[nmglug] Thanks -re:usb drives,

[Geoff Chesshire]

Hi Ted et al,

> Thanks to all on the session last night working on making of a live boot  
> usb drive.

I make bootable USB flash drives all the time.  Typically it takes 30-40  
minutes.  I can take pretty much any previously-installed debian, ubuntu,  
mint, etc., system (either physical or virtual) and make a bootable  
fully-encrypted copy of it on an external drive (e.g., a USB stick).  Just  
yesterday, I put Ubuntu 13.04 on a 16GB stick for someone, which took 35  
minutes.  The cool thing about doing it this way is that you can customize  
and upgrade the source (e.g., virtual) machine ahead of time, and then  
make as many copies of it as you like, each with a different machine name,  
admin user name/password and encryption key/password.  I once used the  
same technique to copy my original laptop drive onto a new drive (attached  
by eSATA) with full encryption, all while booted up from such a USB  
stick.  I'll try to show up for the next meeting to try this for anyone  
who may be interested.

BTW, we had our install-fest in White Rock last Tuesday.  It was a bit  
chaotic, to say the least ... some lessons learned.  We tried getting  
people to use Yumi to make USB sticks with multiple installation images.   
I had pre-downloaded a bunch of images and served these by HTTP over the  
LAN.  I also pre-cached upgrades to debian, ubuntu and mint distributions  
using apt-cacher-ng to serve these over the LAN.  It was way too much to  
expect for one evening!  It would have been better just to provide some  
pre-burned DVDs, pre-loaded Yumi sticks, and maybe the option to use the  
above-mentioned technique to make some bootable USB sticks for folks.

Thanks,
Geoff