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• Operative systems on SD cards

  - by HisDudeness

  I was getting some wild ideas the last days, like putting some operative systems into SD cards rather than on my hard drive. I'll go further into details now and explain what lead me to consider this probably abominable decision. I am on a laptop (that means I have a native SD-card reader) which is currently running a cross-distro setup, with a bunch of Linux systems (placed in dedicated ext4 logical partitions into a huge extended one) regulated by an unique GRUB. Since today, my laptop haven't even seen any Windows system with binoculars. I was thinking about placing all the os part of my setup into a Secure Digital to save all my 500 Gb Hard Drive for documents, music, videos and so on, and being able to just remove the SD and boot my system into another computer too, as well as having the possibility of booting other systems into mine by just plugging in another SD, without having to keep it constantly placed in my PC. Also, in the remote case in the near future I just wanted to boot Windows 8 in it, I read it causes major boot incompatibility issues with other systems by needing a digital signature in order for them to start. By having it in a removable drive, I could just get rid of it when I'm needing him and switch its card with Linux one, and so not having any obstacles to their boot. Now, my questions are: I know unlikely traditional rotating disk drives, integrated circuits ones have a limited lifespan in terms of cluster rewriting. Is it an obstacle to that kind of usage? I mean, some Ultrabooks are using SSD now, is it the same issue, or there are some differences between Solid State Drives and Secure Digitals in that sense? Maybe having them to store system files which are in fixed positions (making the even-usage of cluster technology useless) constantly being re-read and updated and similar things just gets them soon unserviceable, do it? Second question: are all motherboards and BIOSes able to boot from SDs just like they are from USB pen drives (I mean, provided card reader is USB-connected, isn't it)? Or can't bootloaders like GRUB be installed on SDs working? If they can't, is it a solution installing GRUB to MBR and making boot option pointing to SD? Will it work? Are there any other problems to installing OSs on a Secure Digital?

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• Removing extended partition without deleting logical in it

  - by HisDudeness

  I'm running a Linux-based laptop, and in order to multi-boot several distros in it, I created an extended partition which contains a bunch of logical ones with GParted. Now, after quite a long time with this setup, I've changed my mind because of the consequent lack of storing space for my data partition. Now I want to keep one distro alone like it's normal, and eventually have some other operating systems stored in external supports to plug in and use if I want. Obviously, also this partition I want to keep (and to enlarge a little too) is just a logical inside the extended I want to keep. For what concerns the number I'm ok, meaning I currently have this big distro dedicated extended, the swap and the data partitions, so there's space for another primary before I delete the extended, but I don't know how to delete it without touching the logical in it, I don't want to reinstall the system losing all changes and settings, and I don't want to keep an extended partition for a logical alone. How can I do? Do I have to create a new primary, copy the logical content in it and then delete everything? Will the system boot and maintain exactly all the features it has now? Or is there a way to convert an extended into a primary once it contains just one logical? Or can I directly move a logical out of an extended turning it into a primary? Or, again, am I screwed?

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• Putting and configuring grub on an external drive

  - by HisDudeness

  I want to put a bunch of minor emergency operating systems (such as GParted Live, DSL, Puppy Linux and so on) on a partitioned USB pen drive, with a dedicated grub boot loader on it, which I want to start when I select the drive in the BIOS to boot. The problem is: when writing grub boot options I must tell where kernel and initial ram files are located, but the USB drive can have different letters depending on when I did plug it in, if some others external drive were mounted. So, how can I write appropriate options which automatically refer to the drive grub is installed on without having to specify absolute paths, which might change (I mean, like (hd1,msdos1) ot /dev/sdb1)? And, while we are at it, can I have grub working on a device without an operating system on it to which it can refer? I mean, I want to address the command sudo grub-install /dev/sdb from the LMDE system I'm on right now, but I won't have LMDE on my pen drive. Is that a problem? And installing grub on another device, will I keep the grub I have right now on my HDD?

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