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View Full Version : USB + Ubuntu + BOINC (The Hard Way)



Fire$torm
06-05-11, 08:53 PM
Preface.

I decided during the blackout to try my hand at running Ubuntu 10.04 x86 from a USB stick with Persistence. To add to the pain I wanted to configure Ubuntu to mount/attach a Windows network share and install/Run BOINC from that share.
And the final ingredient for this masochistic mix was to do all this without using a PXE client/server setup.

So far......

I have managed to install 10.04 on the USB stick with persistence and properly install the broadcom WiFi driver. I have been able to make backups of /etc/hosts and /etc/fstab files, then edit the originals to get Ubuntu to mount the Windows partition and read/write to it.

The problem is that when I reboot, /etc/fstab and /etc/hosts are back to their unedited form although the backups are still present. And the WiFi driver still persists after reboot.

Now for the call....

HELP!!!! (Super bright Bat Signal in the night sky here.....)

PS. I did find out that fstab gets loaded before network so I would have to run a custom bash script, before BOINC gets called, to mount the Windows share.

Question: How does one write such a bash script?

Edit: The reason for trying this? Simple.... No HDD.

trigggl
06-07-11, 12:01 AM
Preface.

I decided during the blackout to try my hand at running Ubuntu 10.04 x86 from a USB stick with Persistence. To add to the pain I wanted to configure Ubuntu to mount/attach a Windows network share and install/Run BOINC from that share.
And the final ingredient for this masochistic mix was to do all this without using a PXE client/server setup.

So far......

I have managed to install 10.04 on the USB stick with persistence and properly install the broadcom WiFi driver. I have been able to make backups of /etc/hosts and /etc/fstab files, then edit the originals to get Ubuntu to mount the Windows partition and read/write to it.

The problem is that when I reboot, /etc/fstab and /etc/hosts are back to their unedited form although the backups are still present. And the WiFi driver still persists after reboot.

Now for the call....

HELP!!!! (Super bright Bat Signal in the night sky here.....)

PS. I did find out that fstab gets loaded before network so I would have to run a custom bash script, before BOINC gets called, to mount the Windows share.

Question: How does one write such a bash script?

Edit: The reason for trying this? Simple.... No HDD.

Congratulations! <:-P You've reached the Trigggl level of masochism. My advice, remove Windows from the mix. It's much easier to use a network drive from another linux computer, not that I've ever attempted a connection to a Windows computer.

I tried once to set up a network boot, but was unsuccessful. It might have had more to do with the computer (IBM Power) I was trying it on, though and it may actually be pretty easy to do if I tried it with a regular pc. I later found out the IBM Power wasn't booting because of the video card that was installed in it.

A quick Google search, pulled up the following "How-To" (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DisklessUbuntuHowto) on creating a diskless node on Ubuntu.