Disqus - Latest Comments for farrisgoldstein

Re: Portable Ubuntu - Part 2

farrisgoldstein — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:49:48 -0000

I think the most likely problem is that you're doing something you're not telling us, and THAT'S causing it to break. ;)

Seriously, I have done this in general, with 7.10, on no less than 30 machines with at least 5 different cocktails of bios/usb/drive/chipset. The only time I've ever had a problem that couldn't be attributed to user error was when I actually had a bad drive.

Don't know what else to say. You're either still trying to do something the hard/"right"/wrong way, or you've just got some absolutely horrible luck.

Re: Portable Ubuntu Problems

farrisgoldstein — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:06:54 -0000

Your scientific method is flawed anyway, since the ultimate goal is to boot this on your laptop, which has a different bios, different chipsets, different diseases and different sexual orientations.

If you really want to LEARN what it's doing/when... Hey, it's F/OSS, and I'm pretty sure all the install scripts that do the grubbing and whatnot are easy to find.

Re: Portable Ubuntu Problems

farrisgoldstein — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:38:39 -0000

Bastard! You told me last week you were using a Dell. What is it then? No matter what it is, it's probably easy to remove. And, given the nature of my job, whatever model it is, I've probably stripped it down.

If you follow these steps, which will take only a minute or two more than an Ubuntu install, you will end up with either a working system or proof that something is "wrong." Throw out your "This should work, so I won't use a logical algorithm to figure out why it won't" pride for just long enough to get it done. I paint myself into this corner all the time and it's very liberating to just give into the process:

1) Take out the internal drive.
2) Install Ubuntu, as plain-jane as possible, and let the installer handle grub. If you MUST muck with the partitioning, JUST shrink the size of the "/" filesystem it wants to make, then rearrange when you're through. This is, in my opinion, faster and cleaner anyway.
3) Replace the internal drive, and make sure your BIOS is set to boot in "CDROM->USB->INTERNALHDD" order.

If, after that, Ubuntu does not boot when the USB drive is plugged in, then it's almost certainly true that something is wrong, and no amount of manual grubbery will help you until you rule out which hardware/firmware/software is the culprit.

Re: Portable Ubuntu Problems

farrisgoldstein — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:57:42 -0000

As much as I love Ubuntu, everytime I've tried to do manual partitioning I ended up with a mess to clean up. So I usually let it do it's thing, leaving unused space on the drive so I can change my file system layout later.

That said, I think you might get quick results, or at least gain more information, if you run through the install again and just let it do what it wants with partitions (except maybe shrink it's / partition) and grub. This is, of course, counter-productive since by default it might install grub to your internal drive.

You can get around all of it if you just take your internal drive out before you do the install. Sounds crazy, but it only takes 15 seconds on a Dell.

Re: help: portable bus-powered USB hard drives

farrisgoldstein — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:40:32 -0000

I used to have a few Lacie devices. The ones I had were very unreliable, but I've read that they've gotten much better, and that they've even jumped segments from super-cheap to super-reliable.

They also have a line called "Big Disk" which is, hands down, the best name for a storage product EVER.

Re: help: portable, internet capable devices

farrisgoldstein — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:12:41 -0000

Xubuntu. You'll love it.

Otherwise, if you really want to go as tiny as possible, go with DSL (Damn Small Linux), but it's not nearly as cool as Xubuntu.

Re: help: portable, internet capable devices

farrisgoldstein — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:57:21 -0000

Wait, your dayjob is locking down (and presumably encrypting) your laptop, but not issuing you something newer than that old Dell you have?

If you were getting a new one, with built-in wireless and whatnot, I'd say go with linux-on-a-flash-drive in a heartbeat. Even a decently well stocked Ubuntu install can come in under 2GB, and flash sticks are coming down on $/G all the time. Even WITH the old laptop, I'd probably go that route, since Feisty hasn't had any trouble with any cardbus 802.11 card I've thrown at it so far.