[gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Michael Crute]

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Lately I have been doing a lot of traveling and at the moment I don't have a 
laptop. Needless to say I run into a lot of crappy computers (aka computers 
running Windoze). I typically carry a SLAX cd to remedy the problem but the 
downside is I can't save my files unless I additionally carry around a 
thumbdrive. I was wondering if anyone has been able to install Gentoo on a 
thumbdrive. I assume it could be treated like a regular hard drive, correct? 
How about hardware detection? If I use genkernel to make my kernel would it 
detect all (or most) of the hardware on a wide variety of computers? Any 
thoughts, comments, suggestions, potential pitfalls would be appreciated. 
Thanks.

-Mike

-- 
________________________________
Michael E. Crute
Software Developer
SoftGroup Development Corporation

Linux, because reboots are for installing hardware.
"In a world without walls and fences, who needs windows and gates?"

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 19:06:13 -0400, Michael Crute wrote:

> Lately I have been doing a lot of traveling and at the moment I don't
> have a laptop. Needless to say I run into a lot of crappy computers
> (aka computers running Windoze). I typically carry a SLAX cd to remedy
> the problem but the downside is I can't save my files unless I
> additionally carry around a thumbdrive. I was wondering if anyone has
> been able to install Gentoo on a thumbdrive. I assume it could be
> treated like a regular hard drive, correct?

Incorrect. Flash memory only has a limited write lifetime, treating it
like a hard drive will kill it in no time.

However, you're in luck. There is a distro for flash drives that is based
on GNOME, Flash Linux. The author gave a presentation on it at the UK
Gentoo meeting earlier this year. See http://flashlinux.org.uk/


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If you think that you can truncate my sig to 75 chars, then you can just
fu

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Michael Crute]

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On 9/2/05, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Incorrect. Flash memory only has a limited write lifetime, treating it
> like a hard drive will kill it in no time.


Hmm... I had no idea (story of my life). About what is the lifetime of one 
of these little guys?

However, you're in luck. There is a distro for flash drives that is based
> on GNOME, Flash Linux. The author gave a presentation on it at the UK
> Gentoo meeting earlier this year. See http://flashlinux.org.uk/
> 
> 
Well, SLAX runs from a thumbdrive too. The thing is that I have gotten 
spoiled by my Gentoo box that runs only what I want and I want to have my 
own "custom linux". How bad would it be for the drive if I just ran Linux 
off of it (read only)? I would install gentoo on a real hard disk first and 
then copy the partition over the the flash disk. Would this be a suitable 
solution?

-Mike

-- 
________________________________
Michael E. Crute
Software Developer
SoftGroup Development Corporation

Linux, because reboots are for installing hardware.
"In a world without walls and fences, who needs windows and gates?"

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Norberto Bensa]

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Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 19:06:13 -0400, Michael Crute wrote:
> > additionally carry around a thumbdrive. I was wondering if anyone has
> > been able to install Gentoo on a thumbdrive. I assume it could be
> > treated like a regular hard drive, correct?
>
> Incorrect. Flash memory only has a limited write lifetime, treating it
> like a hard drive will kill it in no time.
>

Yup. Like in three years or so... I've dropped both floppies and CD-RW discs 
in favor of pendrives (1GB)

The down side is: not every computer out there can boot from a USB device. So 
for some computers, you still have to carry a boot floppy, but I can live 
with it for now.

Regards,
Norberto

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 22:21:30 -0300, Norberto Bensa wrote:

> > Incorrect. Flash memory only has a limited write lifetime, treating it
> > like a hard drive will kill it in no time.

> Yup. Like in three years or so... I've dropped both floppies and CD-RW
> discs in favor of pendrives (1GB)

more like three months if you put a frequently written directory,
like /tmp or /var/log, on a flash device. Unless you use a filesystem
like JFFS2 that evens the writes over the whole disks, a few months of
logfile updates can easily kill a portion of a drive.

BTW you have PGP signed your email but your key doesn't appears to be on
the keyservers.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

A closed mouth gathers no foot.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 20:59:49 -0400, Michael Crute wrote:

> > Incorrect. Flash memory only has a limited write lifetime, treating it
> > like a hard drive will kill it in no time.

> Hmm... I had no idea (story of my life). About what is the lifetime of
> one of these little guys?

Around 100,000 writes.

> However, you're in luck. There is a distro for flash drives that is
> based
> > on GNOME, Flash Linux. The author gave a presentation on it at the UK
> > Gentoo meeting earlier this year. See http://flashlinux.org.uk/

> Well, SLAX runs from a thumbdrive too. The thing is that I have gotten 
> spoiled by my Gentoo box that runs only what I want and I want to have
> my own "custom linux". How bad would it be for the drive if I just ran
> Linux off of it (read only)? I would install gentoo on a real hard disk
> first and then copy the partition over the the flash disk. Would this
> be a suitable solution?

Running from  a pendrive, be it SLAX or DSL, is fine, because the drive
is read-only. It's when you start writing repeatedly to the drive, as
you would a hard disk, that the problems start.

I didn't state that you cannot put Gentoo on a flash drive, in fact I
stated the opposite. I was disagreeing with the OP's question "I assume
it could be treated like a regular hard drive, correct?".


