This ALL In One PenDriveLinux 2008 version can be run from a USB flash drive either natively (as a stand alone Operating System at boot), or from within Windows as a Virtual Machine. Moreover, the user can save installed software, changes, bookmarks, email, contacts and more automatically via a persistent loop image and then restore those changes upon subsequent Qemu or native boots. This was a major breakthrough as the user can now run it from a USB device even if the computer cannot natively boot from USB and still save changes persistently to be restored regardless of whether booting natively or from Qemu.
Kudo's goes out to Gerardo Nevarez for the preparation of initrd.gz to make both Native and Qemu PenDriveLinux 2008 boot processes possible while running persistently.
Warning: Do not attempt to use the USB drive while running via Qemu or you will corrupt the Linux filesystem. By default, PDL will setup user networking, so that you can mount shares on the host computer by pointing to smb://10.0.2.2. You have to set the network card to use DHCP.
All In One PenDriveLinux Running from USB
ALL In One PenDriveLinux Running via Qemu
Portable PDL Creation Prerequisites
- 1GB or larger USB flash drive (fat32 formatted)
- AIOPendrivelinux08.zip
- Windows Host to perform the install
- PC that is able to boot from USB
Creating Pen Drive Linux bootable USB from Windows
ALL In One Pendrivelinux 2008 as the name suggest was created in 2008. It currently won't work on 64 bit architecture. I plan to work on a fix when I can find the time.
- Download AIOPendrivelinux08.zip
- Extract the contents from AIOPendrivelinux08.zip to your USB device
- From your USB device, click makeboot.bat to make the drive bootable
Running Pen Drive Linux from USB or in Windows
There are two ways to run Pendrivelinux (1) Natively (2) Qemu:
- For Native boot, reboot your computer and set your boot menu or BIOS to boot from the USB flash drive, save your settings and continue to boot.
- For Qemu boot, simply launch qemu.bat from the USB thumb drive and Pen Drive Linux will launch within Windows. However, please note that this does NOT work in Vista yet!
PDL Login and passwords
User: root password: root
User: guest password: guest
Additional notes: A loopfile with a capacity of 256MB has already been created on the USB flash device. If you would like to use a larger loopfile for saving changes, boot using the Boot Live (non persistent) option. Then delete the mcnlive.loop file on your flash drive and create a new VFAT loopfile by clicking the Penguin in the Taskbar and navigating to Pendrivelinux-> Create persistent loop and following the onscreen instructions.
The Remaster Live script used to create Pendrivelinux is included in the download as is seen in the screenshot above, just before the Create persistent loop entry.
This remaster was made from MCNLive and is based on the free Mandriva Linux distribution "without changing the source". Sources are available from ftp.nluug.nl and distrib-coffee or from one of the mirrors.