On Thu, 18 Nov 2021 at 20:20, linux guy <linuxguy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> From time to time I need to do maintenance on Linux computers that > involves booting an OS other than the one installed on the machine. > Currently I have 2 computers that need such attention. > > In the past I've used Live bootable USB drives. They have a number of > limitations including: > > - they use Gnome. I'm a KDE guy. > - they lack many of the tools I need - gparted, etc. > - they don't support persistence, so every time I boot with them I'm > running a script to get everything set up to where I was the last time I > booted. > > One can supposedly make Live USB images persistent, but 1) it didn't work > when I tried it and 2) there are limitations, including that do a major > upgrade to the Live installation. (ie, no dnf updates) > > So... I'm thinking of installing Fedora35 for real on a USB drive and then > using that for my maintenance work. Has anyone done this ? Tips ? > Tricks ? Advice ? > > I'm specifically wondering about setting up partitions on a USB device. > Same as a SATA device ? Anything special about booting a USB device > instead of a SATA or NVME device ? > You can install linux on a USB flash drive or other external drives. It is nice to have a full linux system available so you can save things from the system you are rescuing, but you may need to use the rescue kernel with machines different from the one you are rescuing. Some older hardware may not be supported by newer kernels, so you want to check that all the systems you may need to rescue can boot your rescue drive. Typical USB flash drives are not meant for this use case, and my experience has been that USB flash drives used this way didn't last very long. There are often small NVME SSD drives sitting in junk drawers because they were replaced with larger drives. I put one in a small case from Pluggable. USB flash drives are so cheap that it makes sense to have a couple of them in case one dies. Cheap is also good if you need different linux versions to cover all the systems that may need rescue. In the distant past I used a Knoppix < https://www.knopper.net/knoppix/knoppix910-en.html> DVD for maintenance and rescuing data from Windows machines that refused to boot. -- George N. White III
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