Installing on a USB drive

[Bill McGonigle]

On Jul 14, 2004, at 20:52, Tom Buskey wrote:

> Knoppix boots from CD and will store $HOME and your setting to an USB 
> drive too.  With encryption.

Knoppix is probably the right route.  You can use it to install Debian 
onto pretty much anything it can mount.  A generic USB mass storage 
device ought to work though I haven't tried it.  Your BIOS might be 
able to present it as something else too.

I have a nice webpage saved but sadly don't have the URL.  Here are the 
steps it lists:

Installation Procedure
To get Knoppix installed onto your hard drive:

    1. Boot the Knoppix CD.

    2. When the boot prompt comes up, choose your language.
       Most of us speak English, so we'll type:

           boot: knoppix lang=en

       then press ENTER (you don't type the 'boot:' part, of course)

    3. Wait till the system is fully launched, including the KDE desktop

    4. Press CTRL-ALT-F1, to get a root console. You should see a shell 
prompt

    5. Type: knx-hdinstall

    6. Follow the guided installation menus. This will include:

           * Creating a Linux partition (at least 2.5GB
           * Creating a Linux Swap partition (at least 256MB)
           * 'Mounting' the Linux partition as root
           * Initialising the swap partition
           * Copying all the required files (automatically)
           * Setting up networking
           * Setting passwords
           * Setting up the bootloader (Note: take care with this stage 
- it could render your system incapable of booting into Windows. If you 
really need Windows, then it might be a good idea to set up GRUB 
Bootloader with a 'chainloader' entry, so that you can dual boot. 
Working this out is an exercise left to the reader - there are too many 
possible scenarios for me to cover in this short guide. Also see man 
grub and the files in /usr/share/doc/grub)
           * Rebooting (without the CD)

    7. When you've rebooted Knoppix from your hard disk, click on the 
KDE Control Centre icon in the launcher at the bottom of the screen 
(icon of a colour monitor with a card in front of it)

    8. Within the Control Center, click on Personliche Einstellungen

    9. Click on Land und Sprache

   10. Choose the locale and language of your choice

   11. Click on Andwenden at bottom of that window

   12. Close and restart the Control Center

   13. Click on Peripherals, then Keyboard, and choose your preferred 
keyboard layout (which will probably be US.English. Click OK and close 
the window

   14. Press CTRL-ALT-F2 to get to the root console, and log in as root 
(using the password you chose when you ran the installer)

   15. (Optional) - type apt-get update (followed by ENTER). This will 
update your list of available packages, and takes about 5-10 minutes.

   16. Hey, presto, you've got a fully installed GNU/Linux desktop

The only downside is you wind up configured for German mirrors, at 
least in the copy I have, so you have to edit the sources APT uses.

-Bill

----
Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC              Home: 603.448.1668
bill at bfccomputing.com           Cell: 603.252.2606
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