Portable Linux on External Drive
 

So, I have this hard drive enclosure into which I have mounted a 30 GB drive. What I would LIKE to do is figure out some way to set up this hard drive so that I can use it to run linux on any USB-bootable computer. Ideally, I'd like to set up Gentoo on there, but any functional distribution would be nice. I've been doing some research, but I'd like to find input on here. I see the following issues:

1. Partitioning/Installation
2. Recognition of Drive on Different Systems (i.e., linux finding "root device")
3. Fstab issues.


So, does anyone have ideas towards this project?

Thanks in advance,

Hi,

here are few links:
boot FC2 from USB device
Installing Linux to USB HDD a linux kernel patch to boot from USB device
a linux USB distro

Oliv'

Thanks for the links, should be of some help. I'm a bit wary of touching initrd, but I guess it will be neccessary. I always thought initrd could be avoided by compiling in all the needed features, so I guess I'm not quite sure why it's needed to boot from a usb device. Maybe I just need to give it a shot now :)

I'm like you ;) I don't like initrd way :p
And I think it is not necessary if you know how to compile a kernel correctly... I mean with the exact features it need. So I think like you it's not necessary to use initrd... but it's necessary to know how to make a root filesystem (I mean which exec, libs, scripts... put in it)

Oliv'