Using USB memory key as boot directory for older computer?
I have found a lot of articles on installing an entire Linux distribution onto a USB memory key. What I want to do is install Linux on an older computer, with an 80GB hard drive, but the BIOS doesn't like hard drives bigger than 64GB. The computer is one of those systems built to fit inside a compact case, so there is only room for one hard drive inside the case. As you know, Linux ignores the BIOS, so once it boots any size hard drive is okay. In ye olden days I'd use a floppy to boot the computer, but I'd much rather use a 64MB memory key for /boot so that I can use modern kernels. The computer itself will boot from a USB device. I have all of the parts I've mentioned and not enough money to buy anything else. Can anyone direct me to some assistance in getting a distribution installer (CD distribution) to recognize the USB memory key at boot time, so that it can be used as /boot? Also, does the USB key need to be initialized as bootable before beginning the Linux installation? I'm still deciding whether to use Ubuntu or Debian, though I am leaning towards Ubuntu. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/
On 6/28/07, Leo Mauler <webgiant@yahoo.com> wrote:
I have found a lot of articles on installing an entire Linux distribution onto a USB memory key. What I want to do is install Linux on an older computer, with an 80GB hard drive, but the BIOS doesn't like hard drives bigger than 64GB. The computer is one of those systems built to fit inside a compact case, so there is only room for one hard drive inside the case.
Have you tried lying to the BIOS and telling it the drive is small enough to work with?. I remember having to do that with an 8G drive on a system that couldn't quite see the whole thing. Then Linux was able to see the extra space that neither the BIOS (nor Windows relying upon it) could work with. I think I used it for extra swap.
You mentioned using a CD to install, but you want to boot from a USB pendrive; you can do this with DamnSmallLinux, although I doubt it fits in your plan for using a modern PC. You didn't say how much RAM the PC will have. Debian or Ubuntu should work also, since DamnSmall is based on Debian, but DSL specifically has this in their installer, install to USB and the whole thing will fit in 64MB of space. I assume that to do so with Debian or Ubuntu would just require you to mkdir a mount point for the pendrive, then mount the pendrive as read/write prior to starting the installation. That will allow you to designate /dev/sda1 or /mnt/sda1 as /boot when the time comes to setup the filesystem with the installer. Brian On 6/28/07, Leo Mauler <> wrote:
I have found a lot of articles on installing an entire Linux distribution onto a USB memory key. What I want to do is install Linux on an older computer, with an 80GB hard drive, but the BIOS doesn't like hard drives bigger than 64GB. The computer is one of those systems built to fit inside a compact case, so there is only room for one hard drive inside the case.
As you know, Linux ignores the BIOS, so once it boots any size hard drive is okay. In ye olden days I'd use a floppy to boot the computer, but I'd much rather use a 64MB memory key for /boot so that I can use modern kernels. The computer itself will boot from a USB device. I have all of the parts I've mentioned and not enough money to buy anything else.
Can anyone direct me to some assistance in getting a distribution installer (CD distribution) to recognize the USB memory key at boot time, so that it can be used as /boot? Also, does the USB key need to be initialized as bootable before beginning the Linux installation?
I'm still deciding whether to use Ubuntu or Debian, though I am leaning towards Ubuntu.
The PC will have 384MB to start with (the older PC100/PC133 DIMMs), and I'm getting a 256MB stick soon to upgrade it to 512MB: three slots, so right now three 128MB sticks; later two 128MB sticks and one 256MB stick. Adequate RAM for most things. DSL is nice for some situations, but I'd prefer a complete Linux install over an install that fits on a 64MB pendrive. I figure I'll reformat the pendrive to ext2 instead of ext3. One of my existing machines has a /boot formatted to ext2, and that system doesn't seem to have minded a dozen sudden power failures over the past two years. --- Brian Kelsay <ripcrd@gmail.com> wrote:
You mentioned using a CD to install, but you want to boot from a USB pendrive; you can do this with DamnSmallLinux, although I doubt it fits in your plan for using a modern PC. You didn't say how much RAM the PC will have. Debian or Ubuntu should work also, since DamnSmall is based on Debian, but DSL specifically has this in their installer, install to USB and the whole thing will fit in 64MB of space. I assume that to do so with Debian or Ubuntu would just require you to mkdir a mount point for the pendrive, then mount the pendrive as read/write prior to starting the installation. That will allow you to designate /dev/sda1 or /mnt/sda1 as /boot when the time comes to setup the filesystem with the installer.
