Here is an option,

Use VMware workstation and point the New Virtual Machine Wizard to a folder on your external USB drive. Install CentOS there. Be sure to select Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 so the proper drivers will be loaded. This will allow your XP system to stay intact and allow you to run CentOS at the same time. I do this with my Latitude and it still runs quite fast! This doesn't directly solve your problem but is an option.

Eric D

On 6/24/06, Phil Schaffner P.R.Schaffner@ieee.org wrote:

On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 03:01 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:

...

Mike wrote:

...

Greetings CentOS Fans.

I'm working on an Inspiron 9400 Laptop. It supports booting from USB devices, so I'd like to install CentOS on a USB hard drive as an alternative to XP.

this might not help you, but just so you know - CentOS-4 does not support installing to or booting from usb drives. You might still be able to do it using some trick or the other, but officially its not supported.

Haven't gotten around to trying the CentOS Live CD yet. Does it support customization on a USB key (like Knoppix)?

LiveCD+USB key might serve the OP's purpose as an XP alternative. (Or - my preference - just shrink the XP partition and dual-boot if that is an option for you [e.g. not somebody else's laptop].)

Phil

---

CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

Eric Davis wrote:

Here is an option,

Use VMware workstation and point the New Virtual Machine Wizard to 

a folder on your external USB drive. Install CentOS there. Be sure to select Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 so the proper drivers will be loaded. This will allow your XP system to stay intact and allow you to run CentOS at the same time. I do this with my Latitude and it still runs quite fast! This doesn't directly solve your problem but is an option.

Eric D

On 6/24/06, *Phil Schaffner* <P.R.Schaffner@ieee.org mailto:P.R.Schaffner@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 03:01 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
> Mike wrote:
> > Greetings CentOS Fans.
> >
> > I'm working on an Inspiron 9400 Laptop.  It supports booting
from USB
> > devices, so I'd like to install CentOS on a USB hard drive as an
> > alternative to XP.
> >
>
> this might not help you, but just so you know - CentOS-4 does not
> support installing to or booting from usb drives. You might still be
> able to do it using some trick or the other, but officially its not
> supported.

Haven't gotten around to trying the CentOS Live CD yet.  Does it
support
customization on a USB key (like Knoppix)?

LiveCD+USB key might serve the OP's purpose as an XP
alternative.  (Or -
my preference - just shrink the XP partition and dual-boot if that
is an
option for you [e.g. not somebody else's laptop].)

Phil

That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I want to fork out $200 for vmware workstation. Do you know if vmware player would be sufficient?

I'm also wondering, if vmware is installed does it add yet another constant process even when "not" in use? This machine gets heavily loaded with video editing, music recording and of course gaming...

There are some processes that run whenever vmware is not directly in use. VMWare creates virtual interfaces on your system so that it can do NIC bridging for multiple virtual machines all at once. The three that I have noticed are vmount2.exe, vmware-authd.exe, and vmnat.exe.

VMount2.exe - This is used as part of the importer in the software, it is used to mount the images so that they can be imported into the virtual machine.

VMware-authd.exe - This is used for authenticating local or remote users to vmware.

VMnat.exe - This is used for setting up NAT between your virtual VMWare network and your physical network.

On 6/26/06, Phil Schaffner Philip.R.Schaffner@nasa.gov wrote:

On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 09:56 -0700, Mike wrote:

...

That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I want to fork out $200 for vmware workstation. Do you know if vmware player would be sufficient?

Have seen procedures for using VMware Player to install a new system over an existing downloaded image. Can't create a new VM from scratch.

...

I'm also wondering, if vmware is installed does it add yet another constant process even when "not" in use?

Can't answer that one definitively, but I know VMware Workstation under Linux does have some overhead with the services it starts, so I'd guess that there would be something similar running for XP VMware Player.

Phil

---

CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

Phil Schaffner wrote:

On Fri, 2006-06-23 at 17:31 -0700, Mike wrote:

...

