could I put a livesystem on an SD card? [solved]

[lonesomepoint]

I saw from recent =conversations that you have perfected the liveUSB process, so I tried it again for the first time in a few years, and successfully ran the liveUSB and installed to HD. My question is, would putting a livesystem on an SD card work? I ask 99% out of curiosity, but I might be out of USB ports one day, and my USB hub broke last week.

I'd just try it had I a spare card, but at the moment, I don't.

[BitJam]

Yes you can. There are two possible catches. First, it is possible the sdcard will not be recognized as a removable or usb device by the live-usb-maker program. In this case you can use the command line "live-usb-maker" with the --force=usb option. This will let you install to any drive so please be careful! The second possible problem is that not all system will boot from an sdcard.

[manyroads]

I saw from recent =conversations that you have perfected the liveUSB process, so I tried it again for the first time in a few years, and successfully ran the liveUSB and installed to HD. My question is, would putting a livesystem on an SD card work? I ask 99% out of curiosity, but I might be out of USB ports one day, and my USB hub broke last week.

I'd just try it had I a spare card, but at the moment, I don't.

Also an SD card will likely be Slllllooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww.

[Gordon Cooper]

Some machines have card readers that take an SD card - my old desk top does not, so use an SD to USB adapter and plug into the USB port. I wonder if the computer
thinks that this is a genuine USB? Manyroads wrote that SD card might be slow, this method via USB is fast. Just loaded 4 GB from an SD and it was on the HD in a
couple of blinks.

[penguin]

I saw from recent =conversations that you have perfected the liveUSB process, so I tried it again for the first time in a few years, and successfully ran the liveUSB and installed to HD. My question is, would putting a livesystem on an SD card work? I ask 99% out of curiosity, but I might be out of USB ports one day, and my USB hub broke last week.

I'd just try it had I a spare card, but at the moment, I don't.

What is your kaptop ? Find some of my early posts and see my experience on installin of Linux on SD Card. Ok. Shortly ....I have managed to install and use MX Linux/Sparky Linux(in 32 GB Sandisk SD Card), in my Lenovo X201i. Everything was fine. I have used a Sandisk Extreme.
I suggest:
Find a cheap Lenovo laptop X201 or X201i (Models up to T420 or X220) can boot form SD Card or any Laptop years 20111-2103 that can boot from SD Card.
Buy a 32 GB / 64 GB SD Card ( with higher write/read speed possible , equivalent to Class 10 or U3).

Have a look here :

Code: Select all

https://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/reviews/sd-cards/  

I think that you can manage to buy both (laptop and SD Card ) for 100 Euro ( if the laptop has 8 GB of ram will be great )
Remove HDD (You do need it).
Install MX Linux on SD Card and voilaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !!!!
You will have a fast, light,cheap and portable MX Linux laptop.

[chrispop99]

I've tried this with perhaps half a dozen different makes/models of laptop, but only one worked. That was a DELL Mini-10. It was dreadfully slow, although it wasn't that quick with a HDD install.

It would seem for it to work, the card reader needs to be connected to the USB bus, which is pretty uncommon.

Chris

[BitJam]

I've tried this with perhaps half a dozen different makes/models of laptop, but only one worked. That was a DELL Mini-10. It was dreadfully slow, although it wasn't that quick with a HDD install.

I got it to work on a Dell Mini-10 too, many years ago. The speed was okay.

If the problem is a lack of usb ports then you could easily boot a live system on the sdcard from a live-usb and then unplug the live-usb. The boot parameters "bdev=" "blab=" and "buuid=" can all be used to specify which device to look for the linuxfs file on and finish the boot. In this scenario you can unplug the usb device as soon as the system starts to boot because both the kernel and the initrd are loaded into RAM at the beginning of the boot process.

Also, if you have a grub bootloader on a bootable drive then you could easily do a frugal install to the sdcard. Just put an ext4 file system on it first. The frugal install runs just like the live system. During the frugal installation we create a file called grub.entry in the frugal directory. You can put this in your grub.cfg to boot the frugal system from any drive on the computer.

So there are two ways to boot the frugal install on the sdcard. You can continue to boot the live-usb you created it with in frugal mode or you can add what is in grub.entry to a grub.cfg file. The combination of the live-usb plus the sdcard can be taken to another machine and booted there as well. Again, you can unplug the live-usb as soon as the system starts to boot.

[lonesomepoint]

Hmm, I see from the responses that although possible, this would be an absolute last resort. Considering that some claim it would be slow, I suppose I would want the system to be antiX.

[anticapitalista]

Hmm, I see from the responses that although possible, this would be an absolute last resort. Considering that some claim it would be slow, I suppose I would want the system to be antiX.

If I read the posts carefully enough, it seems that what you want to do (run *live* [my emphasis] on a sd card) should be ok for both MX and antiX.
*Installed* [my emphasis, again] on a sd card might make it too slow (MX and/or antiX)

[BitJam]

If I read the posts carefully enough, it seems that what you want to do (run *live* [my emphasis] on a sd card) should be ok for both MX and antiX.
*Installed* [my emphasis, again] on a sd card might make it too slow (MX and/or antiX)

+1