Booting linux from a USB drive

[Evdawg]

I bought a Kingston DataTraveler USB drive (128mb) and am wondering how to get linux onto it and boot from the USB drive (e.g. instead of a live-CD).

There are a bunch of small linux distros but I have tried each of their methods for getting them onto a USB drive without any success.

The problem is that I have almost no linux experience prior to this... so I need some help choosing the right distro and getting it up and running.

PS. Please don't tell me "google" because I have tried googling how to do this and have not had any success so far.

Thanks a LOT. :)

[markwolfe Veteran]

I have never done this, but you will need a BIOS that supports booting from USB.

There is a premade key here for DamnSmallLinux: http://damnsmalllinux.org/usb.html

[kyro]

for past two days i am using Slax and its just rocking the house ... its easily installable on usb key too... go to http://slax.linux-live.org/download.php and download it.

[Evdawg]

Thanks guys, but I've already got a drive so I'm not going to buying another.

So how would I get Damn Small Linux onto the USB drive? I've looked through DSL's forum's USB section but havn't been able to make any sense of the methods there. Is there some program that I could use to "burn" dsl to the drive?

SLAX is a great distro (I've been using it off of CD for a while) but it's too big to fit on my drive (128mb), but thanks anyways :)

Thanks again.

[markwolfe Veteran]

According to this page from DSL's site:

http://www.linuxcompatible.org/print33984.html

starting at version 0.8.1, there is a "Make USB edition" to tools menu.

You should be able to boot the mini-CD and and transfer it to a USB key, from what I understand from that. :unsure:

[Evdawg]

Hmm, i tried that and it does not seem to be working :(

a window pops up, closes really quick, and nothing is put onto the drive.

Is there a way to prepare it through windows?

[markwolfe Veteran]

At ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/ I see:

boot-0.8.0.img 	 1440 KB 	 08/29/2004 	 08:35:00 PM
boot-0.8.0.img.md5.txt  1 KB  08/29/2004  08:35:00 PM
bootusb-0.8.img  1440 KB  09/08/2004  06:19:00 PM
bootusb-0.8.img.md5.txt  1 KB  09/08/2004  06:20:00 PM
current/ 	 09/30/2004  07:26:00 AM
dsl-0.8.2.iso  50220 KB  09/29/2004  06:18:00 AM
dsl-0.8.2.iso.md5.txt  1 KB  09/30/2004  05:12:00 AM
frugal_lite.sh  2 KB  08/27/2004  07:35:00 AM
frugal_usb.tar.gz  172 KB  09/10/2004  04:00:00 PM
frugal_usb.tar.gz.md5.txt  1 KB  09/10/2004  04:01:00 PM

Now, the dsl-0.8.2.iso is probably what you need. It looks like they provide separate boot images, based on a standard boot and a USB boot (it appears). You may also need the bootusb-0.8.img file.

Did the instructions for you involve these files?

[Evdawg]

alright, now how do it get the ISO onto the actual USB drive? e.g. the equivalent of burning it onto a CD?

[markwolfe Veteran]

alright, now how do it get the ISO onto the actual USB drive? e.g. the equivalent of burning it onto a CD?

584800729[/snapback]

Since most CD burning software probably won't write to a USB (not that I know of, anyhow), you can probably investigate using the dd command to copy the .iso over directly.

Aren't there any instructions on the site (or from http://google.com/linux )?

[neufuse Veteran]

has anyone ever tried to install linux on a USB hard drive before and boot from that?