LinuxCNC 2.5 will not install to USB drive

jm82792 wrote:

andypugh wrote:

ArcEye wrote:

It doesn't have to be huge or costly if you just run Linuxcnc on it. The system will install in about 2.4GB, so anything 4GB + will suffice.

In fact, if you have an SATA motherboard something like
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/KingSpec-8GB-SATA-DOM...&hash=item2c66d4f920
is ideal (I have two development machines running from them, production machines would have ample space)

Is there any setup required like the CF cards or is it plug and play?

If by 'it' you mean the DOM, you can just use it as it is.

With any memory storage media, you would be well advised to use a non-journalling file system
and set up fstab as previously covered to eliminate a lot of background writes

regards

ArcEye wrote:

Another solution to this would be to consider a SSD.
There are no moving parts and the temperature range tolerance will be far larger than a conventional HDD.

Maybe network boot from other Linux server with tftp and exported nfs root file system could be another option?
Just testing such solution, while it is easy to connect power supply and network cable and run a few LinuxCNC machines with its storage on one Linux server in good air & temperature conditions.
I'm not sure how Linux networking affects LinuxCNC RT kernel, but I was able to setup such server for LinuxCNC diskless machines identified by its ethernet MAC adresses configured in DHCP using VirtualBox with updated latest Ubuntu 10.04 iso LinuxCNC 2.5.4 as guest OS on Fedora Linux laptop host
Note: Maybe this will be usefull too:

How to make a live CD/DVD from your harddisk installation
ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=688872

Idea is simple: use unionfs ( A Stackable Unification File System ) which can appear to merge the contents of several directories (branches), while keeping their physical content separate.
Create one LinuxCNC DVD .iso from harddisk installation with latest updates and our customized applications, then simply make it network bootable, so many CNC machines can use the same LinuxCNC.
This way, we have also backup of our system on this live .iso and we can connect DVDROM and boot out machine from it in the case of main system failure, still without local harddisk.

regards.