Creating a Bootable USB with slax-cyut Live CD

也請見 中文版.

Why Slax?

Slax is small: < 200MB and yet very usable. It even includes KDE desktop. It is modular: If you need more packages, go to the well-maintained slackware distribution and pick your favorite tgz packages, convert them to lzm format (e.g. execute tgz2lzm vim-7.1.tgz vim-7.1.lzm under slax), and copy the lzm file into the slax/modules/ directory. Next time you boot slax, your favorite packages will be available.

It has quite a few interesting features that makes customization painless. It just rocks.

Important note: After living on a slax usb key for a few weeks, I realized that both /var/run/xdmctl and /var/run/dbus seem to contain files that are most often updated and that cause most wear and tear on the usb key. So I added these lines to /etc/fstab:
tmpfs /var/run/xdmctl tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /var/run/dbus tmpfs defaults 0 0
I have been using a slax usb key without crashes related to wear and tear for a few months since this change.

Creating a Bootable USB with slax-cyut

The CYUT version of slax is available at this ftp site. This live cd includes mk-boot-usb plus some more modules, which you can also download individually here. The following is a sketch of how to create your own slax bootable usb key using this live CD. Chinese version is also available.

  1. Boot the slax-cyut live cd.
  2. Run mk-boot-usb to create a bootable usb key.
  3. Let's suppose that the content of the slax cdrom will be copied to the slax-6.0.7/ subdirectory of partition 5 of the usb key.
  4. Figure out the location of the cdrom using grep iso9660 /proc/mounts and copy the entire directory to the slax-6.0.7/ subdirectory of partition 5.
  5. Extract the file .../slax/changes.tgz . The extracted files may have extra leading directories in the path if you extract it at the wrong directory or if you place the content of the cdrom in a different directory. Move the changes/ directory to the correct slax/ subdirectory.
  6. Copy the file .../slax/changes/root/menu.lst to /boot/grub/ of the 4th partition, and edit it accordingly. The default setting assumes that the content of the slax cdrom is in slax-6.0.7/ of partition 5.

ps. I use bootable usb keys with eeepc 700 all the time, and did not find its driver module eeedrivers-607.lzm interfere with any other computer yet, so I make slax-cyut load it by default. But if you do have troubles with some hardware, please try moving eeedrivers-607.lzm out of the modules/ directory before trying any other major modifications or even buying a new hardware.

Interesting Uses of a Slax Computer

There are a few interesting boot options to know. You can try each of the following by pressing "e" and editing the command line at the grub boot menu. If you like some of these effects, you can edit boot/grub/menu.lst and add entries for your favorite effects permanently. See the end of this page for a complete example.

Recovery mode: remove the clause changes=/.../.... Changes will not be saved. Each boot will be fresh like booting for the first time. This can be useful in a computer classroom, where a windows computer would need a recovery card to restore the harddisk to the original state on every boot. In fact all other linux livecd's made into a live usb using the mk-boot-usb approach behave in this mode by default.

Lightening fast mode: Add copy2ram to the boot command line. Everything will be copied to ram at boot time. It takes a lot of ram (512MB might do if you don't have many modules; 1G is safer), boots more slowly, but runs faster once it finishes booting. If you further type the command umount -a in a terminal, the usb key can then be removed. This is most suitable for running a diskless kiosk or a diskless terminal that serves an indefinite population and stays on for the whole day once it boots. For example, this can be perfect configuration for a library terminal whose only function is browsing.

See SLAX Cheatcodes for more options and be imaginative to come up with more possibile interesting applications of a slax computer.

Further Customization

This section is optional.

Slax is relocatable. It does not have to occupy a whole partition to itself. You can put it in a subdirectory of a partition that slax will share with other distributions. Besides adding the directory prefix to the vmlinuz and initrd.gz phrases in menu.lst, you just have to add the from=... to the list of boot parameters (and also remember to modify the changes=... parameter accordingly).

A Complete Example of the Boot Menu

Please compare the default boot menu created by mk-boot-usb, and a customized boot menu "vf2".

DSL slax otg
default part 5 part 6 part 7
"vf2" dsl-4.2.5/ of part 5 slax-6.0.7/ of part 5 part 5

The "vf2" version puts all 3 distributions into the same partition (partition 5), and defines 3 different entries for the same slax distribution.

The following are unorganized notes for myself.

  1. Add these lines to /etc/fstab:
    tmpfs /var/run/xdmctl tmpfs defaults 0 0
    tmpfs /var/run/dbus tmpfs defaults 0 0
    Very important! Needed to prevent X from crashing caused by frequent writing!
  2. useradd -m -g users -s /bin/bash cyut ; echo 'cyut:' | chpasswd'
  3. Append ",cyut" to the 3 lines containing audio, video, and cdrom in /etc/group
  4. CC (Control Center). "System Administration". "Login Manager". "Convenience" tab. Assign cyut as auto login user.
  5. as root, edit /etc/httpd/httpd.conf, enabling userdir and index.php
  6. as root, add "cyut ALL=(ALL) ALL" to /etc/sudoers
  7. log out, be automatically logged in as cyut, and press a few enters to set up KDE. From now on, work as user cyut.
  8. Install firefox extensions.
  9. cd ~/.kde/Austart ; ln -s /usr/bin/gcin
  10. ln -s /var/www/htdocs/ckhung/b ckhung-books
  11. cd /mnt/sd??/slax ; md5sum $(find base modules optional -type f | sort) > /root/md5sum.txt
  12. cp /mnt/sd?4/boot/grub/menu.lst /root
  13. Backup /mnt/sd??/slax/changes/