[Dapper Dan]

Yeeehaaa! I just got my new 128 mb usb stick mounted and working! It's a Lexar JumpDrive I got on sale for 20 bucks at OfficeMax. I know this is probably not very interesting news for the rest of you, but I'm having a lot of fun with it, and just wanted to tell someone!

[Degenerate]

Good for you!

Have a whole lotta fun with that baby!

[danleff]

Must be the week of the "Dan's." I just got one of these myself. The goal? Make a USb rescue stick! Looking at Puppy Linux for this now..

[Dapper Dan]

danleff, that's exactly what I'm working on!
Mine is loaded with bbc rescue. How much of a hassel is it going to be to have one fire up at boot? None of my box's bios will boot usb although I understand some bios(s) have updates that will make it where you can. Got any pages I could look at on this? Have you been successfull? Thanks!

[danleff]

That's the 1,000,000 dollar question! One of my Soyo board's bios will and one won't. If you can find a bios update that allows USB booting, this is the issue.

What I have been fumbling with is what the bios will accept. I will have to look into it further, but, you are correct. Some suggest that you need to set the first boot option to USB ZIP (if it is available) and some note USB HD. I have tried both with little results.

I will look at my notes, try again and see what happens. I can't remember which worked until I trashed it. Either way, once I could boot to a menu, but no options worked to actually reach a command prompt or GUI.

There are a few, Runt and SBlinux and Puppy, but I will let you know what happens.

[Dapper Dan]

Flonix makes a version of their distro specifically for usb stick but so far, I can only find the ISO in French and not English. Seems there should also be a way to boot usb from LILO or Grub...

[danleff]

Got it to work! Flonix...all kinds of issues with the included packages though. Let me look around a bit and post back. Yes, in English too!

[Dapper Dan]

I'm going to see if I can figure out how to scale down Morphix-lite to fit on my stick. What a great rescue distro! It saved me last night!

[jmdlcar]

Which linux works best with the usb reader/writer stick?

[Dapper Dan]

Which ever one will fit on it.

Really though, I guess many of them should be fine. I really like Morphix, and if I had a stick big enough for it, that's what I'd use. There's "Damn Small Linux" which comes in under 50 mb, and "BBC Rescue", which is what I'm currently using. I really think we are going to see a lot of new distos that will be targeted specifically to usb reader/writer sticks. Flonix has already got one out, and I think others will soon follow. It seems to be "the thing!"

[Dapper Dan]

danleff, there has suddenly been a lot of discussion over on the Morphix boards about USB stick. Alextreme, (Morphix creator and Moderator) is now working to pull the necessary elements together to make it all work in a separate module. If I'm understanding correctly, a USB stick loaded with Morphix may be able to boot from grub/lilo, or first with a floppy rather than having to do it from bios! This is exciting news! Check it out...

http://morphix.sourceforge.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=862&forum=3&jump=1