Ubuntu on a USB drive

[Tony Monaghan]

I hadn't tried this before so I got myself a cheap 4Gb USB pen drive and had a go at installing Ubuntu Gutsy in persistent mode so I could save any files easily as opposed to using it a 'live' version. I had it all running in about 10 minutes.

Instructions here;

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/28/usb-ubuntu-710-gutsy-gibbon-install/

[masimon]

Trying this out on my 160 gig WD.
but I get this message.

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19457.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

[klangwerk]

You can probably simply ignore this message. Ubuntu uses GRUB as its boot manager, so LILO is not involved (and even if it were, current versions don't have this problem). As for fdisk, you can just use the fdisk from Ubuntu to partition the drive, just like the tutorial describes.

Martin

[masimon]

Thanks Got it working. Woohoo portable OS )(~.

[LFO]

I think I am going to try and get Ubuntu to boot off of a flash drive. I'll have to see if it can be done, it would be an interesting environment. I could then load up apps and keep everything on a flash drive.

Now heading to Buy.com to pick up a 4 gig flash drive...

-Kevin

[sbenno]

Of course Linux works well from an USB drive.
Expecially modern distros like Ubuntu are very easy to install directly to the USB drive, just select the USB drive as target drive and install it, and a the next reboot in your bios set boot from USB HD as first bootdevice.

I run a whole server which feeds diskless linux clients with a boot image (boot over network) which then play mpeg2 video streams over the network, everything resides on the USB stick and works fine.
Make sure you get a fast USB stick, i have one from samsung which can read 20MB/sec and write about 6MB/sec. If you need to write a lot then USB sticks still do feel a bit sluggish but if you don't write much and have a decent amount of RAM, let's say 1GB they feel very fast.

cheers,
Benno