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.
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 .
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.
The sysadmin managed to utter as the plane smashed into the Earth, ‘I use Arch by the way’.
Booted in a fraction of a second. Nice.
Well I carry it anyway for impromptu file transfers. I’ve just added 1gig of survival PDFs. Probably never need them but who knows
With no phone/tablet/laptop how are you going to look at them?
Print them out and/or memorise (as much as you can) them.You’ll carry it until the plastic cracks and it falls off your keyring.
So don’t put anything too private on there.
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
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.
Isn’t it just far easier to transfer documents using one of the thousands of cloud apps though? Since Dropbox and such became a thing I’ve not had a use for USBs. If it’s privacy that concerns you then you already mentioned self hosted services and I’m sure there’s a few Dropbox clones among them.
There’s not much point in survival PDFs unless you’re also carrying a laptop to view them on.
If you really do want to go full apocalypse prepper then track down an archive of Wikipedia and various how-to websites.
i honestly prefer using usbs over cloud stuff because of the speed and it being less hassle, unless it’s a situation where I can just just syncthing or kde connect
Sure, for devices that already are logged in then yes. But to log into my Proton Drive I have to enter my password and authenticate with my Yubikey and it might not be a trusted computer, or the internet connection might be slow. And my self hosted services including my Seafile are behind a VPN so I’d have to log into my VPN on that PC to access them. I definitely transfer files by USB on occasion.
I guess I can put a VPN config file on my USB in the encrypted folder so I can connect to it from any trusted PC
Another common use case is for when I need to give someone else a file when we’re in the same room. It’s not worth the hassle of trying to transfer it over a network or wirelessly, especially if they are large files or we are on a different OS/ecosystem.
The USB stick just works.
How would you access it in a survival situation?
My phone that has no connection, or any USB A / C device that’s around? Not saying its likely
Wouldn’t it just be easier to store stuff on the phone…
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
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portable programs. Pick some that might be useful and add those. I have never had to use one, but I keep them anyways
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Some media to pass the time. This has come in handy once or twice
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extra space for large file transfers
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
You ought to read them and practice their use otherwise you’ll never know if they’re unintelligible when/if you need them.
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.
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I hate to break it down but you probably dont need one
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.
Thats dope. I suppose grandma? Do you keep them around to copy stuff over to your current project?
Mostly Avolites and ETC. Mostly just always save to a couple of USB sticks as backup, one of which lives on my keys and the other in my computer bag. It is nice to have quick access to my user profile and some pre-built stuff though. Some of them I keep around because I do those shows every year but mostly it’s just not worth the effort of deleting them because the files are so small. They are also all backed up to my home server.
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?
STI
Serially Transmittable Infection?
No. Don’t be stupid. Serial Tract Infection. Duh.
This is where the physical write protect notch on SD cards would be useful.
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.
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.
Ventoy with bazzite, arch, think there’s a tails or something similar, a few recovery and hacking tools
Do you want to spread malware? Because that is how you infect an Iranian nuclear project.
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.
How have I never thought of partitioning one large USB drive for multiple purposes…
Windows is not very pleasant about dealing with a removable drive with more than one partition.
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.
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
My dish still has a flash drive marked “Win 8” which I’ve since overwritten with… Some flavor of Linux. Mint maybe.
A medicat install, insanely useful.
What is that?
A bunch of (totally) legally aquired tools on a ventoy install. https://medicatusb.com/ also check out their discord we got a great community
What are you doing with your life that necessitates carrying a USB drive everywhere you go?
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