Eniko (moved ➡ gamedev.place)Dec 23, 2024

hey linux nerds would it be possible to run a headless version of linux off a usb drive? i have a tiny x86 pc that i wanna use for octoprint for my 3d printer but i dont wanna set up a whole thing with peripherals

it already has win11 but last time i tried to run windows headless it did not work out

we used to use a raspberry pi but i can't deal with constant sd card corruptions anymore

Show threadCassandrichDec 23, 2024
@eniko Re: rpi and sd corruption, in theory this goes away if you use a distro that can run from a readonly mount, and put the data on a separate USB flash drive. Or you can even just boot your normal pi os from sd but with the rootfs on usb.
Show threadKevin Karhan Dec 23, 2024

@dalias @eniko I wIshed there was a good way to boot external media on #Pi0 & #Pi0w2...

#Pi3B+ and up support #USB-#Boot out of the box...

Show threadCassandrichDec 23, 2024
@kkarhan @eniko I dropped rpi and have been using Libre Computer Le Potato, but I might get stuck going back to rpi5 at some point for performance reasons... The Le Potato has never given me SD corruption or any such troubles tho.
Show threadKevin Karhan 

@dalias @eniko Personally, I'll sooner or later have to engange the whole #ARMv5 / #ARM11r7 / #RaspberryPi architecture anyway with OS/1337.

  • Tho given it's a minimalist Linux merely booting an initramfs and never doing any writes, there should be no indurance issues.

But I know a #readonly - OS isn't practical and where it is people already use #iPXE & #iSCSI for #diskless setups!

  • THO AFAICT there should be an option to basically partition the system and only keep /boot on an SD card, and the rest could be on any USB mass storage device (i.e. SSD or even HDD)...

That being said Raspberry Pi do have the key advantage of being by far the best in terms of #documentation.

#OS1337 #Linux #distro #development

Dec 23, 2024 at 9:27amWeb
Show threadKevin Karhan Dec 23, 2024

@dalias @eniko but to answer the original post:

Worst-case you manually install i.e. Ubuntu LTS Server or Debian on it once and enable SSH server so you can then shove it back into the closet.