Brian
On 6/28/07, Leo Mauler <> wrote:
Can anyone direct me to some assistance in getting a distribution installer (CD distribution) to recognize the USB memory key at boot time, so that it can be used as /boot? Also, does the USB key need to be initialized as bootable before beginning the Linux installation?
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On Saturday 30 June 2007 21:53, Leo Mauler wrote:
I figure I'll reformat the pendrive to ext2 instead of ext3. One of my existing machines has a /boot formatted to ext2, and that system doesn't seem to have minded a dozen sudden power failures over the past two years.
That'll be because the system doesn't need /boot once it's booted, so it is probably (and should be) unmounted in the first place. For a pendrive, I imagine jffs2 to be best.
On Thursday 28 June 2007 06:50:17 am Leo Mauler wrote:
Can anyone direct me to some assistance in getting a distribution installer (CD distribution) to recognize the USB memory key at boot time, so that it can be used as /boot? Also, does the USB key need to be initialized as bootable before beginning the Linux installation?
Does the BIOS allow booting from a USB device? If not, it's not going to work. I suppose you could boot off of a floppy, and redirect to either the USB or HD.
On 6/28/07, Jonathan Hutchins <> wrote:
On Thursday 28 June 2007 06:50:17 am Leo Mauler wrote:
Can anyone direct me to some assistance in getting a distribution installer (CD distribution) to recognize the USB memory key at boot time, so that it can be used as /boot? Also, does the USB key need to be initialized as bootable before beginning the Linux installation?
Does the BIOS allow booting from a USB device? If not, it's not going to work. I suppose you could boot off of a floppy, and redirect to either the USB or HD.
He said it would boot to USB. On modern mobos, you toggle this in the BIOS to put the USB first in line. Oh, Leo, you shouldn't have to do anything to the USB pendrive to make it bootable other than format it as ext2/3 if you want to. They all start out life as Fat32, due to their size and expected use in a Winders box. you should be able to leave it as Fat32 as long as your fstab identifies it correctly and sets it as r/w, but you may prefer to change to Ext2/3. :-) Not sure if you should not do the journaling on the drive and just do Ext2. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Brian
I've just started playing with FreeNAS (well, it's BSD...), and it shows USB thumb drives as a regular USB mas storage just like it would in Linux. My mobo just boots right from it as it would a regular ATA HD or CD drive. I know occasionally one might need a certain program (syslinux) to write boot blocks for the drive, but for the most part with a newish thumb drive it should "just work". I've got plans to play with DSL and Puppy and others on a thumb drive at some point soon. Jon. On 6/28/07, Brian Kelsay <ripcrd@gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/28/07, Jonathan Hutchins <> wrote:
On Thursday 28 June 2007 06:50:17 am Leo Mauler wrote:
Can anyone direct me to some assistance in getting a distribution installer (CD distribution) to recognize the USB memory key at boot time, so that it can be used as /boot? Also, does the USB key need to be initialized as bootable before beginning the Linux installation?
Does the BIOS allow booting from a USB device? If not, it's not going to work. I suppose you could boot off of a floppy, and redirect to either the USB or HD.
He said it would boot to USB. On modern mobos, you toggle this in the BIOS to put the USB first in line. Oh, Leo, you shouldn't have to do anything to the USB pendrive to make it bootable other than format it as ext2/3 if you want to. They all start out life as Fat32, due to their size and expected use in a Winders box. you should be able to leave it as Fat32 as long as your fstab identifies it correctly and sets it as r/w, but you may prefer to change to Ext2/3. :-) Not sure if you should not do the journaling on the drive and just do Ext2. Anyone else have thoughts on this?
Brian _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
On a second note, for those who want to do a full install to flash media of any sort, it's best to NOT use swap space on the device. Flash media has limited write cycles and running swap on it will run down your devices lifetime. If you have a (somewhat) disposable device, putting swap on it may speed up your system a little, but it might also lead to memory errors in the future. Keep an eye out on all those guys running ReadyBoost in Vista, as it's a long term file caching system and does not do a bunch of R/W operations like swap does. Jon. On 6/28/07, Jon Pruente <jdpruente@gmail.com> wrote:
I've just started playing with FreeNAS (well, it's BSD...), and it shows USB thumb drives as a regular USB mas storage just like it would in Linux. My mobo just boots right from it as it would a regular ATA HD or CD drive. I know occasionally one might need a certain program (syslinux) to write boot blocks for the drive, but for the most part with a newish thumb drive it should "just work".
I've got plans to play with DSL and Puppy and others on a thumb drive at some point soon.
Jon.
