Hi,
what does “persistent” mean in connection with an usb storage device? Can one get rid of NomadBSD easily by formatting it over or are there some other actions that one would have to undertake?
Does ext4 work as a file system for the usb storage device? Or what filesystem should one work with?
Btw., my intention is to test hardware compatibility regarding usb wifi dongles.
Thanks in advance.
Kind regards
Have you taken a look at the handbook?
NomadBSD comes with a bunch of pre-installed filesystems (CD9660, FAT, HFS+, NTFS, Ext2/3/4). You can mount storage devices via DSBMC (see Overview), which is a graphical client for DSBMD.
Well, yes I have. My question aims at the installation medium. If I “dd” the content of the .img file to the usb drive, what will I have to do to get rid of nomadbsd again? Could I just use - for example - mkfs.ext4 to wipe it out or do I have to take some other measures too?
what does “persistent” mean in connection with an usb storage device?
Basically, it means you can save data on the USB device.
Can one get rid of NomadBSD easily by formatting it over
Sure
or are there some other actions that one would have to undertake?
No
Does ext4 work as a file system for the usb storage device?
No (this is not a Linux distro)
Or what filesystem should one work with?
UFS (or ZFS). I suggest you start with the former.
Welcome to BSD
Thanks for the clarification. I did not find any (maintained) tools for ufs on linux though, will try it with zfs.
Take a look into the handbook on FreeBSD. You will see that FreeBSD is very different to Linux. I use both of them, but FreeBSD/NomadBSD is my daily driver.
NomadBSD is easy to use and to install.
It sounds like you want to use NomadBSD’s (ZFS) USB stick to share data with Linux. If that’s the case, I’m not sure it’s going to work in the long run. This is because ZFS is a very complex filesystem intended primarily for huge data centers that need high scalability and redundancy.
In the first place, using ZFS on a USB stick is like using a roadroller to kill an ant.
Mind you, it works. However, it’s going to wear out your USB stick, because ZFS performs a much higher number of updates compared to the most popular file systems (as we said, its purpose is to ensure redundancy and recovery).
You might be wondering: So why is ZFS provided by NomadBSD?
Because NomadBSD can also be installed on hard drives or solid-state drives (main menu → System → NomadBSD Installer).
My intention is to have a Live Medium to boot from to see if certain hardware works or not. So what filesystem should I put on an USB HDD or Stick in order to boot NomadBSD from such a medium?
Obviously ZFS is not suitable, as dd does not work with it. For UFS I could not find any linux-tools. That’s why I do not know how to proceed.
Sorry, I have not yet tried to burn a USB drive in a Unix environment, but belanaEtcher does that well in MS Windows, according to our handbook.
not very clear to me what you mean telling this. In NomadBSD handbook you can read how to burn NomadBSD in a USB stick from any OS including Linux, and regardless the preferred filesystem
NomadBSD works very well with dd. It works regardless of any filesystem, because dd does not copy files or folders. It only dumps bit for bit from your media to another place.
In NomadBSD I wrote several linux images and iso files with dd to usb devices without one issue.