I think I am not using the correct wording in my searches.

Here is the idea.

I have someone sitting at a computer using windows, I plug in the usb and linux boots up in the background and presents a folder to the windows user. It has two folders 'in' and 'out'.

The windows user puts a file in the 'in' folder and linux does something to it and puts the output in the 'out' folder.


When the windows user ejects the usb it shuts down linux and is removed.




Details: I know how to do the in and out folders and I can use incron to watch a folder then do something when a file is dropped in.

The part that I don't know if it is possible is to get linux to boot up silently and present a folder. Does the user have to have virtualization software installed or can this be done without it?

I would'nt even know how...that would mean that two OS'es (calling windows an OS is a stretch, I know...) would run concurrently and parrallel on the same box...I doubt if that's even possible...

In THEORY you could install a virtual Linux machine image on the USB drive and have the virtualization software installed in Windows. I have used VMWare Player on both Linux and Windows to run various operating systems. The limitations I see include:

The space needed for a virtual machine of a full featured Linux install is considerable. 4 - 8 GB it typical.
USB drives are slow
The resulting boot time for the VM will also be slow
The Windows programming interface may be limiting. You could certainly configure autorun to start the VM. I am not sure you could catch the eject signal to shut down the VM.

I just did a little test. I copied a Ubuntu 11.10 VM onto a Kingston 8 GB flash drive. Boot time including auto-logon was about 50 seconds. Not too bad. Shutdown time however was 1 minute 40 seconds. Writing being slower than reading with the flash drive. This was tested on an i870 quad core PC with 8 GB of RAM.

If you tell us more about what you are trying to accomplish perhaps some more ideas will be forthcoming.

Ken

I made several of these using DSL and portable-qemu, and even found a way to mount my usb/hdd from within the virtual DSL
I'll look around and see if I can fix one up and upload it somewhere....

EDIT: OK, I found all the stuff, here's screenshot of it playing off usb in XP lappy
I gotta edit some of the configs, etc and re-read the readme stuff I wrote.
You can use many other distros besides DSL too
I also gotta find the thread on here I started about how to mount the usb or hdd from within the virt world, etc

OH, you dont need anything installed as it's all in the PQemu folder and it all runs on linux or windows
read here
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post3969567

Attached Images

dslportable.PNG (97.7 KB, 5 views)

Thank you, I will look into that.

If you wish I can upload it all for you somewhere?
still haven't found the thread on LQ where I could mount drives within the qemu vm but I'll look some more...

That info was on the qemu for windows site somewhere. Like hda=//./folder or such

http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/H...yCdrom-en.html

Thanks for the offer, but I will continue to try to build it and work it out - I do appreciate the excellent information provided. Thank you.

Can I ask what you are trying to Do?
Just interested thats all thanks for your time.
I ve never worked out the purpose of

http://lifehacker.com/5195999/portab...inside-windows

eirther to be honest

---------- Post added 31-01-12 at 10:05 PM ----------

Can I ask what you are trying to Do?
Just interested thats all thanks for your time.
I ve never worked out the purpose of

http://lifehacker.com/5195999/portab...inside-windows

eirther to be honest