One pendrive for all PC (Intel/AMD) computers

Tue Dec 29 17:36:18 UTC 2015

Hello guys, I posted some news on:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2276498&page=2

I'm booting UEFI with two different partitions, iso files located on EXT4
partition...

2015-06-25 22:11 GMT-03:00 Israel <israeldahl at gmail.com>:

> Hi,
> I agree with Nio, in theory (or at least from what I can understand about
> it) I also think a casper read-write partition would work.  You might look
> at the usb-creator source code:
> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~usb-creator-hackers/usb-creator/trunk/files
> it is written in Python, so it may take some time to understand the
> process.  You might even be able to take some code form it and make
> something along the lines of a One Pendrive for all x86 based computers
> (well... realistically only 586+ as cmov is not supported in any modern
> Ubuntu kernels and neither is non-PAE)
>
>
>
> On 06/24/2015 11:34 AM, Andre Campos Rodovalho wrote:
>
> > I'm thinking about the casper-rw partition. Could it be used for the iso
> > files in a convenient way? Maybe - and it is better to have few
> > partitions, when the drive is small.
>
> Unfortunately I don't know much about casper-rw. I think using it with an
> regular ISO might not be easy. I have no idea how these partitions are
> mounted... Maybe is a custom configuration made by startup disk creator!?
>
> I made a usb bootable device with startup disk creator and persistence a
> long time ago. I noticed the content of iso was extracted to the drive, and
> the persistence was made with a file...
>
> 2015-06-24 12:28 GMT-03:00 Nio Wiklund <nio.wiklund at gmail.com>:
>
>> Hi Andre,
>>
>> Nice to see you here again. I notice that your tutorial thread at the
>> Ubuntu Forums is attracting many readers :-)
>>
>> Yes I know there are advantages with ext partitions and how to tweak
>> them for optimal performance and lifetime on a pendrive, but I didn't
>> want to make the setup too complicated. You may be right, that there are
>> enough advantages with ext filesystems, so that I should store the
>> isofiles there (and have only a small fat32 partition to allow for UEFI
>> booting).
>>
>> Anyway, pendrives are often slow, and I have found that rsync behaves
>> much better than zsync, when the target drive for updating is a
>> pendrive. I think this is true also with ext filesystems.
>>
>> One big advantage is that there is no need for copying/cloning/flashing
>> from the internal drive to the pendrive. The slowness of the internet
>> connection matches quite well the slowness of a USB 2 connection, so you
>> don't lose much time anyway.
>>
>> Fragmentation is another reason to avoid fat 32. I guess I have to watch
>> out for that, but as long as the iso files remain about the same size
>> and the file system is far from full, that should be a small problem in
>> this case.
>>
>> I'm thinking about the casper-rw partition. Could it be used for the iso
>> files in a convenient way? Maybe - and it is better to have few
>> partitions, when the drive is small.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Nio
>>
>>
>> Den 2015-06-24 14:35, Andre Campos Rodovalho skrev:
>> > Hey Nio, you can use ext4 partition and grub2 for a BIOS boot. (This
>> > might allow you to zsync, for testing..)
>> >
>> > Another option might be to create a first "boot" partition with
>> > GPT+FAT32, but set up GRUB2 to load images in a second ext4 partition,
>> > (where the ISO files will be stored).
>> >
>> > I know this should work, but I had no time to test it out yet...
>> >
>> > Cheers!
>> >
>> >
>> > 2015-06-19 15:43 GMT-03:00 Nio Wiklund <nio.wiklund at gmail.com
>> > <mailto:nio.wiklund at gmail.com>>:
>> >
>> >     Hi again :-)
>> >
>> >     There is one minor edit:
>> >
>> >     I wrote 'You can even zsync the Lubuntu daily iso file directly
>> into the
>> >     pendrive for iso-testing.' That was to promise too much. I tried,
>> and
>> >     found that zsync is slow with a slow drive and uses some features
>> of an
>> >     ext file system while we are using fat32. It is better to use
>> *rsync*
>> >     (which is also an alternative in the instructions for iso-testing. I
>> >     made this script for 'wily-desktop-i386.iso',
>> >
>> >     --------------------------------------------------------------
>> >     echo "***** get/update iso file with  rsync:"
>> >     rsync -tzhhP
>> >     rsync://
>> cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/lubuntu/daily-live/current/wily-desktop-i386.iso
>> >     <
>> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/lubuntu/daily-live/current/wily-desktop-i386.iso
>> >
>> >     .
>> >
>> >     echo "
>> >     ***** check md5sum:"
>> >     wget -O md5sums
>> >     http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/daily-live/current/MD5SUMS
>> >     grep wily-desktop-i386.iso md5sums>md5sum-desktop
>> >     md5sum -c md5sum-desktop
>> >     --------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >     You need space for two versions of the iso file (plus a little extra
>> >     margin). The old one is not wiped until the new one is complete.
>> >
>> >     Best regards
>> >     Nio
>> >
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Regards
>
>
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