USB booting :: Storing files on USB

It strikes me that using DSL, and indeed certain other distros, on a USB stick is a bit...strained, since they're designed for the rather limited environment of a CD. Specifically, what I'd like to do is to store the files natively, on the USB stick, rather than using the backup/restore features. Key advantages to this:
1. No need to play with backing things up and restoring them--just boot off the stick, and your files are there.
2. When in a different OS, the files can be accessed simply by mounting the memory stick and selecting a folder.

To this end, I would like to change the /home symlink (which is by default to /ramdisk/home) to point to a location on the USB stick, mounted as /cdrom, it seems (so /home -> /cdrom/cargo), and to make the relevant directory writeable as a normal user. I have verified that it is possible to write to files in this location (by becoming superuser). But it does not seem to be possible to give the directory to "dsl" using chown.

I have found how to uncompress the KNOPPIX image, but I cannot see where the symlinks are set up. How might I go about changing the symlink, and giving the default user write permissions?

Thanks in advance.

It sounds like you're looking for the "persistant home" feature of dsl - the details are in the wiki.

Alternately, you could leave your configuration files (torsmorc, .gimp-1.2/, etc) in the backup and save other files (docs, photos, mp3, etc) directly to a folder/partition on the usb stick - something like /mnt/sda1/docs

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Specifically, what I'd like to do is to store the files natively, on the USB stick, rather than using the backup/restore features.

However, that's the recommended option to reduce io operations on the flash device, since it would wear it out much faster afaik. (just a tip - but they are getting cheaper)

Thanks, I think persistent home was what I was looking for.

Experimentation has suggested that the USB disk is a different device depending on what computer it's booted on (and different again if booted on qemu). Will the method on the wiki work for a location on /cdrom? And will that automatically set the permissions appropriately (I will experiment with this later, I'm just putting the questions here as well).

@thehatsrule: I understand, but flash drives are designed to have files written to them, so I think I'll live. In any case, storing it as a backup could, I think, potentially cause more writes (as it's compressed, so changing one file could potentially change the whole backup file (as I understand it)).

Quote (takowl @ April 09 2008,14:04)

@thehatsrule: I understand, but flash drives are designed to have files written to them, so I think I'll live. In any case, storing it as a backup could, I think, potentially cause more writes (as it's compressed, so changing one file could potentially change the whole backup file (as I understand it)).

I believe it is the many operations done that wears it out, rather than doing one batch operation at the end. Most applications have their own profile directory in ~, such web browsers by default, etc. That being said, if you were planning on having a huge ~ for whatever reason, I guess it would take too much time.

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