Opensuse bootable flash drive

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VladDracule

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
Messages
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Hello all,

Im trying to create an opensuse system where its just bootable from a flash drive (not recommended because itll shorten the life of the flash drive i know but i only need it for roughly 6 months for a school project)

Im having issues when i try to do this however

First thing i tried was just downloading the installation .iso and burning it to a disk and then booting from that disk and going through the installation process (Creating the partitions, SWAP, main etc)

This seemed to work and i could boot into open suse however it also installed a grub on my computer which then caused issues. If i did not have the flash drive installed into my usb port the grub loader would give me an error saying it wasnt finding one of the disks

I then thought id just remove grub so i repaired the windows boot file using cmd prompt with my win 7 disk installed and then tried just booting directly from the usb device, and again grub popped up giving me an error and it would not boot.

What am i doing wrong?

ps im trying to use opensuse 12.1 not the latest 12.2
 
im not sure a live CD type device is exactly what im looking for, because i need to be able to install software run and compile code. Is that all possible with a livecd setup on USB stick?
 
This should help with your windows drive. You need to fix the mbr.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

Live CD's are generally static although there are ways of altering them. For what you want, you need a dedicated environment.

Next time you install to a flash drive, check the bootloader changes the installer wants to do and don't allow it to add the windows drive to the mix. If you're booting from the flash drive, you don't need a windows boot option anyway. That will happen when you pluck the usb drive out.
 
What you're doing wrong is assuming that opensuse would be designed, tested, and able to do this well. If there isnt a faq or wiki or forum showing people successfully doing this all the time, you're on the unbeaten path, which means risk, work, and help required. Your next step is asking opensuse experts on an opensuse forum or mailing list, and if that doesnt work, switching distros and starting over. My advice is virtualize it.
 
It has been done it works with external hard drives so theres no reason it shouldnt with an external flash drive
 
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