[Discuss] Persistent mode with Mandriva live CD

[Murray Strome]

----- Original Message -----
From: John Blomfield <jabfield at shaw.ca>
Date: Friday, December 14, 2007 11:31 pm
Subject: Re: [Discuss] Persistent mode with Mandriva live CD
To: Murray Strome <wmstrome at shaw.ca>

> Murray Strome wrote:
> > John Blomfield wrote:
> >> I think this is what I was saying above?  You appear to 
> have a full 
> >> install on your Pen Drive NOT a Live image.  With an 8G 
> pen there 
> >> aren't any restraints on the number of packages you can 
> install.  But 
> >> be warned if you are planning to use this on someone else's 
> computer 
> >> that may have a completely different BIOS and you will not be 
> able to 
> >> boot it without a boot CD.
> >>
> >> John Blomfield
> >>
> > I realize that this may not work on another computer, 
> especially since 
> > it is the 64-bit version!  And it probably is a full 
> install, but it 
> > doesn't matter to me as the HD MBR is unscathed, I can access 
> all the 
> > Windows partitions OK, and I also have a 20GB LINUX partition 
> on the 
> > HD onto which I have now copied most of my home directory from 
> my 
> > working Desktop LINUX machine.
> >
> This is all very interesting!  Out of curiosity I tried to 
> do a full 
> install from Kubuntu Desktop CD and from Fedora KDE Live CD but 
> both 
> failed because my pen is only 2GB and both distros want 2GB ext3 
> plus 
> 250MB swap.  However, I was able to get far enough along to 
> confirm that 
> it would work in principle given enough Giga Bytes.  This 
> would be a lot 
> simpler than the command line approach outline in the Ubuntu 
> guide you 
> used but may take longer.
> 
> The other interesting point is that the Fedora and Kubuntu Live 
> CD's 
> uses a completely different format.  Fedora as I mentioned 
> before uses a 
> compressed image file where as Kubuntu uses an open file tree 
> with 
> (would you believe) Windows executable files and dll's.  I 
> wonder what 
> license covers that???????????  Kubuntu must be using a 
> Windows based 
> installer?
> 
> John Blomfield

I think the Windows stuff is used for looking at the material from Windows, not installation.  I had tried to do an install to a pen drive some time ago, putting the boot (GRUB) on the USB drive, but it messed up the MBR. It took a lot of work to fix that in VISTA (much more complicated than XP). The installation I did using the method I outlined earlier worked fine. If the USB drive is in place, Kubuntu boots.  If it is not inserted, VISTA boots normally.

Murray