Andrew Pritchard wrote: > I was given a rather funky Xmas present - a USB flashdrive/watch > (http://www.memixdirect.com) which says it's bootable. It also claims to be > Linux 2.4 compatible, though I've not yet tried connecting it to a Linux > box.
At 256 mb, that's big enough to include a full debian installation on the watch. You should be able to fit debian and maybe X and some personal files (gpg key?) on there. Another option is that debian's next-generation installation system can use such a USB drive as install media instead of a CDROM. You can then boot many computers from your watch, and do a debian install on them. This would eat about 128 MB and could be made to cooexist with other uses of the watch with some work; see http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ for details. > I'd also like to create a bootdisk, which has a Linux kernel on it as my NT > box at work won't talk to anything USB (gaahh we hateessss NT! *sorry - been > watching too much LotR*). Specifically so it can talk to the NTFS partition > on my machine at work. Alternatively I'll repartition the machine and create > a FAT partition so Linux can talk to that. The machine at work isn't new > enough to be able to boot from a USB device :( > > Has anyone tried either/both of these? Can anyone give me some pointers > about where to start with either of these projects? The debian-installer project includes a boot floppy which has the necessary USB drivers. You boot from the floppy, and it will find a USB device with an initrd.gz on it, then mount the initrd and chroot into it, and run its init. While this is intended to boot d-i in circumstances like you describe, there's no reason you could not build your own initrd.gz with anything you like in it and boot it this way. > Hoping you all had a Merry Christmas, and going to have a happy new year! No toys that fun (and I don't like wearing a watch).. Hope you have fun with it! -- see shy jo
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