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[John]

Daniel Stone wrote:

>On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 07:15:24PM -0700, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
>  
>
>>On Mon, Sep 20, 2004 at 09:28:31AM +0800, John wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Can Ubuntu handle /usr being on USB?
>>>      
>>>
>>I don't think anyone has yet had the masochistic streak required to attempt
>>such a thing.  Let us know how it turns out. :-)
>>    
>>
>
>I have a USB 2.5" hard drive enclosure I'm now suddenly very tempted to
>install on.
>
>  
>
Installing on it should be fine, especially if you can boot it.

I muffed copying /usr to it and when I rebooted I had some interesting 
problems.

What I did was
Create /USR
Copy /usr to it badly
Rename /usr to /Usr
mkdir /usr
edit /etc/fstab
reboot

It came up without /usr

Problem 1. No sudo, it's in /usr isn't it.
I explicitly ran it from ?Usr/sbin
Problem 2
No text editor. It's in /usr someplace
I explicitly tried /Usr/bin/vim (no vi)
Shared library probs.

Hmm.
I'm root now, so I mounted the USB drive and sorted out what's wrong 
with it.

I guess Installing to USB should be done because
a. A bootable USB drive is a handy thing to have in one's shirt pocket 
or handbag.
b. Someone is going to do. Good to be ready.

Also, sitting down and making sure the system is recoverable if /usr is 
hard to find should be done. Booting a recovery CD (or USB disk) isn't 
always possible.

ps Has anyone tried booting to single-user mode? I think I saw a fly in 
that ointment a while ago.