On 6/28/07, Brian Kelsay <ripcrd@gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/28/07, Jonathan Hutchins <> wrote:
On Thursday 28 June 2007 06:50:17 am Leo Mauler wrote:
Can anyone direct me to some assistance in getting a distribution installer (CD distribution) to recognize the USB memory key at boot time, so that it can be used as /boot? Also, does the USB key need to be initialized as bootable before beginning the Linux installation?
Does the BIOS allow booting from a USB device? If not, it's not going to work. I suppose you could boot off of a floppy, and redirect to either the USB or HD.
He said it would boot to USB. On modern mobos, you toggle this in the BIOS to put the USB first in line. Oh, Leo, you shouldn't have to do anything to the USB pendrive to make it bootable other than format it as ext2/3 if you want to. They all start out life as Fat32, due to their size and expected use in a Winders box. you should be able to leave it as Fat32 as long as your fstab identifies it correctly and sets it as r/w, but you may prefer to change to Ext2/3. :-) Not sure if you should not do the journaling on the drive and just do Ext2. Anyone else have thoughts on this?
Brian _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't linux REQUIRE some sort of swap? If you don't give a swap partition, it should just make a swap page, right? On 6/28/07, Jon Pruente <jdpruente@gmail.com> wrote:
On a second note, for those who want to do a full install to flash media of any sort, it's best to NOT use swap space on the device. Flash media has limited write cycles and running swap on it will run down your devices lifetime. If you have a (somewhat) disposable device, putting swap on it may speed up your system a little, but it might also lead to memory errors in the future. Keep an eye out on all those guys running ReadyBoost in Vista, as it's a long term file caching system and does not do a bunch of R/W operations like swap does.
Nope. Swap is not needed. It can help, but I've run systems with 512MB-1GB of RAM with no swap, with no issues. It wasn't long ago that most systems had 256MB of swap+RAM total. Having actual RAM is better than swap. Swap is there to make up for not having enough physical RAM. RAM is cheap nowadays, so the need for swap is greatly reduced. Jon. On 6/28/07, feba thatl <febaen@gmail.com> wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't linux REQUIRE some sort of swap? If you don't give a swap partition, it should just make a swap page, right?
On 6/28/07, Jon Pruente <jdpruente@gmail.com> wrote:
On a second note, for those who want to do a full install to flash media of any sort, it's best to NOT use swap space on the device. Flash media has limited write cycles and running swap on it will run down your devices lifetime. If you have a (somewhat) disposable device, putting swap on it may speed up your system a little, but it might also lead to memory errors in the future. Keep an eye out on all those guys running ReadyBoost in Vista, as it's a long term file caching system and does not do a bunch of R/W operations like swap does.
On Thursday 28 June 2007 13:01, Jon Pruente wrote:
Nope. Swap is not needed. It can help, but I've run systems with 512MB-1GB of RAM with no swap, with no issues. It wasn't long ago that most systems had 256MB of swap+RAM total. Having actual RAM is better than swap. Swap is there to make up for not having enough physical RAM. RAM is cheap nowadays, so the need for swap is greatly reduced.
Not quite. No matter how much RAM you have, swap is still a good idea (though of course not technically required). Some times it makes more sense for Linux to swap out a program so it has more RAM to cache files in. If you have no swap, it can't do that.
On 6/28/07, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
On Thursday 28 June 2007 13:01, Jon Pruente wrote:
Nope. Swap is not needed. It can help, but I've run systems with 512MB-1GB of RAM with no swap, with no issues. It wasn't long ago that most systems had 256MB of swap+RAM total. Having actual RAM is better than swap. Swap is there to make up for not having enough physical RAM. RAM is cheap nowadays, so the need for swap is greatly reduced.
Not quite. No matter how much RAM you have, swap is still a good idea (though of course not technically required). Some times it makes more sense for Linux to swap out a program so it has more RAM to cache files in. If you have no swap, it can't do that.
Ok, in the real world then - what is the default mode in a system having the whole 8 Gigs of memory on board? Is the "swap" then truly no longer a needful concept, or does it become a virtual swap to a soft set memory area? Oren Beck "8Gb of Ram per computer in the office? Can we then use 100 computers to spatiallydispersed hold in RAM a 500 Gb hard drive's content =or the reverse-one HD to load 100 computers with a project running totally as ramdisk at 0300- to 0700?"
participants (8)
-
Brian Kelsay -
feba thatl -
Jon Pruente -
Jonathan Hutchins -
Leo Mauler -
Luke-Jr -
Monty J. Harder -
Oren Beck