Hello

i'm trying to install linux on my USB stick

During 2 weeks i've tried to install some distro like shinux, flonix, featherlinux and damn small linux, and I only succeed to boot with shinux.

But the 3 other distro don't work : everytime I try, the system correctly boot, i get the screen with penguin and « boot: » (here i've tried all i could, including nothing and failsafe), and everytime i get 4 or 5 lines that are normal, and after that, 15 or 20 lines with "cloop : error -3 or -5 uncompressing block xxx ". There are also many lines before with « xxx : not found »
and it ends with a "kernel panic : unable to mount root fs"

I don't understand why it dosn't work, i've tried on 2 different computers, and with 10 or 15 different versions and the problem is always the same.
How to get these distros working on my USB stick ???

Thank you very much of your answers.

Amandine

P.S.: all apologies for my english and grammar... I'm a poor young french girl who doesn't understand anything !

I'm using DamnSmallLinux on a USB stick and I must say it wasn't too easy to get started. However, I'm surprise by your description of your problem. I spent hour making my PC find the USB stick to boot on. I had error like "no operating system found" right after the BIOS started, or sometime nothing. I had to tweak the geometry of my USB stick. I found usefull info here ==> http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/talk/node/86
But once I finally saw the DSL boot menu, then everything else worked like a charm.
But you said you could start booting on the USB stick (you mentionned seeing the pinguin and getting weird stuff) and only after you hit problems???
If you post more detailed info about what exaclty happens when you try booting DSL (I haven't tried the others distros so won't be able to help for those) maybe I can help.
En tout cas ne te décourage pas. c'est en essayant qu'on apprend

hey, thank you for your reply

I tried and tried and tried, and i had the idea testing my other USB stick. I thought it was unable to boot, but I was wrong : I just had to change in the BIOS : USB-ZIP instead of USB-HDD, and it worked fine ! In fact, it was my other USB stick which had problems. So I succeed to boot Feather, Flonix, and DSL. But DSL is the most difficult to boot ! I reeally rather like Feather !

All that was really interesting for me, it is like a game, and I thought people who would like to install Feather or other distros on USB would be very disappointed like I was, so I wrote all I leanrt and made a website, so that they succeed like me It is in french (sorry !), but I think it might help lot of people

Amandine

P.S.: if you want to see my website, it's here : www.yellow-sub.fr/linuxusb/
PS.2 : Dear moderators, I don't know if i really can write my website adress here, so if not, thank you to remove it, I don't want not to respect your rules !

Just checked out your website. Nice, congrats for sharing your experiences with the community
I'll just correct one thing you said about the USB devices (sda):
/dev/sda is your physical USB stick,
/dev/sda1 is the 1st partition on your sda USB stick
/dev/sda2 is the 2nd partition on your sda USB stick
/dev/sda3 ...... and so on.

Like me for instance, I partitionned my 512MB USB stick in 2 partitions: one with DSL and the 2nd for my home directory. Then I boot on sda1 and save my stuff on sda2. Get it ?
If you plug a 2nd USB stick, then it's /dev/sdb. Same thing with the patitioning (sdb1, sdb2, ...). A 3rd one would be sdc.
It works the same with harddisk. hda, hdb, hdc being physical hard disks and when you add a number at the end it's the different partitions for each hard disk.

Being really happy with DSL, I didn't give a try to other small distros. I specially like their easy way of downloading and installing software with myDSL. What is it about featherlinux that you like in particular?
Since you have all 4 distros now working, I'll be interested in having a "usability comparision". Plus that'll look good on your website Tu crois pas? En tout cas si tu completes ce site j'en parlerai aux prochains qui me demandera des infos sur les distrib bootable USB. Domage qu'il ne soit qu'en français, mais d'un autre coté c'est bien aussi, après tout beaucoup de francophone ne parle pas anglais.. les pauvres!

Thanks for your congratulations !

I knew all that things with sda1 and others, but I didn't explain it in my website because it's not so important in order to install Linux on Usb! But perhaps i should explain it, I don't know.
However, my colleague has an USB stick that is mount with /dev/sda, and it doesn't work with /dev/sda1. I don't understand it, but if I want to install linux on it, I have to edit files, and if not it doesn't work. I found the explanation here : http://featherlinux.berlios.de/phpBB...al+sector+size

just ont thing about hda, hdb, hdc... I thought hda was the first hard drive on the first "nappe IDE", hdb the second drive on the same nappe, hdc the first drive on the second nappe, and hdd the second drive on the second nappe.
So, is that correct? and if I have 2 HDD, one 1st drive on 1st nappe, and the other 1st drive on 2nd nappe, what will be the name of the second? HDB or HDC ?

Your idea of "usability comparision", i'm sure it's a good Idea, but i can't do it now because i didn't really test all things of the 4 distros, I just tried to install them and see quickly what they could do What i like with Feather is that it recognize and connects to the network automatically, without asking me anything. I don't know if DSL is the same, surely yes I think. And I like the "look" of Feather,
If I have time, I will add my opinions and usability comparison on my website
C'est vraiment une bonne idée en tout cas, merci
C'est clair que beaucoup de francais ne comprenne tpas un mot d'anglais, et puis les anglais ont plus de ressources sur le net pour trouver ce qu'ils cherchent, donc pour l'instant, le site reste en francais ! ;-)
Enfin bon, je plains ceux qui sont sur le net sans comprendre un mot d'anglais, qu'est ce que ca doit etre frustrant d'arriver sur une page en anglais, ou on pense que la solution du probleme est la, et qu'on peut pas l'avoir... rageant!!! ;-)

I would say your 2nd disk will be hdc. Since as far as I know the standard like this:
IDE bus 0 ==> /dev/hda (master)
IDE bus 0 ==> /dev/hdb (slave)
IDE bus 1 ==> /dev/hdc (master)
IDE bus 1 ==> /dev/hdd (slave)

About DSL, it detected everything fine on the 3 PC I tried it, and network came up automatically. And it has a cool tool on the side to mount/unmount any detected HD/cdrom/USB-storage by one mouse click. It's made to be light and efficient so the looks&feel is poor, but still OK for me.

The problem I still have is the USB-ZIP vs. USB-HDD in the BIOS. The laptop I need to have a USB-linux on can only boot on USD-HDD. And only USB-ZIP seems to works to boot on the USB stick. Don't have no floopy on this laptop so looks like I'm screwed
This only option I found is to boot on a CD and at the boot menu tell it to load the OS from the USB stick. It works but I need to carry this external cdrom with me and that's a pain.

I think I'm gonna give feather a try, before definitely pick the one that works the best for me.

Wonder if both Feather and DSL can exist as dual-boot options on a 512MB thumb, similar in some ways to UML?
If so, could there be a persistent /home directory made for both (why not??)

-nycace