Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Portable Gentoo (Pen Drive Linux)
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 13:09:15
Message-Id: 532D8B50.8020001@gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Portable Gentoo (Pen Drive Linux) by Nilesh Govindrajan
1 On 22/03/2014 15:00, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote:
2 > On 22-Mar-2014 5:42 pm, "Brian Hesdorfer" <zerophnx@×××××.com
3 > <mailto:zerophnx@×××××.com>> wrote:
4 >>
5 >>
6 >> On 3/21/2014 9:53 PM, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote:
7 >>>
8 >>> Hi,
9 >>>
10 >>> Since I don't have a laptop, I'm thinking of installing Gentoo on my
11 >>> USB 3 pen drive. I'll use binpkgs from my desktop so that pen drive
12 >>> lives long.
13 >>>
14 >>> Has anybody tried Samsung's F2FS? I heard it performs better than the
15 >>> traditional ext4/xfs/etc on flash drives.
16 >>>
17 >>> Also the pen drive will be used on random hardware (which can be a
18 >>> laptop or a desktop), so what else do I need to consider other than
19 >>> using genkernel's default configuration (the livecd config, which
20 >>> enables all modules)?
21 >>>
22 >>
23 >> FWIW, I've been F2FS plus encryption with Arch and haven't had any
24 > problems. I'd suggest having anything important backed up somewhere else
25 > since it's still seen as experimental (I think).
26 >>
27 >
28 > Of course. Pen drives are as such not very reliable, so backups are a must.
29 >
30 >> If you're using it on random hardware and want X, you'll have to
31 > include the variety of video cards you might run into (Intel, ATI,
32 > Nvidia) in your USE flags.
33 >>
34 >
35 > Will it work out the box without configuration?
36 >
37 >> Also, be wary of the predictable naming for network interfaces
38 > (enp5s0, enp9s2,etc). You might want to disable that feature using
39 > something like "net.ifnames=0" in your bootloader or a udev rule so you
40 > can just set eth0 to DHCP and it will work on most machines.
41 >>
42 >
43 > NetworkManager helps with that, or may be just run dhcpcd.
44 >
45
46
47 I suspect you will end up duplicating a lot of work that is already done
48 elsewhere by the binary distros. You'll probably also have your hands
49 full just trying to keep up with video hardware as you'll need at least
50 intel, fglrx and nvidia drivers (plus maybe nouveau and radeon).
51
52 Are you 100% sure you want to go that route? Sounds like a huge amount
53 of work. In your position, I would rather investigate a LiveCD type
54 solution with a persistent fs layer on top and let the distro do all the
55 heavy lifting.
56
57 Especially as you don't have the target hardware to hand for testing,
58 you can only test by plugging the stick and seeing if it works.
59
60
61
62
63 --
64 Alan McKinnon
65 alan.mckinnon@×××××.com

Replies

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Re: [gentoo-user] Portable Gentoo (Pen Drive Linux) Nilesh Govindrajan <me@××××××××.com>