Creating an USB machine

Finding out USB drive

Just after plug an USB pendrive, it will be reported to messages

# dmesg | tail

[83849.723172] scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices

[83849.723257] usb-storage: device found at 7

[83849.723259] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning

[83854.720315] usb-storage: device scan complete

[83854.753307] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Kingston DT 101 G2 PMAP PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS

[83856.221935] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] 15646720 512-byte logical blocks: (8.01 GB/7.46 GiB)

[83856.224195] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off

[83856.224199] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00

[83856.224202] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through

[83856.228811] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through

[83856.228815] sdd: sdd1 sdd2

[83856.256440] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through

[83856.256444] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk

Getting ready

Probably auto-mount has mounted the drive, so, umount it

# df -h /dev/sdd1

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sdd1 1.9G 997M 786M 56% /media/KINGSTON

# umount /dev/sdd1

Installation

The idea is to start a new fresh installation in a virtual machine environment using the USB drive as primary disk. I prefer to use i386 distribution to make it compatible in a wide of systems. It will takes a long time than usual.

kvm /dev/sdd -net nic -net tap -cdrom debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso -boot d

Booting

After installation, shutdown the virtual machine, remove the pendrive and try it booting a real machine. You will have to configure BIOS machine in order to boot from USB. It will work fantastic giving you a portable linux.