Linux on an SD Card

Conrad11

Conrad11

Conrad11

Soldato
Joined
12 Jun 2005
Posts
5,361
Hi there,

My vista install just failed again - well its the first time on this pc, but vista has failed on other PCs in the past.

I am running Ubuntu 7.10 64-bit off a live cd at the moment and it's allowing me to get on the internet and try to find solutions to my problems etc...and it runs fast enough to do what I want. I can watch videos whilst i find the solution which is always good.

Basically, I want to create a Linux install for when my PC breaks and I NEED to do something, or for when I fancy using Linux.

My machine is a decent enough laptop...4GB (which is why 64bit), T7520, 8600GT....its a DELL XPS M1530.

Since you can get a 4GB Class 4 SDHC card for under £8 now, I thought it would be nice to install it onto that and just insert/remove it when I need to use Linux. I assume 4GB would be enough for a Ubuntu linux install? Yes? No? I am thinking of going without a SWAP as I have 4GB? Bad idea?

Would the SDHC card be fast enough for a decent speed in linux? I mean, I know I am using a live cd at the moment and thats ok, but I was kinda hoping for a bit quicker speed (hence the decision to install, rather than creating my own livecd).

Was looking here: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/diskbenchmarks, and it has a read speed of 15.40MB/s, which I assume is a lot more than a CD read speed. Out of interest, does anyone know what the CD read speed is?

So....any thoughts?

Thanks.


EDIT:

How do you setup Wireless LAN on Ubuntu?
 
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Not done it myself but have seen plenty of people running from USB sticks - why not have a look at some of the tutorials over at www.pendrivelinux.com as you'll find all the info you should need.

As for setting up the WLAN, a lot depends on your hardware. What NIC are you using?
 
Turns out I can't boot from SD card on my laptop.

Have purchased this USB flash drive from ocuk to do what I want. Reasonably fast at 19MB/s

Is it not as simple as just installing ubuntu onto the usb stick and plugging it in when I want to boot it? (Ensuring that USB is about HDD in the boot order).

Will i have to mess about with these boot loader things? - If so, I cba...
 
I put a tutorial up about doing this to a USb SD card or pen drive which should also work fine for a USB drive.

Just do a search for my posts and you should find it quite easily.

It is very simple but you do have to spend 5 minutes or so modifying the Grub boot menu list file after you have installed.

RB
 
In terms of not using a swap file, I would say you don't need it, I have run Ubuntu Hardy 64bit on 6GB Ram with no probs 4Gb should be ok to. The default swap file is only about 1.5Gb anyway add that to the minimum requirements for the OS and you are still miles away from 4GB.

Also less writes to the flash drive will make it last longer.
 
PhilGQ said:
Also less writes to the flash drive will make it last longer.
Click to expand...

Yeah that was my trail of thought...The USB flash drive I bought (which gets delivered tomorrow) has a warranty of 10 years so I expect it will have a decent write/read life anyways...

I expected that, as you say, 4GB will be more than enough for a memory, I'm not exactly going to be doing any video editing or stuff that would require the 4GB methinks.
 
RimBlock said:
I put a tutorial up about doing this to a USb SD card or pen drive which should also work fine for a USB drive.

Just do a search for my posts and you should find it quite easily.

It is very simple but you do have to spend 5 minutes or so modifying the Grub boot menu list file after you have installed.

RB
Click to expand...

Found the guide - it's just what I am after.

Is it possible to have two partitions on the USB stick, one ext3 which is where linux is installed and the other fat32/ntfs for file storage, and can have use of the second partition within windows?

If it is possible, is there anything special I have to do, or can I just create the two partitions when installing linux?
 
Didn't work out quite the way I wanted it too...way too slow, infact, I would say it was slower than the live-cd which was strange.

When I would scroll firefox down, it would crash momentarily then scroll...wierd.

Anything that I could have done wrong?

I mean hdparm was giving a READ speed of over 30MBps....
 
Stock Ubuntu is way too bloaty for a usb stick IMO.
Priorotise the packages you really need and grab a slimline distro that you can load entirely into ram. Takes a bit longer to boot, but your machine will zoom. 4GB is loads of RAM, you should have no problem.
I quite like Austrumi, but there's not necessarily any need to go that slimline.
 
DeeJay-Mo said:
Stock Ubuntu is way too bloaty for a usb stick IMO.
Priorotise the packages you really need and grab a slimline distro that you can load entirely into ram. Takes a bit longer to boot, but your machine will zoom. 4GB is loads of RAM, you should have no problem.
I quite like Austrumi, but there's not necessarily any need to go that slimline.
Click to expand...

Can you recommend any tutorials for doing such a thing? Something that will guide me through picking up the packages and compiling it...etc...
 
You can have multiple partitions, but windows XP will only see the first partition (can get a modified driver to see them), linux sees all partitions fine.

I found running MCNlive from my sandisk cruzer was very snappy, the only thing that made it a pain to use was when I booted off a USB 1.1 PC, it took about 5-8 mins to boot fully and was a bit sluggish.
CDs have faster sequential read speed, but flash has much faster random access, modify your fstab and add the "noatime" parameter to decrease disk activity (stops last-open time being written every time you just open a file). I really wouldn't worry about wearing them out, from what I've read it's very unlikely.

With MCNLive you can reroll your own liveCD/USB stick, just remove/add packages then run the scripts, burn to disk, install to USB stick.
The only problem is that it's no longer maintained and based on mandriva 2007.1 (or 2005, can't remember, been a while since I used it)
 
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Conrad11 said:
Can you recommend any tutorials for doing such a thing? Something that will guide me through picking up the packages and compiling it...etc...
Click to expand...

The wiki at damnsmalllinux.org is a good place to start.
This will show you how to get a basic DSL install on a USB stick, that you could then customize with MYDSL packages and remaster.
It's not the only way to skin a cat but it is a pretty tried and tested formula.
Good luck!
 
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