Installing Linux on a Pen Drive

In this small tutorial, I'll try to tell how to install a few linux distros on a pen drive. Its a bit different from them. With linux on pen drive, you can boot from any computer. you can have your data along with personalized system settings available anywhere.


Some requirements are as under :-

* A fat 16 formatted pen drive. Size of 2GB is recommended, although DSL and puppy linux install on a 512 MB pen drive.

* ISOs of DSL and puupy linux, star package for slax,goblinx and pen drive linux zip packages for usb. Google them. They are freely available on net. Download latest versions for up-2-date software.

* A motherboard bios thats capable of booting from usb drives. it aint necessary if you are using puppy linux.any version of linux installed.



Points to take note of :-
* Take a back up of data in your pen drive.

* if you have a u3 drive, remove u3 utility from it. for details go to u3.com/uninstall.

Getting your Pen Drive ready :-

* Pen drive needs to be fat 16 formatted. Use GParted,cfdisk or any other partition tool for this purpose.

* First, u need to identify ur pen drive with fdisk.plug in ur pen drive and run the following command as root user:
fdisk -l

* This should show your pen drive as sdX, where X is a,b or c..make a note of it.

Follow this step(for cfdisk) only if u need to format your drive as fat 16 :-

* cfdisk /dev/sdX

* Important: data in pen drive will be lost, if any.

* Choose type as 06,'Bootable' and 'Write', followed by yes and 'Quit' to write to the partition tableof pen drive.

Note: sequence of what you do is important. follow as told.

Slax on Pen Drive :-

1. download slax 6.0.9 tar package for usb from www.slax.org/get_slax.php

Now carry out steps as mentioned :-

1. Double click on slax 6.0.9 tar package you downloaded. This will open archive manager, and show contents of package namely /boot and /slax. Drag and drop them onto usb partition.

2. open the terminal and navigate to the /boot directory copied on usb. u will see a shell script called bootinst.sh.

run following script as root user :-

* sh bootinst.sh

Thats it ! You have slax on ur pen drive.

Damn Small Linux :-

Download the ISO from www.damnsmalllinux.org and burn it on a CD. boot the live cd, and plug in ur pen drive

and follow following steps:-

1 navigate to Start > Apps > Tools > USB-HDD Pen Drive Install..

2. In the terminal that opens, u'll be asked to answer a couple of questions:

* Verify that ur usb device is sdX. answer why if this is correct device as shown by fdisk earlier.

* Boot options are presented next, press enter if they are acceptable.

* Answer us for us keyboard and press enter

* following this you will be asked if you are ready to proceed with the install. press enter.

* DSL will create two partitions- sdX1(a F16 partition) and sdX2(an ext3 partition)- and install the GRUB bootloader.

Note: persistance settings can be enabled from start > tools > control panel > Backup/Restore, and entering sdX1 or sdX2 as partition to save system settings in the window that opens

GoblinX :-

This is one of the best distributions of portable linux versions. Google for 2.7 zip package of goblinx, and

download it.

To install on pen drive, follow the same steps as followed in installation of slax:

1. Double Click on GoblinX-2.7.zip package. This will open archive manager and show the contents of package namely /boot and /goblinx. drag and drop them into usb partition.

2. open the terminal and change to the /boot directory copied on the usb. you'll see a shell script called

bootinst.sh.

Run script as root user: sh bootinst.sh

Puppy Linux :-

Download 90 MB ISO from puppylinux.org and burn it into a CD.

Boot the live CD, plug in your pen drive and do as under:-

1. Click Start > Setup > Puppy universal installer and choose usb flash drive install from wizard that follows. pen drive is detected, and you will be presented with two methods to install puppy :-

* A combo format method, which creates a 128MB F16 partition for puppy system files as well as pup save configuration files, and a large ext3 partition for data.

* the super floppy mode takes you to GParted.

2. To install puppy, click on the Install Puppy to sdX (or hdY) located on top of puppy universal installer wizard.

See here:



* You will then be asked if your puppy linux cd is in ur cd rom. press enter if it is, and then choose to have syslinux installed from the next installer wizard page.
* An orange box then shows up on desktop. just press enter for 2-3 questions asked, and you're done with installation
* Note: Don't use partition tools found on puppy installer. universal installer detects file system wrongly made with these tools.

Pendrive Linux :-

Download USB package from downloads.sourceforge.net/pendrivelinux/Pendrive08 .zip(remove the spaces between .zip) and its size is 493 MB.

How to install :-

1. Double click on Pendrivelinux08.zip package. This opens archive manager. Drag and drop them into usb partition.Pendrive linux can be only made bootable through windows :-\

To avoid using windows to make drive bootable, copy /boot folder of slax or goblinx to the pendrive and then

execute step 2. aftr that deleted /boot folder.

2. Open the terminal and change to the /boot directory copied on usb. Run the bootinst.sh script as root user.Login passsword is root, while for the guest, it is guest.

That was all about how to install linux on pen drive. there are many other good distros of linux for pen drive. try them.

credits : oug - suppi