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How to convert Live CD to boot from USB Thumb Drive?

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passing-thru   05-19-2006 at 05:53:42 PM

Greetings,

I want to know how to convert a Linux Live CD to boot from a USB Thumb Drive.
The Live CD can be of any Linux Distro.

I've tried copying everything from the CD to USB Thumb Drive but that didn't work (I got a "corrupted boot partition" or something during bootup).

This is for testing purposes and demontration of Linux to my friends.

I found that running Live CD from CD-ROM drive is painfuly slow on some system.

Thanks in advanced.

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Bronze Linux badge linux_0   05-20-2006 at 01:58:00 AM
- 0 +

Quote :

Greetings,

I want to know how to convert a Linux Live CD to boot from a USB Thumb Drive.
The Live CD can be of any Linux Distro.

I've tried copying everything from the CD to USB Thumb Drive but that didn't work (I got a "corrupted boot partition" or something during bootup).

This is for testing purposes and demontration of Linux to my friends.

I found that running Live CD from CD-ROM drive is painfuly slow on some system.

Thanks in advanced.





I'm afraid, it is not that simple.


You might want to check out DSL

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

and

http://distrowatch.com/

for USB distros.

Good Luck :-D

Reply to linux_0
bmouring   05-25-2006 at 06:49:04 PM
- 0 +

One thing you might want to check out is seeing if the livecd distro you're using supports "docache" as a starting or boot parameter, it will load the contents of the CD into memory, making it run incredibly fast. That being said, you obviously need a decent ammount of memory, upwards of a gig to do this on most distros. For example, with knoppix:
[code:1:cb28ecb566]
~starting up...~
boot: (type this in) knoppix docache (enter)
.....
[/code:1:cb28ecb566]

If you really want to wow your friends, give the Kororaa LiveCD a spin :)

Reply to bmouring
Bronze Linux badge linux_0   05-25-2006 at 07:10:20 PM
- 0 +

Quote :

One thing you might want to check out is seeing if the livecd distro you're using supports "docache" as a starting or boot parameter, it will load the contents of the CD into memory, making it run incredibly fast. That being said, you obviously need a decent ammount of memory, upwards of a gig to do this on most distros. For example, with knoppix:
[code:1:4b88545579]
~starting up...~
boot: (type this in) knoppix docache (enter)
.....
[/code:1:4b88545579]

If you really want to wow your friends, give the Kororaa LiveCD a spin :)




Hehe :-D

If you have 4GB of RAM that's no problem at all but if you have 512MB or 1GB of RAM that may not work quite as well.

The Knoppix 700MB CD contains about 2.3GB of "stuff" uncompressed.

There are some distros which can boot from a 32MB CF card or a 50-60MB CD.

That's the beauty of open source you can make it as big or as small as you need :-D

That LiveCD looks very kewl btw.

Reply to linux_0
bmouring   05-25-2006 at 07:26:49 PM
- 0 +

Just giving it as an option, the worst it could do it complain about running out of space and not booting (and not damaging anything either), but agreed, I do have a somewhat skewed view of what's possible with RAM disks :lol:

Reply to bmouring
Bronze Linux badge linux_0   05-25-2006 at 07:48:27 PM
- 0 +

Quote :

Just giving it as an option, the worst it could do it complain about running out of space and not booting (and not damaging anything either), but agreed, I do have a somewhat skewed view of what's possible with RAM disks :lol:




LOL :-D

Your machine is better than most server machines around the globe :lol:

Here's all the knoppix boot parameters:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/kno [...] tcodes.txt

If you're using a smaller Live CD it's a lot easier to make it all fit in RAM and then everything is going to fly.

RAM disks are awesome :-D

That's the future -- when RAM gets cheaper and every PC has 32GB of RAM or more everything will just sit on a RAM disk and will be hundreds of times faster :-D

Reply to linux_0
bmouring   05-25-2006 at 08:50:49 PM
- 0 +

Yes, the "cheat codes" as they're called here are the bread and butter of booting any liveCD on a system like mine, a little out there.

In reference to the XGL+compiz liveCD, I got the software that one uses up and running on my laptop (1.7 Dothan, 1 gig, Mobility Radeon 9700) so when a snobby macophile tells me that Linux is ugly, I just log out of my current session and load that one up :)

(I would run it at all times but it does lower my battery life by about an hour, and when that's the difference between 7 hours and 6 hours, it's not that big, but I usually have long days where I will have to be portable for 6+ hours.)

Reply to bmouring
Bronze Linux badge linux_0   05-26-2006 at 10:38:09 AM
- 0 +

Quote :

Yes, the "cheat codes" as they're called here are the bread and buttor of booting any liveCD on a system like mine, a little out there.

In reference to the XGL+compiz liveCD, I got the software that one uses up and running on my laptop (1.7 Dothan, 1 gig, Mobility Radeon 9700) so when a snobby macophile tells me that Linux is ugly, I just log out of my current session and load that one up :)

(I would run it at all times but it does lower my battery life by about an hour, and when that's the difference between 7 hours and 6 hours, it's not that big, but I usually have long days where I will have to be portable for 6+ hours.)




3D is great but it sure wastes energy that's for sure :-/

Energy conservation has gone out the window recently.... :-(

Reply to linux_0
bmouring   05-26-2006 at 03:05:10 PM
- 0 +

Honestly, it is pounding pretty heavily on my graphics card yes, but it does take strain off of the processor when moving windows around/resizing windows/switching desktops/etc., so my hope is that after the project becomes a bit more mature and refined, and scaling back the eyecandy, can actually extending battery life by making the processor work less.

Just hoping here.

Reply to bmouring
Bronze Linux badge linux_0   05-26-2006 at 03:52:31 PM
- 0 +

Quote :

Honestly, it is pounding pretty heavily on my graphics card yes, but it does take strain off of the processor when moving windows around/resizing windows/switching desktops/etc., so my hope is that after the project becomes a bit more mature and refined, and scaling back the eyecandy, can actually extending battery life by making the processor work less.

Just hoping here.




One can hope :-D

Open source is guaranteed to get better :-D

Reply to linux_0
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