[Fedora-livecd-list] Is it possible to have an updatable system on a usb stick?

[Richard Shaw]

On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 7:49 AM, Rahul Sundaram
<sundaram at fedoraproject.org>wrote:

> Anne Wilson wrote:
>
>> My laptop runs Mandriva, but because I do end-user support for both
>> Mandriva and Fedora issues I'd like to have both systems.  Unfortunately I
>> simply don't have enough drive space to install another OS, so I wondered
>> whether I could actually install F9 onto an 8GB usb stick.
>>
>> I've read http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/USBHowTo and
>> http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/11/07/i-am-fedora-and-so-can-you/, but
>> these seem to refer to a non-upgradable system.  Since I need to be able to
>> use KDE 4.1 that won't suffice.
>>
>> Can anyone please point me to useful reading, or give a brief rundown of
>> tasks and things to remember in doing this?
>>
>
> The USB howto will work fine. You can currently upgrade everything on the
> USB key except the kernel IIRC. It is really no different from running off a
> hard disk other than the fact that it is more portable.
>
> Rahul
>

This has not been my experience. I was actually able to update the kernel
without problem but several other packages have caused problems, most
notably udev which had an issue during reboot with an error about loading
the 50-udev-default.rules.

I've also had problems with updating xorg. X tried and failed to load, but
instead of only trying 3 times it went into an infinite loop.

Also, after reading a previous post on this list, I would keep updates to
only things you care about since the overlay file records block changes and
you will eventually run out of overlay.

My HW if anyone is interested:
HP 8510w (Laptop workstation)
Core2Duo (2.4GHz)
Centrino vPro chipset.
Nvidia Quadro 256MB

Richard
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