Hello all, I had run into this post about modifications that would tune a full install on a thumb drive to work better with the flash, and just received a reply, so for those of you that would like to try it here is what is suggested. -Alexander <div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: FedoraForum.org <<a href="http://fedoraforum.org">fedoraforum.org</a>@<a href="http://googlemail.com">googlemail.com</a>> Date: Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 8:05 PM Subject: New Private Message at FedoraForum.org To: <a href="mailto:xander.pirdy@gmail.com">xander.pirdy@gmail.com</a> DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL! *************************** Dear apirdy, You have received a new private message at FedoraForum.org from DZ*, entitled "Re: Full install to flash media". To read the original version, respond to, or delete this message, you must log in here: <a href="http://forums.fedoraforum.org/private.php" target="_blank">http://forums.fedoraforum.org/private.php</a> This is the message that was sent: *************** ---Quote (Originally by apirdy)--- Hello, I just ran across your post @ <a href="http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=225095" target="_blank">http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=225095</a>. I was wondering if you could detail more specifically what you did to prevent writing to the media often, and prevent wearing out your disk (ie. how do you put tmp and logs into a ram drive, and what flags did you add to boot options and how). I am a somewhat experienced linux user, though I am new to fedora. Also do you know if a full install can be done to a fat(32 or 16) formatted usb drive? Would this require installing isolinux rather than grub? Do you know how to do this as well, and would that require different boot options? Thank you very much for any help you can give me. -Xander ---End Quote--- You could install on a flash just as if it was a hard drive. Nothing really specific to the fact that it is a USB stick. Just be careful during the install. If the stick is /dev/sdc watch not to put grub on /dev/sda. You could remove the hard drive to be safe. So it doesn't matter how it is formatted. The stick will be reformatted (I use ext4) during the install. I use the following modifications, they seem to speed up performance considerably. 1. assuming ext4, tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/xxx (/dev/xxx is the root partition on unmounted stick) then add data=writeback to "/" mount options in /etc/fstab 2. Add noatime,commit=60 to "/" mount options in /etc/fstab 3. Put tmp into RAM: Add to /etc/fstab: tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0 4. add elevator=noop to kernel boot options (in /boot/grub/menu.lst) I also resized the swap partition to 0 and added that space to the root partition, by using gparted (unmount first), then mounted the stick and removed the swap entry from fstab. I did this because I use encrypted home and I don't want unencrypted stuff to end up in swap. Although it's possible to set up encrypted swap, I thought I can live without having swap at all. *************** Again, please do not reply to this email. You must go to the following page to reply to this private message: <a href="http://forums.fedoraforum.org/private.php" target="_blank">http://forums.fedoraforum.org/private.php</a> All the best, FedoraForum.org </div>