Slack on a thumb drive? Suggestions and pointers requested

sombragris · 10-10-2014, 02:15 PM

Hi there,

Someone gave me a 128 GB thumb drive. I'd like to use it as a bootable thumb drive with full-blown Slackware on it. The thing is, I have no idea on how to do it except for the vague notion that it is indeed possible. So, how can I do it? If you can give links or pointers to information that would be really appreciated.

Some information that I would like to have:

How to boot Slackware from a thumb drive
How to define swapspace and tmp drives so that I could use local storage instead of a thumb drive (I'd like to avoid frying my drive too soon).

Thanks in advance!

genss · 10-10-2014, 02:29 PM

How to boot Slackware from a thumb drive

never did try to install lilo on an usb device
however, Didier Spaier shared some knowledge in this thread

How to define swapspace and tmp drives so that I could use local storage instead of a thumb drive (I'd like to avoid frying my drive too soon).

by editing /etc/fstab
as with lilo, you would also want to use uuid's instead of /dev/node

fsLeg · 10-10-2014, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sombragris

How to boot Slackware from a thumb drive

I did that for my netbook. It's exactly the same as you would do when installing to HDD. You partition your thumb drive, you choose those partitions, you install lilo to the thumb drive's MBR. In order to boot make sure to have these two things: ramdisk (initrd; yes, even if you use the huge kernel) and rootdelay kernel option (rootdelay=5 did the trick for me). It is needed so the kernel could find and mount the root filesystem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sombragris

How to define swapspace and tmp drives so that I could use local storage instead of a thumb drive (I'd like to avoid frying my drive too soon).

What genss said.

Didier Spaier · 10-10-2014, 02:42 PM

Hi Eduardo,

Google helped me find an old post answering a similar question.

I think you could try the same method, just replacing "external HDD" with "USB stick".

Probably the

Code:

append="rootdelay=30"

is not necessary in case of an USB stick, that doesn't need time to spin (or at least you can decrease that delay).

Also, it's better, before chroot in step # 5 to insert a step #4bis. Type as root:

Code:

mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev

so these pseudo-filesystems be accessible from the USB key.

sombragris · 10-11-2014, 11:44 AM

Thank you! these links are really useful. Now, a question: how would be LILO better than ISOLINUX for bootable media?

fsLeg · 10-11-2014, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sombragris

Now, a question: how would be LILO better than ISOLINUX for bootable media?

Actually, it doesn't matter what boot manager you use. Slackware comes with a variety of those, it just installs lilo by default, but you are free to use what you think is more convenient.