-- 
Neil Bothwick

WinErr 01B: Illegal error - You are not allowed to get this error.
            Next time you will get a penalty for that.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Rumen Yotov]

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On Fri, 2005-09-02 at 22:21 -0300, Norberto Bensa wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 19:06:13 -0400, Michael Crute wrote:
> > > additionally carry around a thumbdrive. I was wondering if anyone has
> > > been able to install Gentoo on a thumbdrive. I assume it could be
> > > treated like a regular hard drive, correct?
> >
> > Incorrect. Flash memory only has a limited write lifetime, treating it
> > like a hard drive will kill it in no time.
> >
> 
> Yup. Like in three years or so... I've dropped both floppies and CD-RW discs 
> in favor of pendrives (1GB)
> 
> The down side is: not every computer out there can boot from a USB device. So 
> for some computers, you still have to carry a boot floppy, but I can live 
> with it for now.
> 
> Regards,
> Norberto
Hi,
A little OT here, but just wanted to mention a distro (XoL IIRC) it's a
derivative of SoL (Server oriented? Linux) linux project (check
distrowatch.com), there are some more projects under SoL.
Basic idea is to run the main system from CD-ROM but have all configs &
docs on an USB-pen drive. So in theory boot the CD, work, save your
docs/work and go on. Moving office w/o a laptop.
PS: no experience with this checked the page though.
Rumen

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Norberto Bensa]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 22:21:30 -0300, Norberto Bensa wrote:
> > > Incorrect. Flash memory only has a limited write lifetime, treating it
> > > like a hard drive will kill it in no time.
> >
> > Yup. Like in three years or so... I've dropped both floppies and CD-RW
> > discs in favor of pendrives (1GB)
>
> more like three months if you put a frequently written directory,
> like /tmp or /var/log, on a flash device. 

You can use UNIONFS for those ;)
Anyway, unless we're talking about different technologies, one of my USB 
drives is working fine and it is more than a year old. And I've used it like 
crazy (both read _and_ writes.)


> BTW you have PGP signed your email but your key doesn't appears to be on
> the keyservers.

Oops. The signature was supposed to be used for private mail messages only. I 
don't trust keyservers. 

My apologies to everyone! 


Regards,
-- 
Norberto Bensa
4544-9692 / 15-4190-6344
Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Rumen Yotov]

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Hi,
OT here
On Sat, 2005-09-03 at 14:45 -0300, Norberto Bensa wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 22:21:30 -0300, Norberto Bensa wrote:
> > > > Incorrect. Flash memory only has a limited write lifetime, treating it
> > > > like a hard drive will kill it in no time.
> > >
> > > Yup. Like in three years or so... I've dropped both floppies and CD-RW
> > > discs in favor of pendrives (1GB)
> >
> > more like three months if you put a frequently written directory,
> > like /tmp or /var/log, on a flash device. 
> 
> You can use UNIONFS for those ;)
> Anyway, unless we're talking about different technologies, one of my USB 
> drives is working fine and it is more than a year old. And I've used it like 
> crazy (both read _and_ writes.)
> 
> 
> > BTW you have PGP signed your email but your key doesn't appears to be on
> > the keyservers.
> 
> Oops. The signature was supposed to be used for private mail messages only. I 
> don't trust keyservers. 
> 
Why you don't trust the keyservers, you (or any other person which
already has your signature) could always check if your signature is
authentic (or you can update it if need be). Your choice of course.
> My apologies to everyone! 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> -- 
> Norberto Bensa
> 4544-9692 / 15-4190-6344
> Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Rumen

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 3 Sep 2005 14:45:23 -0300, Norberto Bensa wrote:

> > more like three months if you put a frequently written directory,
> > like /tmp or /var/log, on a flash device. 
> 
> You can use UNIONFS for those ;)

That makes it less portable, but it is a solution.

> Anyway, unless we're talking about different technologies, one of my
> USB drives is working fine and it is more than a year old. And I've
> used it like crazy (both read _and_ writes.)

Flash memory has a definite write limit (no read lmiit AFAIK). It's
around 100,000 writes PER CELL. So if you use it as a normal filesystem,
writing and deleting files, as it was intended to be used, you won't
have much of a problem. Each write is likely to be to a different cell.
but if you have something that continually writes to the same place,
you'll soon kill it.

Read the recent thread on slow usb storage transfers, for an extreme
example, the way the latest kernels update the FAT for each block
write when a drive is mounted sync. Until I read this, I thought I'd
been unlucky when a Crucial 1GB drive died after only a few months use.
It turns out that repeatedly copying large files to the drive killed the
area containing the FAT.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Norberto Bensa]

Hello Neil,

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> Read the recent thread on slow usb storage transfers, 

Thanks Neil, I've missed it. I'll read it (I use async anyways... )


-- 
Norberto Bensa
4544-9692 / 15-4190-6344
Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Thumbdrive

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 4 Sep 2005 14:11:53 -0300, Norberto Bensa wrote:

> > Read the recent thread on slow usb storage transfers, 
> 
> Thanks Neil, I've missed it. I'll read it (I use async anyways... )

I preferred sync, because it meant the files were written immediately, so
there was far less chance of corruption if the drive was pulled without
unmounting it. Now I use pmount, called through HAL by KDE and can't seem
to find a way to get it to mount sync. I've tried creating the config
files to override the default behaviour, and even editing the default
file, but it still mounts sync :(


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Life Support System Failure - Reboot Patient (Y/n)?

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