ReiserFS or ext3 on USB flash drive?

[William Park]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 11:10:58AM -0500, bassix-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org wrote:
> I would like to know if this is possible:
> 
> 1) Installed distro on hard drive (size around 1.5GB).
> 
> 2) Format a 2GB USB 2.0 FLASH drive with ReiserFS or ext3.
> 
> 3) Completely move the hard drive installed distro to the USB FLASH
> drive (which would be bootable). I've seen instructions for moving
> installed OS to another partition, so I assume the same instructions
> would work.
> 
> Has anyone ever done this? Will it work? I'm hoping to create a
> "customized" distro install that I can take and plug into different
> machines. I'd like to have a real OS as opposed to a live cd so that I
> can still update and upgrade.
> 
> Is this feasible? Does anyone know of any potential pitfalls from
> trying this?
> 
> Any help would be appreciated as always.
> 
> -Steve.

1. Yes, it will work.  In fact, that how my USB thin-client works (See
    my .sig).  It boots and runs off USB key drive.

2. Now, you don't need to install to harddisk and then copy to USB key.
    You can install directly to USB key.  Key insight here is
	USB key == SCSI harddisk
    that is, you'll see it as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, or ...

3. As for Ext3 and Reiserfs, I recommend 'ext2' with 'noatime' mount
    option.  Since it will be root device, it has to be writeable.  But,
    you can turn off logging, or use ramdisk for /tmp and the likes.

-- 
William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>, Toronto, Canada
ThinFlash: Linux thin-client on USB key (flash) drive
	   http://home.eol.ca/~parkw/thinflash.html
BashDiff: Super Bash shell
	  http://freshmeat.net/projects/bashdiff/
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