8.31.2009

ChemPup USB boot

Ideally ChemPup would be delivered on a 2GB USB flash drive that had a small (128MB) windows readable (VFat or NTFS) partition that has the ChemPup user guide, quick-start guide, tech support info etc. Then upon reboot, the flash drive will already be inserted and the bootable ext2 partition with ChemPup will boot up and they will know exactly what to do for the initial boot. Well it seems that this is very possible, but not necessarily fail-safe and instead depends on the hardware configuration. I am unsure if it is important which partition be "first" on the drive, but on initial test it seems that windows is only happy reading the first partition. Likewise I had trouble on at least one older computer to boot ChemPup from the second partition, but when first in line it was okay....meanwhile, at school I have found ChemPup on partition 2 boots without any trouble. So I am encouraged, but again, I will need to have "back-up" plans that can be rapidly deployed if a user has trouble with older hardware.

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