Unordered List ItemDuring the meeting, Alex Pilon suggested that a liveUSB could be booted in VirtualBox, but we had trouble doing this. I (JN) tried again the next day, with no success, despite giving myself ownership of the /dev/sdc device where the liveUSB was attached. However, qemu was able to boot a (32bit) CrunchBang Waldorf liveUSB, but not my (64bit) 2016 DanceBox. Dmitriy Korovkin emailed me that he had managed to boot CorePlus-7.2.iso after putting it on a USB, but not Ubuntu 16.04. So booting a liveUSB in a virtual environment may be a “sometimes” possibility. It would be nice to figure out the reasons and conditions.

I also looked into converting the liveUSB (back) to an iso. This should be fairly straightforward, but initial attempts following several recommendations on the Web were unsuccessful, and other messages on the Web seemed to report at best limited success.

I have re-edited a quite long article on my efforts to (re-)build the DanceBox iso and liveUSB. These are in the file DanceMasterUSB. There are notes on a quite large list of distros and their suitability or not. The document was prepared mainly for my own later reference.

In a few days (JN: Note that this refers to the November 2016 meeting time) I will send out a note on the OCLUG Linux list asking who might be interested in pursuing the liveUSB (based on Arch) to prepare one or more “toolkit” liveUSBs. Participation can be in person (I've a reasonable space with largish screen, tables, and some test laptops) or by email / wiki.

Whether this project or some other inspires some shared activity, I believe we should be looking to undertake some efforts to amplify the knowledge within the Group. Most of us have some particular knowledge and expertise – mine tends to be spotty in the present area but in numerical computing – but most of us are capable of testing and documenting things, and much of the best of open source comes from diligence and persistence seasoned by a bit of brilliance from someone in the know.