Solution to an old problem

LINK!

Gives instructions on how to use Linux to create an .iso image of a cd. Needed to create one, but the instructions were blown up when my first phone died. Found it again. It is too easy:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=filename.iso

Done Deal.

Open Source Day - Nobody told me!

Just found this post on Tech Republic - one of my favorite sites for tech news and info. I subscribe to a few of the newsletters, including MS Office, and of course, Linux and Open Source.

Software Freedom Day

Sept. 19 was Open Source day which, like all great things open source, was kept a great big secret! NARF! The problem with free software, open source, Linux and the like are not the help and support mechanisms (those are great) or the interfaces (getting much better, but not perfectly polished like the big names). The biggest problem is awareness. If people don't know that options exist, how can we expect them to use them? Imagine that no one knew there was another car manufacturer besides GM? Cereal other than Kelloggs? Phones other than an iPhone (such blasphemy!)?

Check out the post, and if you can, download and burn the disc. It won't cost you anything........

Happy Birthday Rooster

Yesterday was The Rooster's birthday, so of course we went fishing for a few minutes. We made a quick run over to a small county park where the panfish are usually biting. He had one on the beach before I even got my rod rigged up, but then it was pretty slow. They just weren't biting. We saw a good looking Brown Trout cruising around, but couldn't tempt it.

We did find a spot at the end though that held this sunny and a bluegill - both over 7 inches. Not a bad take for panfish around here.

A good birthday present, except he didn't get to keep it.  :)

Let the dough start rolling in.....

Finally got AdSense enabled for my other blog. Now I can start to be a bit more proactive in promoting it. I have been keeping a low profile on it at the start, as I wanted to have a chance to earn from visitors. Now that the ads are active, I can push it a little bit more.

Don't get me wrong, it is not all about the money. I put the ads on there in an attempt to bring in some income, and if it turns into a new job for me that requires me to take my family fishing/camping/hiking and to claim all the expenses on my income tax, so be it. :)

I did pass the url on to two other sites - PPFF and Friends of Ridley Creek. Both are non-profits geared toward promoting and protecting state forests and parks, and I received a nice message back from the PPFF, which I hope turns into an opportunity as well.

It's funny - blogging started for me as a hands on, anyone can do it exercise in my intro class, and has turned into a fun activity that I hope I can turn into a job. Who'd-a-thunk-it?!?

(Furry) Friends

Amazingly, without the help of social networking, I recently came back into contact with a former co-worker from almost 10 years ago. The last time we spoke, she mentioned a local wildlife rescue that she has some contact with, and I told her about our experience with Pinkie, the baby squirrel, and the difficulty we had in finding someone to take him. From that experience, my daughter has expressed a desire to volunteer at a rescue center.

Rocky Springs Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Broadway, NJ is the name of the center, and everything I have found out about the center and it's director, Donna Fox, is amazing. Along with rave reviews from my friend, hackettstownlife had excellent references to them. Along with working as an RN, somewhere along the line, Donna has created and patented a special garment, the Cuddle N Carry at Cinderooz.com. The shirt has a built in pocket for carrying around baby and small pets the want to be close to you for warmth and comfort while leaving you free to move and hands-free. Really cool idea and invention. They are auctioning one off to benefit a shelter in New Orleans (yes, they still need help down there).

If you would like to help, check out GoodSearch. It is a charitable service from Yahoo that makes donations to the charity of your choice every time you search. With all of the hoopla about search engines, isn't it nice to use one that is doing something good? I am changing my search box as soon as I wrap up this post.

Be nice.

The Phillies magic number is .........26! Time for their September magic.

Note to Self post

I was working this morning on getting Apache setup on my home server box, and found the definitive answer to getting my subdomains setup at this blog.


Much thanks and grateful bowing to the author, as I was finally able to test out some of the things I have been looking into doing based on this much helpful information. I now have a web server running according to a fully qualified domain name (after editing the hosts file on my laptop first to point to the server)

This is a reminder to me for when I want to setup and modify the next subdomain on my local net

Family, Baseball and Football

Family - just got back from taking the kids to Knoebels for a weekend jaunt. Ma helped pay for the rooms and tickets since unemployment is taking forever to process.......Went out for a ride with Ma and my baby girl to look for Perseids while we were up there - girlie and I did see one, but that was all. Took both older kids to Lancaster County the early am of the 12th, but cloud cover prevented us from seeing anything. We then did some fishing, but had no real luck.

Baseball - pending the outcome of tonites game, the Phillies magic number is (by my best count) 44. They could easily lock this up by mid-September.

Football - www.sackvick.net

Second chances and all that are fine. People who make a mistake ONCE get a second chance. Willfully killing dogs (even torturing his own family pets!) for over six years is over the line. He has a college degree, and is not owed a second chance at a multi-million dollar career in the NFL. I am sickened by the league allowing him to be re-instated, and my once beloved Eagles in signing Vick. I will not watch their games (GO STEELERS!), and will follow that with a boycott of all their sponsors - Pathmark, no more ACME. No Aquafina water - and so on. Maybe if the people who ultimately pay the bills get enough negative pressure, they can force a change in the all-powerful NFL. Probably not, but my dog and I will be able to sleep safe and content at night.

Be proactive.

Baseball

The boys of summer are in full swing. After an exciting week of rumor watching, the hometown boys landed last years Cy Young award winner - our second choice! (Go figure!) He was the best pitcher moved @ the deadline, we got him, and he thanked us for saving him from Cleveland with a complete game gem! I like Cliff Lee - he's a keeper!

