Install Linux to USB dongle through VMware workstation

My MBP is installed with 256GB SSD for a long time ago, and it is a little small size for my usual usage, for example, I need to boot one more OS like linux or windows at the same time.

Finally I found the solution "booting up the linux from the USB dongle from the virtual machine".

Here I share the the procedure to install Linux to USB dongle through VMware workstation first.

Step1.
From Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management
To find out the USB dongle partition location.
For example the target USB dongle is the Disk 3.



Step 2.
Create the virtual machine in the vmware workstation.
VMware Workstation > File > New Virtual Machine > Custome (Advanced)





Choosing the linux/ubuntu will affect the later disk driver option.




Choosing "Use a physical disk" option.


From the disk partition in the step 1, my USB dongle should be the PhysicalDriver3.


Choosing the ISO image.


power on the virtual machine.


Reference:
http://anders.com/cms/385/VMWare.Fusion/Mac/Laptop.Hard.Drive
http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/2011/09/attaching-a-physical-raw-disk-to-vmware-fusion-4-without-bootcamp/

My ramdisk experience

環境變數
使用者變數
TEMP
原始值 %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp
新值 r:\temp

TMP
原始值 %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp
新值 r:\temp

系統變數
TEMP
原始值 %SystemRoot%\TEMP
新值 r:\temp

TMP
原始值 %SystemRoot%\TEMP
新值 r:\temp

修改 IE 暫存檔位置
修改 Firefox 暫存檔位置

troubleshooting for init

Recently, I had an error message like
"Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found.  Try passing init= option to kernel."

After I did some investigations, the possible problems are listed below,
1. is the kernel config "Kernel support for ELF binaries" not enabled?
   from http://blog.whatisthisbird.com/2010/08/linuxkernel-panic-not-syncing-no-init.html
2. the init file cannot execute normally, maybe lack of the needed libraries.
   from http://dicky-chiang.blogspot.tw/2009/07/embedded-linux.html

But I have neither of these problems.

Finally, I found that the tricky is that
in openwrt, init/main.c init_post() will try to invoke /etc/preinit, but there is not such thing in my rootfs.
(normally, init/main.c init_post() will try
 /sbin/init
 /etc/init
 ...
)

So my solution is to append "init=/sbin/init" to the kernel command line to tell the kernel the exact init location.

partition check

When the system is not shutdown safely, it usually needed a disk check forcely, for example,
> touch /forcefsck
> reboot

After the system reboot and before finished booting up, it will perform fsck forcely.

If the partition had error and need manually check, my solution is like below,
> umount /dev/sda1
> fsck -y /dev/sda1

It is ask the fsck utility to recover the partition and correct the errors, like delete the file, automatically.