Recently I had a need to log into a machine with no cdrom and I decided to use to get enough of a shell to access the machine. It’s a very small, 50MB distribution of linux that is not that easy to install if you don’t have a linux box to start with. Despite the large number of Linux boxes that I once owned, I’ve replaced all of them with Mac OS. Fortunately, there is a simple way to install DSL on a USB boot drive from Mac OS, using VMWare Fusion.

• Damn Small Linux On A Stick

How To: Install Damn Small Linux By Spence. Install Ubuntu Linux on a Mac using Parallels. Share Local Drives and Folders using Oracle VM VirtualBox with a.

• Damn Small Linux Plus XAMPP to Create WordPress Virtual. The below video shows how to run Damn Small Linux on VirtualBox. VMWare Fusion or VirtualBox for Mac?
• Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts. However, in the DSL(damn small linux) one, the same. You can try to install the guest additions in.

You’ll need a 1GB USB drive. The smaller the drive is, the better. Some systems cannot boot off of very large USB drives.

512MB or 1GB is recommended. Here’s the how to Download the latest copy of DSL from a mirror. Do not use syslinux, but get the ISOLINUX version.

This is the ISO named dsl-x.x.x where x.x.x is a version number. I used, although in retrospect I should have used the VMWare VMX Image. Either works. Insert the pendrive and format it. Mac OS will auto mount the pendrive. Open Disk Utiilty. Format the device as MS DOS FAT and MBR.

One Partition. Important: Unmount the pendrive before starting VMWare Fusion. Create a new VMWare Fusion Virtual Machine The general idea here is to create an empty VM using fusion, and to boot off of the ISO you have just downloaded. It can be reasonably small. You do not need to allocate disk space on your HD. Configure the VM as Linux/Ubuntu and to mount the CD. Mount the pendrive as an “Alcor Micro Mass Storage” device.

It will appear to your VM as /dev/sda. Install DSL When DSL boots up, at the “boot:” prompt, type “install” Then, select “5” for “USB Pendrive HDB boot install” Answer yes to all prompts, and the install will (hopefully) complete. DSL is great for password recovery, emergency repair, or system rescue.

Damn Small Linux On A Stick

So long as your system supports booting from USB drives, you’re good to go! This entry was posted on Monday, June 20th, 2011 at 4:20 pm and is filed under,.

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