Greetings CentOS Fans.

I'm working on an Inspiron 9400 Laptop. It supports booting from USB devices, so I'd like to install CentOS on a USB hard drive as an alternative to XP.

I tried booting to the 4.3 (disk 1) CD, but it doesn't see the USB Drive when it gets to the stage of partitioning... any idea what's involved in getting the USB drive recognized so I can install CentOS onto it?

OK - got my curiosity up. Had wanted a USB stick install also. Was unable to figure out how to get the installer to see the USB thumb drive, despite being able to modprobe ehci-hcd, scsi_mod, etc. in the Ctrl-Alt-F2 virtual console. (Anybody else able to manage this? Would have allowed a direct install to USB if it had been possible to make it visible to the installer.)

Here's a kludge for a (per Karanbir - unsupported) 2GB-USB-key-bootable CentOS 4.3 install:

In a nutshell - do a minimal install to a hard disk partition (may be done on a different machine - that was my method); boot to it; insert, fdisk, mke2fs, and mount the USB stick; copy the installed system to the USB drive; edit /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf; make an appropriate initrd; grub-install; and away you go. Used a procedure based on http://www.simonf.com/usb/ for FC3.

In more detail (and omitting some trial/error):

Installed minimal system to a 2GB partition (since my USB drive is 2GB) using custom install with disk-druid to install to a single partition (not using LVM), and ignoring warnings about no swap.

Booted from the installed system, logged on as root, and inserted USB drive which was then recognized. On my system the USB drive is /dev/sda. Ran:

# fdisk /dev/sda (Made primary partition 1, filling up the entire 2GB USB device, and made active.) # mke2fs -jL /el4 /dev/sda1 # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt # tar lcf - / | tar xf - -C /mnt

Edited /mnt/etc/fstab to look like:

LABEL=/el4 / ext3 defaults 1 1 none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0

---

Edited /mnt/boot/grub/grub.conf to look like:

default=0 timeout=5 hiddenmenu

title CentOS-4 i386 (2.6.9-34.EL) root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-34.EL ro root=LABEL=/el4 initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-34.EL.img

---

[First guessed (hd1,0) but GRUB sees the USB drive as (hd0,0) when it is selected as the boot device.]

Ran:

# chroot /mnt # mkinitrd -f --preload=ehci-hcd --preload=usb-storage --preload=scsi_mod \ --preload=sd_mod /boot/initrd-2.6.9-34.EL.img 2.6.9-34.EL

# grub-install /dev/sda

Plugged the USB key into my laptop, booted and chose USB boot device. Let Kudzu remove/install new hardware. Success!

Logged on as root, ran:

# yum update # mkinitrd -f --preload=ehci-hcd --preload=usb-storage --preload=scsi_mod \ --preload=sd_mod /boot/initrd-2.6.9-34.0.1.EL.img 2.6.9-34.0.1.EL # yum install emacs xorg-x11 system-config-display xterm # yum groupinstall "XFCE-4.2" "Graphical Internet"

(Group "GNOME Desktop Environment" was too big for the stick. Might be able to manage a GNOME or KDE environment by careful package selection. The updates and installs could have been done before the move to the USB drive. Using a larger install partition and cleaning up install packages before the copy operation might have allowed more packages on the target USB device.)

Rebooted to new kernel, ran:

# system-config-display

Added user with useradd. Logged in as new user and ran:

$ switchdesk XFCE $ startx

Got a GUI environment.

Not exactly pretty, and may be problematic when booting on other hardware, but did yield a reasonable CentOS 4.3 system on USB media. (I'd still recommend a dual-boot install of CentOS with XP on the laptop if you want to use it very much. Knoppix Live-CD, or SuSE or Mandrake installers can be used to shrink an NTFS partition to make room.)

Phil

Now that sounds achievable. If I can free some time up this week I'll be giving that a try. Nice work!