Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Okay, I fooled you. Not quite. But it would be cool if we could, wouldn't it?

I never go far without a bootable Linux Mint USB key. I have an old 4gb drive from 3yrs ago that is now my Linux key I call PocketLenny. (My N900 is NiNi. I name everything...)

What I got to thinking was what if Nokia allowed us to create a small partition to use as a bootable flash drive? Would that be something useful to any of the members? I'd love to give my PocketLenny away to a buddy and use my mobile as a bootable drive, and run a persistent Linux off of maybe a 5gb partition. I really don't like Windows much anymore, and have adopted Linux as my desktop OS of choice to match my mobile. Why can't my N900 become PocketNiNi?? All the ingredients seem to be there...

I'm sure the hardware wasn't designed for this, and may be impossible on the N900. But if it could be done, who would want it? And for all you hardware engineers, what limitations must be overcome to make it happen? Are they insurmountable issues, or something that shouldn't be hard to do?

I intend to take the response and idea and present it as a Brainstorm or some other way to get Nokia's attention if response is positive enough. I'm open to suggestions on how best to present the idea as well, as long as the data shows there is a desire for such a feature.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Yup, that would be a great idea...Personally I would put on that partition the equivalent of System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org). It has saved the day many times, especially on those pesky cluster nodes without CD drive :)

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

someone else is thinking on the same lines: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=36356

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

This was one of the early ideas I had for my n900 as well, but the Ubuntu USB Disk creator warns that the n900 needs formatting.

I'm not too familiar with how USB boot works from a low level perspective, so I'm not sure what would be necessary to make this work on the n900, but it would be freaking sweet.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Fresh, booting Mint 8 from SD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCL50tJIKI

quite a boring video, but it works.
No real hacking, simple made a bootable card and run.

Should be also possible to do it on the internal memory, I will take a look at that when my exam is over :)

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Haven't had a chance to check out your video yet, but sounds like you just set up an sd card to be bootable through some usb stick or something, and then stuck it in the n900 and was able to boot?

I just put a 16gb sd card in my n900 today, but had been planning on using it as a debian chroot, now im wondering if I could partition it to get a bootable ubuntu usb image, and a debian chroot

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

I have, a minimal archlinux installation on a samsung multifunction printer/scanner, I think there's no problem on doing the same on the n900.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

I'm no hardware guru, but I think the disk would need a boot sector, or an 000001 spot, or whatever its called. Can't remember. School was so long ago...

What I'd like is to have a Mint/Ubuntu install as well as an optional VirtualBox so I could run it in Windows if necessary. Then I'd be the king of the universe. :cool:

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

That'd be cool but please change the title, its like me posting a thread saying "N900 emulating N64 at 60 fps!!!" and then the post just says lol jk but thatd be cool right???

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

[QUOTE=christexaport;421921
. Then I'd be the king of the universe. :cool:[/QUOTE]



Until windows boots...

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Windows 7 actually rocks on cheap hardware, too. But I love Linux and free, so... Once Linux has a PVR as good and simple to setup as Media Center, WIndows will be dead to me.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

This doesn't aways work. I was able to get my netbook to boot off the SD card in the N900 a few times but sometimes the netbook will see the internal storage first and it wont boot.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

I'd like someone to report how mojopac performs from the N900.
http://www.mojopac.com/
I'd appreciate it because I plan on putting it on my N900 and installing world of warcraft.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

@sschueller, I had to disconnect and connect again every time I booted, but when doing so, I was always able to boot all right.
Apparently both the internal storage and the SD card are seen, so it's just a matter of selection.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

i think installation will mess up the bootloader of the phone...and then u will be left with a 550$ worth of a pendrive minus maemo

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

I don't seem to be able to get it to work every time. I also noticed sometimes I will get into a situation where the phone will only show the SD card and not the internal storage.

I wonder if there is a setting somewhere that defines what is made available when the device goes into USB mass storage mode.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

It happens with normal USB drives as well. If you log off of Linux Mint, it actually says "remove your drive and press enter' or something similar. If you don't, it won't always recognize it on reboot. The same must apply to booting from an SD card as well, sschueller.

lohiaprateek, we haven't had a brave enough tester to confirm how it will affect the bootloader, or if it even rests on that part of the device. My goal was to get Nokia to support increasing the built in storage and allowing it to be partitioned and turned into a bootable drive, without using an SD card on this and or future devices.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

@christexaport, I will partition the drive and make it bootable when I have a little more time to make sure that I won't brick my device. I don't really expect any serious issues with that.

Can someone describe the boot process on n900 for me? It would save me some time :)

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Let us know what you find. Is this possible on any other devices? Like iPhones, WinMo, or android?

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Yes it is good idea. I have been doing this with my HTC Pro/N800 for a while . You have to use distro that boots from within Windows. I have Mojopac,Pendrivelinux,Portable apps booting from Win on the Htc/N800. It should work on the N900 also :confused:

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Some Links http://www.mojopac.com/ here http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ and here http://portableapps.com/ All bootable from within Windows live.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Sorry, flash drives are so cheap there is no reason for this. Just get a flash drive.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Because you always have your N900 with you.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

This is somewhat off-topic, but since someone mentioned Portableapps, does it mess with the N900's ability to be recognized as a phone/mass storage device?

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

It should not mess with anything. The SD cards get isolated from the device when you plug it in, at least that's what happens on my N800. I have installed these programs on my N800 using it as a hard drive for over 2 years never had problems. Its cool to boot from it on someone else's computer and have all your Fav apps load.You also don't need to partition anything all these programs can live in your SD card with all your other stuff.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

Portableapps.com is only files like everything else. You might want to backup autorun.ini though, IIRC the Portableapps extracts an icon and a modded autorun.ini file. It also changes the label of it using autorun.ini

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

I get it to boot from the SD card every time now by making sure I enter a folder on the internal storage from the command prompt which prevents the phone from unmounting the internal storage. Only the SD card is made available to the connected PC and it boots from it.

Re: Use the N900 as a bootable USB drive!!
 

please tell us exactly what you did