04 next to your 8.10 without any problems. Just let the installation process finish to get a new grub in the mbr and both OSs are recognised. That way you don't have to do anything by hand. Well, you could do the partitioning first with a gparted CD

Building something new is of course also an interesting possibility and not to be scoffed at. It is only a matter of clicks to install both uck and usb-creator and the rest is easy.

As you can see I still have not grasped why a live stick should behave differently. Afaik it is a bog standard system with ubiquity (the installer) compressed in a squashfs and a boot loader. If the BIOS is able to talk to the stick/usb-drive in the first place I don't see any difference (but hope to be corrected if wrong).

Ah, I wish I had a USB-hard drive to give it a go...

[Detonate]

Re: Intrepid portability question

Ah, I wish I had a USB-hard drive to give it a go...

Do you have any old hard drive lying around taking up space? Then get one of these. I got one and it magically turns any hard drive, IDE, Sata, Laptop into a USB drive.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=2020&cpc=RECOM

[claydoh]

Re: Intrepid portability question

I just recently pulled the main hard drive out of my dead hardy pc, slapped it into a drive enclosure, and intended to use it as a backup drive. It was originally in an nvidia-based Athlon 2700cpu motherboard with a GF FX 6200 video card.

I plugged it into my Intel based Intrepid laptop/ati mobility 7500. Could fully access the drive fine. One day, while booting the laptop, I noticed it was taking a rather long time to boot, and when it finally finished I was presented with my Hardy/KDE3 desktop! Luckily the laptop's hardware is well supported with the included free drivers. As the drive had grub on it already, and my laptop was set to boot from USB drives first, my laptop booted to the usb drive, noticed the complete hardware change, and adjusted as necessary.

So it is possible to do what you want, even by accident if your hardware is supported. I haven't tried installing Kubuntu to the usb hard drive directly, but the drive does show up in the livecd installer, so it should be possible to just put the grub bits on that drive

[Detonate]

Re: Intrepid portability question

I recently changed satellite providers from Direct TV to Dish Network. When I asked Direct TV what they wanted me to do with old equipment, they told me it belonged to me. So I took the DVR apart and harvested the hard drive. I hooked up to my 2020 adapter, and now I have a 160 GB USB drive for free.

[toad]

Re: Intrepid portability question

Yeah, those devices are cool, Detonate! They cost €20 across the pond, though, so nearly three times the price you lot pay. Oh, and I do not have a spare IDE drive.

What I am interested in, however, is one of those things you can stick in your notebook's hard drive compartment and which takes two memory cards, but that is another story.

One more word of advice (sorry Tom, but your own fault for asking interesting questions) - just in case you decide to put 8.04 on your USB drive as well, do not share a /home partition because of the differences in .kde (one for 3.5.9, the other for 4.1.2). Everything that does not go in .kde can be shared. For a more detailed discussion just ask.