I was searching the net on how to create a bootable USB flash (pen) drive and I came across Slax linux.

Slax linux is a LiveCD distro which is based on Slackware (one of my favorite distros) which is one of the most stable and rock-solid distros available. One good thing about slax is that it's thoroughly configurable. You can make your own custom LiveCD to use wherever you go. 'Modules' are available for various apps which just have to be copied into a directory on the LiveCD and you're good to go. You can even make your own modules from tgz packages (which is the standard packaging for slackware) by the utility 'tgz2mo'. There are also some customised ISO images available built in Slax for various purposes, but you can always customise one to your liking. A standard ISO image is 181MB, but the minimal ('frodo' installation) is only 40MB without any GUI. The standard image has both KDE and Fluxbox.

There is a very easy way to create your customised slax LiveCD or LiveUSB (I coined that term ). MySlax Creator is a windows app which presents you with an easy to use interface (read 'click and select') to create your own LiveCD. It creates the ISO image and burns it directly to your CD or your USB flash drive. You can in fact make your 128MB flash drive a bootable Live Linux installation.

After trying for nearly 3 hours to make a Live installation on my flash drive, I came across this utility. The drive was ready in 15min and it worked! Anyone who uses a liveCD extensively for recovery purposes should give this a try.

Links:

Slax Linux
MySlax Creator

There is a method to make a LiveUSB flash drive manually using slax but I couldn't get it to work. It would give me a boot error. If anyone can get it to work using this method, I'd appreciate it if you let me know the details about how you did it . Here's the link:

Run GNU/Linux from a USB drive

Cheers.

When I get a new mp3 player I'm thinking of using ym current one to carry around as a linux booter (it's one of the ones that works like a usb drive when it's plugged into the comp). I had forgotten slack had a bottable distro, I had been thinking Damn Small Linux or that other popular small one I cant remember right now. But slack would probably be a better choice for me then DSL.

Oh, and not to burst your bubble, but I've heard the term 'LiveUSB' in a fair number of different places before long before this

My bad . I thought somebody had already said it before me, but since I never came across it before, it made sense to claim all credit and apologise later (like now) if the need arose.

First thing that came to my mind was BartPE builder (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) a nice tool to create a custom, cd bootable windowsXP.
Second thing that came to my mind was; "yes, at last" . A customizable bootcd for linux (one that even uses KDE) .
I think I know what I'm going to do the next few hours .

I'll keep you guys informed on how thing went.

Yea, BartPE is sweet. I've tried it out and it's just great. A Windows LiveCD is a boon for all those guys who clean up infested windows systems.



Please do ... but if you follow the MySlax Creator method, it shouldn't take you more than 15min (barring the time to download the stuff) .

Do bootable filesets just have a flagged file that the bios looks for in the boot sequence? I was just thinking about if BartPE would work off a usb drive easily or does anything needs to be configured depending on the media..?

No ... there is something else that needs to be taken care of, and my guess is it's the media that is used. Because, initially during one of my attempts at making a bootable usb flash drive, I copied the entire contents of the image file as they were into the usb drive and set the bootable flag on. But it didn't work. That's one of the problems I faced while trying to manually create a bootable LiveUSB drive. Here's the link to the page that I followed (unsuccessfully):

[url=http://os.newsforge.com/os/05/07/08/1522251.shtml?tid=2]
Run GNU/Linux from a USB drive[/url]

atm I'm realy having some troubles with slax. For some reason, KDE doesn't want to start in accelerated mode when "a" module is loaded. Annoying problem, since working on a 60Hz refresh rate is painful (it feels like my eyes are drying out and that I'd rather poke them out than continu working).
So no my search to the one module (out of 20 or 30) that's causing the problem.

I've also had a problem on another computer at school. Slax hung right before it would load the modules.

Anyway, slax is good if it works, but a fast cd-drive is a must if you don't want to wait long times.

That's weird. I think the latest Slax-5.07b still has some bugs in it. Maybe you should try out with one of the older releases like 5.0.6? I haven't tried out with the modules as I needed the usb drive for something else and had to format it again. I'll try it again one of these days as soon as I find some time.

Abhiram you can install BT2 to usb drive like this

Format flash usb drive fat or fat32

Copy bt & boot folders to usb drive

Then cmd (Windows)

Then type in the letter of usb drive example usb=e:
See:syslinux.Exe e:


This installs bootloader on usb drive to make drive bootable.

WARNING make shure to install on to e: or whatever your usb is otherwise no windows.

Marvin