Thumb Driving

This is the HOW TO for installing and running Linux from a USB Thumb Drive. Find a live CD version of Linux, ie (Knoppix, Slax, Ubuntu) If you want a small distribution I would use Slax. It will fit on 180MB. Find a thumb drive big enough to store the CD. Partition and Format the drive using FAT. Windows users can goto My Computer, right click the Thumb Drive and Click FORMAT. Make sure that you change the file system type to FAT not FAT32. Linux users run cfdisk to make a FAT partition to the full length of the drive. If cfdisk dosen't work you may have to run fdisk and delete all the partitions. Boot the Linux Distribution off of the CD or your hard drive if you have linux installed. Mount the CD and the Thumb Drive.

mount /mnt/cdrom/

mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/sda1

Copy the CD to the Thumb Drive

cp -ra /mnt/cdrom/* /mnt/sda1/

Make sure vmlinux and initrd.gz are in the root of the drive.

Run Syslinux.

syslinux -s /dev/sda

If you are installing SLAX Try the MySLAXCreator. http://myslax.bonsonno.org/download.php