this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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Just picked up a 128GB USB A/C stick that can go on my keyring. What are some things I should put on it to have access to at all times?

I already have self hosted services accessible over my VPN, so this would be for when I can't access that.

I'm thinking at least Ventoy and some common ISOs, then I'm not sure what else.

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[–] [email protected] 146 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

The reason you're struggling to think of anything to put on it is because you don't need to be carrying a USB drive.

No aircraft cabin crew have ever put out a call asking if there are any Linux sysadmin onboard with a copy of GParted Live v1.5.0 for 32bit ARM devices .

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

No aircraft cabin crew have ever put out a call asking if there are any Linux sysadmin onboard with a copy of GParted Live v1.5.0 for 32bit ARM devices .

The grizzled greybeard spoke up, brandishing his weathered USB drive above his head like a sword. "I can do it. I'm a sysadmin."

"Oh, thank God!" the flight attendant sighed. "It says something about booting, I'm not sure. Nobody here knows Linux."

The greaybeard squeezed himself out of his seat and stood in the aisle. "I’d just like to interject for a moment." he interrupted with a raised finger and a self-satisfied expression. "What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/LInux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX."

He shifted his bulk to block one of the other passengers, who was screaming behind him that nobody cares. The pilot was now standing behind the flight attendant, begging the sysadmin to come up to the cockpit, but the greybeard was undeterred. "Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates t—"

The sysadmin never finished his sentence; the airplane smashed into the ground and all aboard were killed instantly. The impact somehow caused the GNU/Linux device to reboot correctly before it too was smashed to pieces a fraction of a second later.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

The sysadmin managed to utter as the plane smashed into the Earth, 'I use Arch by the way'.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

Booted in a fraction of a second. Nice.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Well I carry it anyway for impromptu file transfers. I've just added 1gig of survival PDFs. Probably never need them but who knows

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You'll carry it until the plastic cracks and it falls off your keyring.

So don't put anything too private on there.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I'll encrypt anything vaguely private. Honestly its a useful way of me not losing it around the house too, I must have 3 or 4 USB sticks in the house but when I need to install an ISO I can never find any

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Oh, then stick ventoy on it, and just shrink the partition and give yourself some permanent storage space too. Alternatively, just do the same for a live Linux iso of your choice.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

How would you access it in a survival situation?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Do you have a link to the survival PDFs? I'm curious

I have a few apps like that installed, such as first aid for example. Might as well get some useful guides on my USB in case my phone is dead.

Also my recommendation

  • portable programs. Pick some that might be useful and add those. I have never had to use one, but I keep them anyways

  • Some media to pass the time. This has come in handy once or twice

  • extra space for large file transfers

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Survival/comments/732c79/ive_collected_a_bunch_of_free_survival_pdf_links/

Original Zip link is dead but someone in the comments recreated it. No idea if they're any good, hopefully I'll never look at them

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago

You ought to read them and practice their use otherwise you'll never know if they're unintelligible when/if you need them.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

No idea if they're any good, hopefully I'll never look at them

Well, better to be prepared. When you are starving and freezing from cold in a forest, lost and about to be mauled by a black bear, it's nice to have that stick around so you can quickly grab it and shove it sideways up in the arse of the bear.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Not OP, but this instantly made me think of the worst-case scenario PDFs I stumbled upon on Lemmy recently.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You could get a very very old ebook reader from a yard sale. You get something functional and a lot of them act like a USB drive.

Plus a very small solar panel can charge it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

No aircraft cabin crew have ever put out a call asking if there are any Linux sysadmin

Does not mean it will never happen!!!

sysadmins save lives!

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I have three partitions: First one is Ventoy with a couple of distros per architecture. Partition two is a standard exfat partition for files. Partition three is a small fat16 partition, since there's always that one device someone has (oscilloscope, 3D printer, UEFI/BIOS, etc.) that only supports very simple file systems. I've had to use the fat16 partition more than a couple of times and I don't even work with legacy hardware.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I've got a USB stick on my keys but I don't remember what's on it because I've never used it lmao.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Just sticking a USB stick into a bunch of different ports, is going to get you an STI eventually.

