Advantage of booting Linux from USB ?

A lot of people seem to do it - what is the advantage ?

Assuming the MBR and /boot is on the USB disk - does it mean it is easier to recover a system when bust ?

Assuming the bootloader is bust - could you just attach the USB stick to another PC with say, vmware workstation, install a minimal copy of CentOS, change the kernel path and put the stick back into its original server and it just works ?

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Comments

pram

You could do that with a boot cd. Who exactly do you see booting from USB.

jibbajabba

What I mean is, a lot of people I know have the MBR and /boot on USB stick and the data (whole '/' for example) on HDD. Question is not how to do that, but what the benefits are really.

petedude

Sounds like an odd config to me, but I can hazard some guesses:
1. Use the same bootloaders on multiple PCs??
2. Somehow get the kernel to boot more quickly?
and most likely:
3. Isolate the boot sector from workstation-based boot sector viruses

ChooseLife

I don't see that done often, would say it is an unusual set up. You could get the best answer on advantages by asking people who are doing it this way. I'd do it to simplify/quicken recovery process, should /boot and MBR get corrupted. Isolating from viruses could protect from some of them, but not all

WafflesAndRootbeer

There are no real advantages to doing it except you can swap it out or upgrade easily if the OS gets borked. It's commonly done with machines configured as network storage because it means one more opening for an HDD or SSD or quick and dirty server/routing/firewall boxes but there is no practical reason to do it on an actual system because it will not perform comparably to anything running from a dedicated storage medium. USB booting of Linux distros is also used for maintenance/recovery purposes as it's perfect for running a LIVE distro to perform data recovery or other functions. They have maintenance/recovery specific distros for USB use.

ChooseLife

Just occurred to me - OP, were you referring to desktops, rather than servers?

jibbajabba

ChooseLife wrote: »

Just occurred to me - OP, were you referring to desktops, rather than servers?

Both, one guy using this approach on a desktop, and one guy on a server .. I would ask them but won't see them for a while.