On 2015-11-26, rlhar...@oplink.net <rlhar...@oplink.net> wrote: > On Wed, November 25, 2015 9:37 pm, David Christensen wrote: >> No, I'm talking about disconnecting all hard disk drives and solid state >> drives, plugging in a USB flash drive, booting a Debian installer CD, and >> installing Debian onto the USB flash drive. Debian then runs from the USB >> flash drive as if it were a HDD/ SDD -- e.g. /dev/sda. Next, I install >> whatever tasksel package sets I want, install whatever apt/ dpkg/ *.deb >> packages I want, install whatever other software I want, and configure >> things how I want. I now have a USB flash drive that I can boot in most >> other machines (up to ~10 years old) and have a Debian environment with >> exactly what I want. > > Which arrangement sounds like exactly what I wished to find. Thanks much; > I shall give it a try. > > Dare I ask whether this would work with a USB-interface drive such as the > Toshiba Canvio Connect II (reformatted, for example, to ext4)? >
By the way this can be done neatly in kvm, for example (I have done it myself, actually) with the netinstall.iso in your home directory, for example (yes, I know, I said for example twice). Here's the magic formula: kvm -hda /dev/sdc -boot d -cdrom netinstall.iso where /dev/sdc is your usb flash drive and netinst.iso is your, well, netinstall.iso. I used the big 266 mb (give or take) one. No danger of installing onto the wrong medium and wiping out all your fond memories (if you get the /dev/sdc part right) because the installer only sees the flash drive. Anyhoo.
