Installed pclos 2010 to usb thumb drive

[mike200]

 Hello there, I downloaded the ISO of pclos 2010 lxde, and made a live CD. I know that there does not seem to be official support for thumbdrive installation, but I thought I'd try to install to my 8 gig thumbdrive, using drak installer. I created an ext4 partition and a swap partition on the drive, and  the OS installed without problems. It now boots off the thumb drive using GRUB, and works perfectly except for one thing: I cannot use any IDE devices on my computer (hard drive, cd, dvd ). Apparently, the system is not detecting the IDE interface for some reason. Is there a way around this problem, or is this fundamentally due to the limitations imposed by my method of installation? I would like to think that there is a simple hack that could make this thing work, because, apart from this problem, everything else works great!

[Was_Just19]

There is no reason I am aware of that this should be so.
In which case full details of your hardware with particular emphasis on the problem parts will needed to allow someon to help with your problem.

regards.

[uncleV]

Do you see your drives in
Configure Your Computer-->Local Disks-->Manage disk partitions?

If yes you can point them to be permanently mounted on your system. If you change the file etc/fstab you can have them mounted by demand.

I'm on LXDE too and have had this problem too  - PCmanFM didn't mount them and you couldn't see them.

Otherwise you can check what does your system sees as hard drives and partitions by fdisk-l in root mode.

[mike200]

 My system is an MSI k8mm-v motherboard with 1.6 GHZ  AMD Sempron CPU, 750 meg DDR  RAM  250 GIG western digital caviar ide hard drive, and a generic CD burner and DVD ROM. IDE controller provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA 66/100/133 operation modes, and can support up to 4 IDE devices. There is also a SATA  controller that can support two SATA devices.
  Pclinuxos control center----->Local Disks---->Manage disk partitions  only shows the flash drive.
fdisk -l gives this result:

root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 8086 MB, 8086618112 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 983 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0002ea75

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         892     7164958+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2             893         983      730957+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5             893         983      730926   82  Linux swap / Solaris
[root@localhost ~]#
 fstab gives:
 # Entry for /dev/sdb1 :
UUID=7e25b3ca-18f7-4fdf-b9c8-b813bd4e0d70 / ext4 defaults 1 1
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
 

[Was_Just19]

In PCC are the ATA controllers listed and are there driver modules listed for them?

For instance my PATA controller uses the  "ata-piix"  module  and the SATA controller uses the   "ahci"  module.

If the driver modules for your hardware are not listed that might explain things.

regards.

[mike200]

 In PCC, the (E)IDE/ATA controllers are listed :

 "Vendor: ‎VIA Technologies, Inc.

Description: ‎VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE

Media class: ‎IDE interface

Connection
Bus: ‎PCI

PCI domain: ‎0

Bus PCI #: ‎0

PCI device #: ‎15

PCI function #: ‎0

PCI revision: ‎0x06

Vendor ID: ‎0x1106

Device ID: ‎0x0571

Sub vendor ID: ‎0x1462

Sub device ID: ‎0x7142

Misc
Module: ‎pata_via"

 set driver options is unavailable.

[Was_Just19]

Into a terminal copy and paste the following command to see if the driver is loaded ...

lsmod | grep pata_via

If there is nothing returned then the driver is not loaded.

[mike200]

 Indeed, lsmod | grep pata_via  returned no result. The next step is obviously to get the driver loaded, but I am relatively inexperienced  with pclos, so you will have to walk me through the procedure.

[Was_Just19]

Indeed, lsmod | grep pata_via  returned no result. The next step is obviously to get the driver loaded, but I am relatively inexperienced  with pclos, so you will have to walk me through the procedure.

As root in a terminal copy and paste the following command

modprobe pata_via

If you get no error then the driver should be loaded ........  you can check immediately by running the first command again to see if you get an acknowledgement that it is now loaded.

To load the driver permanently you need to - as root - edit the file  /etc/modprobe.preload

To do this just add

pata_via

on its own line at the bottom of the file, followed by a blank line <- that is important.

You should then try rebooting to see if the PATA devices can now be seen and accessible.

regards.

[mike200]

  I just want to thank everyone who helped out with my problem, particularly John boy. Eveyrthing  now works perfectly (hard drive, cd, dvd)
  I  created a thumbdrive install of pclos because I wanted to see if it could be done. There is no official method of installation given on the pendrivelinux website, and  thumb drive installation is not mentioned in the pclos documentation.I even tried Unetbootin but that only gives a live CD installation, with no persistence. I tried at first using my drive formatted FAT 32, expecting to be able to format and partition with the Drak installer. Every attempt I made to create the partitions and install the system failed; I created and formatted the partitions, but the installer always  finished prematurely, returning an error message.
  When I partitioned and formatted the drive in advance with PCC, the installer worked perfectly, creating a perfectly functioning thumbdrive installation! (Except for the problem I described of course).This does seem to be the solution for those who want to put pclos on a pendrive

[Was_Just19]

  I just want to thank everyone who helped out with my problem, particularly John boy. Eveyrthing  now works perfectly (hard drive, cd, dvd)
  .....

Glad to hear it!

Have fun. 

Make sure that the file access is set to 'relatime' for your installation to reduce wear on the flash drive. (it may be by default, I don't know) ......  it should show in /etc/fstab if it is set this way.

My root partition entry

Code:

UUID=9dc6a34a-8a6f-4cd6-9ba0-46a24b2907fc / ext4 defaults,relatime 1 1

regards.

[pags]

  I just want to thank everyone who helped out with my problem, particularly John boy. Eveyrthing  now works perfectly (hard drive, cd, dvd)
  .....

Glad to hear it!

Have fun. 

Make sure that the file access is set to 'relatime' for your installation to reduce wear on the flash drive. (it may be by default, I don't know) ......  it should show in /etc/fstab if it is set this way.

My root partition entry

Code:

UUID=9dc6a34a-8a6f-4cd6-9ba0-46a24b2907fc / ext4 defaults,relatime 1 1

regards.

There is also a noatime option, if I recall correctly, which inhibits updating the "last accessed time" of files, further reducing were (and sometimes improving performance)...YMMV

[Bald Brick]

Are there any real benefits from a normal install on a pendrive in relation to making a live pendrive? I mean, a couple of years ago 8 GB was a lot; today 16 GB isn't.

I'm asking because when I stumbled over this thread I was just going to do a remaster for a live pendrive, but just installing PCLinuxOS on it normally would be faster and less bothersome.

[pags]

Are there any real benefits from a normal install on a pendrive in relation to making a live pendrive? I mean, a couple of years ago 8 GB was a lot; today 16 GB isn't.

I'm asking because when I stumbled over this thread I was just going to do a remaster for a live pendrive, but just installing PCLinuxOS on it normally would be faster and less bothersome.

My opinion is, with a flash-based device, I put "Live" versions on...less writes means less wear, and flash has better read performance (and poorer write performance).
For portable installs, I use 2.5" USB harddrives (mechanical).  Larger sizes for less money, swap doesn't wear out the device to same extent with excessive writes, and over performance (system "feel") is better (snappier?).

[CaptainSarcastic]

I did an install on a 4GB flash drive and just didn't put a swap partition on it at all.  All my machines have at least 2GB of RAM, so I almost never use swap space anyway.