I all, I was thinking about installing centos on a usb flash drive. Perhaps a 4GIG. I dont need X or anything on this drive so installing should fit just fine.
Are there boot issues with these flash drives? I'll be using a newer motherboard so the motherboard should be able to boot USB.
Does this work? Have others done anything with flash drives? I am wanting this flash drive to be the ONLY drive in the computer. Kind of a dedicated machine running multiple RS232 multiport cards.
Thanks,
Jerry
It'll only be a problem if you're planning to use a swap file or do frequent writes (compiling programs, etc). Solid state devices really aren't great if your going to do heavy writing because they will fry eventually. Under normal usage this could be years, but with heavy daily use it could be months.
Geoff
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld.
-----Original Message----- From: Jerry Geis geisj@pagestation.com
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 13:32:29 To:CentOS ML centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] Install on a usb flash drive
I all, I was thinking about installing centos on a usb flash drive. Perhaps a 4GIG. I dont need X or anything on this drive so installing should fit just fine.
Are there boot issues with these flash drives? I'll be using a newer motherboard so the motherboard should be able to boot USB.
Does this work? Have others done anything with flash drives? I am wanting this flash drive to be the ONLY drive in the computer. Kind of a dedicated machine running multiple RS232 multiport cards.
Thanks,
Jerry
_______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
An interesting idea. How would the install work? If you boot from DVD with the USB drive installed, will it see the drive and make it an option for the install destination?
Thanks, Scott
On 8/18/07, gjgowey@tmo.blackberry.net gjgowey@tmo.blackberry.net wrote:
It'll only be a problem if you're planning to use a swap file or do frequent writes (compiling programs, etc). Solid state devices really aren't great if your going to do heavy writing because they will fry eventually. Under normal usage this could be years, but with heavy daily use it could be months.
Geoff
-----Original Message----- From: Jerry Geis geisj@pagestation.com Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 13:32:29 To:CentOS ML centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] Install on a usb flash drive
I all, I was thinking about installing centos on a usb flash drive. Perhaps a 4GIG. I dont need X or anything on this drive so installing should fit just fine.
Are there boot issues with these flash drives? I'll be using a newer motherboard so the motherboard should be able to boot USB.
Does this work? Have others done anything with flash drives? I am wanting this flash drive to be the ONLY drive in the computer. Kind of a dedicated machine running multiple RS232 multiport cards.
Thanks,
Jerry
On Sat, 2007-08-18 at 13:14 -0500, Scott Moseman wrote:
An interesting idea. How would the install work? If you boot from DVD with the USB drive installed, will it see the drive and make it an option for the install destination?
Tried this a while back with an earlier release of CentOS4 and couldn't get the installer to see the media. Ended up installing a small system on a comparable-sized partition (actually under VMware, but that is not required) and "cloning" to to the USB drive with tar, editing /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf, writing grub boot record to the MBR, creating a new initrd.img after doing chroot, and probably some other kludges I don't remember, but did get it to boot and run eventually. Worked OK on the hardware it was created on but with limited portability. The "right way" [TM] to do it would probably be to start with a live distro and get it to work from USB. IIRC this is done for some live distros.
A recent thread on this seemed to end with some hope for the future, but without resolution:
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2007-July/084142.html
On 8/18/07, gjgowey@tmo.blackberry.net gjgowey@tmo.blackberry.net wrote:
It'll only be a problem if you're planning to use a swap file or do frequent writes (compiling programs, etc). Solid state devices really aren't great if your going to do heavy writing because they will fry eventually. Under normal usage this could be years, but with heavy daily use it could be months.
No swap and "noatime" on the mount as suggested elsewhere. The more you can minimize writes to the media the longer it should last.
Geoff
-----Original Message----- From: Jerry Geis geisj@pagestation.com Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 13:32:29 To:CentOS ML centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] Install on a usb flash drive
I all, I was thinking about installing centos on a usb flash drive. Perhaps a 4GIG. I dont need X or anything on this drive so installing should fit just fine.
Are there boot issues with these flash drives? I'll be using a newer motherboard so the motherboard should be able to boot USB.
Does this work? Have others done anything with flash drives? I am wanting this flash drive to be the ONLY drive in the computer. Kind of a dedicated machine running multiple RS232 multiport cards.
Might consider a Live-CD distro with a USB key for customization, but that would not satisfy your "only drive" constraint.
Phil
On Sat, 2007-08-18 at 17:52 +0000, gjgowey@tmo.blackberry.net wrote:
It'll only be a problem if you're planning to use a swap file or do frequent writes (compiling programs, etc). Solid state devices really aren't great if your going to do heavy writing because they will fry eventually. Under normal usage this could be years, but with heavy daily use it could be months.
One thing I've heard is good is to add noatime to the fstab options for flash devices.
Paul
Geoff
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld.
-----Original Message----- From: Jerry Geis geisj@pagestation.com
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 13:32:29 To:CentOS ML centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] Install on a usb flash drive
I all, I was thinking about installing centos on a usb flash drive. Perhaps a 4GIG. I dont need X or anything on this drive so installing should fit just fine.
Are there boot issues with these flash drives? I'll be using a newer motherboard so the motherboard should be able to boot USB.
Does this work? Have others done anything with flash drives? I am wanting this flash drive to be the ONLY drive in the computer. Kind of a dedicated machine running multiple RS232 multiport cards.
Thanks,
Jerry
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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