Ubuntu Placeshifter running from USB zip (thumb) drive

[Ghampton]

One of my Sage Clients is now booting and running from a USB thumb drive.

I'm not sure exactly why I did this, but it worked surprisingly better than I thought it would, so I'm sharing. I used the Ubuntu Live CD creator to create a bootable Ubuntu installation on a USB flash drive. The system booted right up, I installed the video drivers, the Placeshifter, and configured the remote. Poof, it just worked!

Video looks to be as good as it was on the Windows SageClient (I know that shouldn't be). The hardware is a quad core Athlon with 4 GB memory and a GeForce 9500 GPU (and gigabit ethernet). Overall performance is very acceptable (the computer does nothing but SageTV and Hulu).

Live CD Creator link: http://lifehacker.com/5319596/usbunt...nux-usb-drives

Next I'm going to plug it into another computer and see if it's truly that portable.

[Chriscic]

I recently started doing the same thing, and overall the USB solution works great. For me, it let's me use my work laptop after hours for my own purposes, without having to swap a hard drive out every time.

I am having some placeshifter issues (see other thread), but I don't think that has anything to do with the USB solution per se.

[jchiso]

What version of Ubuntu are you guys using? Since upgrading to Karmic I cannot get Sage Placeshifter to run on any system I have...

[Chriscic]

9.10

What's the exact problem you are having?

I noticed that if I check the "3D acceleration box" the program will not load, in case that's helpful.

[jchiso]

When I click on the menu item, nothing happens. I have java JRE6 or whatever it's called installed. I'm trying to run the 6.6.1 version of the Client...

[Chriscic]

Sorry, not sure I can help you there. I'm also running 6.6.1 for the placeshifter version.

I can check my java version if you tell me how.

[dadein]

I've been playing around with getting a setup working from a USB drive as well. I used the "Ubuntu Live CD Creator" now called "LinuxLive USB Creator" available at http://www.linuxliveusb.com/. Great program! Very easy to use.

So far I have had success with installing XBMC, Boxee, Hulu Desktop, and SageTV. I have been able to get my Firefly remote to work with LIRC for all BUT SageTV. Is there something I am missing here or does SageTV not support a remote on the Linux platform?

Hardware: Core 2 Duo 6600(2.4ghz), 9400GT Video, 1Gig Memory, 4Gig Sony thumb drive. no hard drive, no CD/DVD drive.
Software: LinuxMint-8.iso 32bit (Ubuntu 9.10 base), Nvidia driver 195.36.15 , Flash 10.1 d51, LIRC, and latest XBMC, Boxee, Hulu Desktop, and SageTV