How do you make the stick read only? To prevent picking up malware along your journey?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

STI

Serially Transmittable Infection?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

No. Don't be stupid. Serial Tract Infection. Duh.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

This is where the physical write protect notch on SD cards would be useful.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

Do you want to spread malware? Because that is how you infect an Iranian nuclear project.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago

A metal 128 GB USB on my keychain next to the U2F key

16 GB Ventoy partition with:

  • Clonezilla ('deploying' my system image and backups)
  • Mint Debian Edition (everything needed to test and recover my Debian systems)
  • Debian netinstall
  • Various manuals and reference documents
  • Portable CrystalDiskInfo and VeraCrypt for Windows
  • Dumping grounds for files that I intended to transfer between machines, particularly the XP retro gaming rig
  • An optimistic IF-FOUND.TXT
  • KeePass
  • Previously Windows, until once upon a time, I booted into WinRE via Ventoy, got confused between X:, C:, and whatever else, and proceeded to nuke my USB instead of another disk. The Windows installer lived on its own USB happily ever after.

And a LUKS encrypted partition in the remaining space with more documents and a backup of almost all of my photos.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

Sorry about the negativity from so many people.

You do what works for you.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

When I last had an everyday carry USB stick (5+ years ago) I found I never actually used it for anything.

I had Ventoy and some practical ISOs, and PortableApps with a bunch of useful software (firefox, foobar2000, GIMP, notepad++...) for when I was using someone else's Windows PC.

...think I stored like two word documents on it, ever.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Mine is mostly lighting console show files of various concerts/comedians/dance performances I have been the lighting designer for. I know my use case is different than most people's, but hey, you asked.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

512GB Ventoy, every version windows that can boot from ISO. Gandalf's win 10 PE, gandalf's 111 PE, Debian live ISO, max versions of Debian and NixOS, silver blue and fedora. Ubuntu along with LTS. I could have put my crypto partition on it, but I actually like keeping that as a separate key.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I had to google ventoy and now I feel like a cave man because I have a dish with 6 flash drives that all have different ISOs

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Ventoy and...

Clonezilla, (custom) ArchISO, Tails

the stuff you might need to safe other people's PCs sigh ...

HBCD_PE, Windows 11

If I hadn't included those in my ArchISO already I would probably add..

one of the usual Rescue ISOs, GParted Live.

Bonus points for Ventoy's ISO partiiton doubling as simple storage.

PS: Thanks for the reminder to update some of them again.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I haven't carried a USB stick in years, so not sure what I would do. Maybe a copy of my recipe book if I ever digitize it?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Lots of people have already mentioned Ventoy.

MediCat is Ventoy with a ton of images and a config file. It seems great, although I chose to roll my own as MediCat had a lot of Windows-centric images i have no need for.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Mine is a durable, metal 128GB stick. It lives on my keyring and has a relatively recent copy of Arch on it. It's handy for fixing broken laptops and rescuing data. A friend has a more advanced one, with multiple distros on it for different diagnosis options.

The rest of the disk space is just xfat.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

I also have a USB stick on my keys. Mostly I keep books I'm reading, favorite movies, stuff like that. Then when I'm hanging out with friends later and we're talking about what we're watching I have it all ready to share.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My "everyday carry" isn't a USB stick, but it can act as one - and much much more: I always have my trusty Flipper Zero with me, and the image I carry in the mass storage emulator is the Linux Mint installer, with extra space in the image to store small files.

To be honest, the Flipper Zero's mass storage emulator turns it into the slowest USB stick you never saw. But in a pinch, it's there and it's usable. I use my Flipper for a variety of other things all the time - including, with my laptop, as a presentation remote and secondary mouse - and I almost never need a USB flash drive. So slow though it is, it's enough for when I do need one.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Ventoy with every ISO I've needed to install, and Snappy Driver Installer Origin with its full set of drivers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

I got two identical 64gb sticks. One's for a Ventoy setup with a bunch of different ISOs, in case anything has to be done and/or recovered. The other just has occasional random files i might need

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

ventoy with some live image, gparted, and arch iso

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

64 GiB, two partitions, one with my files including Keepass database, the other with Ventoy with ISOs for Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon, Debian 13.5 KDE, NixOS Gnome, Win 10 and bazzite

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

A medicat install, insanely useful.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Two partitions for a live linux, the second for home and other data. It can come in handy, if you're on linux.

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