CrunchBang on USB

[TheBeast32]

Hi, I'm going to install CrunchBang Linux on my 2GB pen drive. I was just wondering about the way it saves stuff. Do you have to back up and restore your data and settings every time you shutdown and boot like when using Damn Small Linux for everything to be saved?

[John A]

>Do you have to back up and restore your data and settings every time
>you shutdown
That would depend on how you install Crunchbang to your USB pendrive. As far as I know, Crunchbang wasn't ever designed to run on a flash drive, which means it's up to you how it's installed.

A ramdisk environment, which is what Damn Small Linux runs off of, works with a virtual Linux filesystem loaded from a file into memory. Any changes to the filesystem only change what's in the memory (i.e. it's volatile), so your changes aren't saved. Presumably Damn Small Linux is setup this way to reduce the number of reads to your USB drive, which means it'll run faster. If you want a ramdisk-based environment, you'll need to do something similar to this.

If you install Crunchbang so it maintains your settings as a non-volatile device, you'll end up with an ext2/3 filesystem on your thumbdrive, complete with a full install of Crunchbang. Your pendrive is basically acting as an external hard drive. (Which also means it won't run as fast as DSL.) Installing will depend on how Crunchbang's installer is. If you're lucky, you might just be able to select the USB drive as your target drive and it'll install everything normally. If not, another method is to install it first on your hard drive, then copy the files over to your pendrive and then make it bootable.

[TheBeast32]

Thanks, I'll see if I can do what you said. I just have to download the distro because it's like 700 mb.