Installation of DebEX Barebone to a USB stick

NEWS 131221
The DebEX Barebone ISO is now a ISO-hybrid, which means that it can very easily be transferred to a USB pen drive. You can then even run DebEX Barebone from the USB stick and save all your system changes on the stick. I.e. you will enjoy persistence!

DebEX Barebone can be installed/transferred to a USB stick directly from the ISO file. It might be good to use this method if your computer lacks a CD/DVD drive, or if you just prefer to run Linux systems from a USB stick.This is the way to perform the installation:

1. Boot up a Linux system (Ubuntu or...) and download the ISO file debex-barebone-64bit-jessie-isohybrid-p-893mb-131221.iso
2. Open up a terminal and cd to the folder where the ISO file is
3. Insert a USB stick and make sure which name it was given (/dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdc1 or ...)
4. Run the installation command cp debex-barebone-64bit-jessie-isohybrid-p-893mb-131221.iso /dev/sdb
5. Then run the command sync
To make changes
persistent do this:
6. Start Fdisk with the command
fdisk /dev/sdb
7. fdisk # p (show the current table)
8. fdisk # n (create new partition - eg /dev/sdb2)
9. fdisk # w (write changes and exit)
After the partition (/dev/sdb2) is created, you have to create a filesystem on it. One possible choice would be ext4.
10. Run the command mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb2
11. And this command: mkfs.ext4 -L persistence /dev/sdb2
Now we have to put one persistant configuration file on /dev/sdb2. This is done with command 12 and 13.
12. mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb2 /mnt
13. echo "/ union" >> /mnt/live-persistence.conf
14. umount /mnt
Done! See this Terminal picture.

NOTE1: Do not use /dev/sda. (You will then delete the partition on which you probably have a Windows system).
NOTE2
: You shall not write /dev/sdb1 (which is easy to believe).
After following the instruction 1 - 14:
Restart your computer with the USB stick in place and change the BIOS so that the computer in the first place is booting from the USB stick.

NOTE3: This way to transfer/install DebEX Barebone to a USB stick works perfectly. It can happen that you have to try twice before any changes are saved on the stick. I can also happen that you have to try Boot alternative 3 (DebEX Barebone failsafe) before you can run Boot alternative 1 (DebEX Persistent). See this Boot menu.
NOTE4: If the above described method doesn't work for you, you should try with another USB stick. (Another brand). All different versions of SanDisk are known to work very well.

Alternative
You can as an alternative to the above mentioned commands use Linux Live USB creator (LiLi) in Windows. When using it it will look like this. Persistence can't be enabled though. Be sure to go to OPTIONS and choose "Recognized Linux" as Debian Live 6.0.4 (LXDE) or Debian 7.0 (LXDE) before starting the installation.

exton /131221

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