Going to attempt run Kubu from 8 gig usb drive

[woodsmoke]

Well, since the Kubu drive went south, it was JUST 6 years old!! I had the thought that I'd try running Kubu from a flash drive.

I did that once before, with some OS I don't remember, maybe about three years ago. As I remember the distro had specific stuff and really promoted running from a USB drive, maybe it was DSL or something. But it was "sluggish" and didn't find some hardware as I remember.

Anywho...I checked the info on the Kubu d/l page. I have a Sandisk 16 gig that I'll format to FAT and even though I have an AMD 64 would probably do a AMD 32 install.

What I would be planning to do is to run it straight from the usb drive permanently, like in LTS mode, and staying on 24 hrs/ day..

so questions:

It will HAVE to be wireless the machine presently works fine wirelessly using Oneric.

Are there folks that have specifically done this and are there any things of which I should be aware?

Do Oneric, Precise?

I really would like to use the present Remastersys of my previously tweaked install....so?

woodsmoke

[Snowhog]

Well, just before I installed 12.04 on my HP, I downloaded and installed it to my 1GB USB thumbdrive (didn't opt to create a persistent /home as I recall) using Startup Disk Creator. It worked great.

[woodsmoke]

So ...just follow the instructions on the d/l page for usb install?

Go save with Oneric or edgy with Precise?

woodsmoke

[Snowhog]

So ...just follow the instructions on the d/l page for usb install?

Just download the appropriate .iso for your architecture. Then create a bootable USB using Startup Disk Creator (K > System > Startup Disk Creator). That's what I did.

[woodsmoke]

will do!
thanks
woodsmoke

[vw72]

While one can use the live cd image with a persistent home directory, I think I would opt to create a live cd on a 1g drive and actually do an install to the 8g usb drive. For one thing, it should boot much faster as it doesn't have to decompress to ram each time.

[woodsmoke]

Well,
Things went...strangely....

I just "did a normal install", Really, I clicked install and it just did it.

The only thing I did "different" was to follow the instructions that I should remove all other usb items, like the printer.

The problem was that it was Precise. It ALL installed and found the net. Then it "updated" and collapsed completely, no wireless, menu items missing, just a mess, as it was installing on a hd.

So, just for the halibut I did Linux Mint KDE just to see what would happen.

It installed "normally" as on a hard drive, and works fine.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Hm... Not sure why it broke for you, woodsmoke. I've installed Precise onto a USB drive as the target a couple times and it worked both times, and survived upgrades both times too.

[woodsmoke]

SR

YOU RAISE A FASCINATING OBSERVATION.

Why is it, that, with ostensibly, the "same" systems.....people obtain such disparate results?

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Here's what I did.

1. On computer Alice, currently running Ubuntu 11.10, I downloaded the 12.04 ISO. Using Startup Disk Creator, I made a live USB.

2. Computer Bob's hard drive has only Windows. I inserted the live USB and a blank USB. I booted from the live USB.

3. During the install, I dropped to a shell to check the /dev assignments. They were:
/dev/sda: hard drive
/dev/sdb: live USB
/dev/sdc: blank USB

4. When the installer reached the partitioning section, I said "install to /dev/sdc, on a single / formatted as EXT4, no other partitions"

5. I didn't let the installer guess where to put GRUB but instead manually selected /dev/sdc.

6. Upon completion, I booted Bob with the installed-to USB. Worked fine, if somewhat slow -- I'm totally spoiled by SSDs now.

[woodsmoke]

Hi SR
Thank you very much for the walk through.

But, I'm confused by the SSDs thing.

Could you be more verbose?

thanks
woodsmoke

[Snowhog]

Lengthy, but detailed. See Solid-state drive (Wikipedia)

[woodsmoke]

aaaaahhhh
woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

But, I'm confused by the SSDs thing.

Simply that I'm now so spoiled by having used only SSDs on all my computers for the last couple years that even USB drives now seem intolerably slow to me.

[Snowhog]

But isn't the useful life of SSDs (considerably) less than conventional HDDs? SSDs have a 'rated' read/write cycle limit IIRC. If that is true, and SSDs 'per unit of storage' are more expensive than HHDs (that is true, yes?), it would seem that an ideal setup would be a SSD (smallish) for the OS 'non-volatile' directories/files, and using a largish HDD for everything else (all the volatile directories and files).