Baseball item #2 - checking the sports pages, I read an article about fellow blogger Brian Gump - a Minor League baseball player in the Phillies organization. He has a good blog he is keeping up, and I hope he keeps at it over the "winter" to keep us up to date on how he keeps prepared. Check him out.

Baseball item #3 - The Magic Number.
The Phillies "Magic Number" is 53. The Marlins are 5 games back - I will be keeping an eye on this one.

Back-to-Back! Go Phils!

Update

Just an update on life as it goes right now.....

Kris and the kids all just went through mild bouts with swimmers ear. Not a big deal (fortunately). Right now I am the walking wounded (literally) with a mild sprain to my right foot that makes walking a pain.

Been keeping up with the free movies. Went to see Inkheart today. Ben and I did some fishing last week without much success. But like Ben always says, a bad day fishing is better than a good day @ work! LOL

Went for a walk along the big trail at Ridley Creek State Park over the weekend. The kids enjoy it, but the stroller is a pain in the neck, so I checked craigslist and found a hikers baby backpack for $25. Max likes it already!

Put the soft top on my Jeep the other day. The kids loved riding with the top off, and then with just the top on. I forgot how much fun that is. (If you or someone you know would like to experience the fun, the Jeep is for sale for $3800 - 3 tops, hard and soft doors - a steal!!!)

Kids are warming up for their first soccer tournament of the season (sprained my foot catching too much ground on a shot @ practice). Coach and I are cautiously optimistic.

I think that I am going to take some classes soon. I really want to build on my web skills and move my career in that direction (or is it this direction?). Mobile web and mobile apps are shaping up to be the next two big growth areas, and I am ready to go for a ride.

Busy, Busy, Busy

What a busy week! Who'd a thunk being jobless could be so busy?!?

Monday I filed for my U.C. benefits. Tuesday I took the kids to the weekly free movie show (Spiderwick Chronicles - good flick). Wednesday we went to Ringing Rocks and Nockamixon(sp?) Parks in Upper Bucks County for some fun with the kids. When we got home, I got a text from a buddy about going to a fishing tourney on Lake Champlain next weekend - someone backed out and they had a slot paid for, just bring gear. Thursday I did some things around the yard (gotta do my chores before I go). Friday, we found a pinkie baby squirell in the yard that we tried to rescue after its mother never returned for it (sadly, he did not make it through the night despite our best research and efforts).

And of course, every night I search the job sites and talk to people about a job.

Not having a job is a lot of work........

What did you do this weekend to be a better geek?

Hello Cycle 41!  Since we are starting a unit on the Internet, I thought what better way to start things off than by finding your lesson on the Internet!  I am soooooo clever!

This is my blog.  I use it for class assignments, and my own general rantings.  If you start to miss me, you can just read some of my other posts.........

There are some folks that use their blogs as a money making machine - there is even a site called problogger.net, where the writer claims a six-figure income, and I know there are numerous books on the subject.  (As a matter of fact, I have seen a book written by a blogger based right here in Philadelphia - I kid you not!)  In addition to advertising, some bloggers get free coupons, gift cards and even free stuff just for reviewing products on their blogs.  It has become such a big business, that the FTC is looking into regulating bloggers.

If you like to write, but don't want the hassle of maintaining a blog site, you can get your work published in a variety of ways: Helium.com, ConstantContent.com, and AssociatedContent.com are all sites that will pay you to write for them directly, or provide a marketplace for your writing.

If you aren't much on the content side, but can (or want to) design and make good looking, functional websites, you may want to look into how to become a freelance web designer.  Working with content management software like Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla are all excellent entries into the world of web design/web building.

Of course, you can get yourself some space on the Internet and re-sell it (kind of like a digital middle-man).  Bluehost.com is a site I found that provides a tremendous amount of space and flexibility on the Internet for a very low cost (compare it to hosting packages provided by sites like GoDaddy.com).  The beauty of (and problem with) the Internet is that there are no licensing, business or expertise requirements to setup shop.  Anyone can pick a name, rent the space and hang their shingle in whatever field they want.  Got an idea on how you can leverage your special talents (no Perry, belching the alphabet is not a special talent) to make money on the Internet?  These are the types of sites that can rent you the space to do it......

If you are a social butterfly, you can get in on the money making game with social networks too.  Design a really cool template for MySpace or Facebook, and you can sell it for a modest penny or two.  Google "myspace templates" and see just how many sites there are......

Lastly, if you have no friends in this life (not mentioning any names of people in the back of the room on the typing tutor all day long...........ahem), you may want to try a Second Life.  In a virtual world, you can be anyone you want, even if you want to be a real-estate mogul or fashion designer.  Not only can you be rich and famous in your Second Life, but you could actually put some money in the bank account associated with your first (read NORMAL) life!

In some cases, without any special "skill", but a little bit of know-how, you can make money on-line at little cost and with little time and resources.  Certainly, you don't even need your own computer to make money online, although I wouldn't recommend that!  Now that I have pointed you to some of the options, it is up to you to see just how realistic these opportunities are.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:  Using the links above, and using sites like Google and Bing to search for the italicized terms, surf the Internet, and find out more about the real opportunities that people have taken advantage of to make money on the Internet.  Look into as much as time allows...it's okay to "fall down the rabbit hole".  With the Internet, some things require exploring and meandering.  After you have had a look around, write me a one page paper about the opportunity that interests you the most, and how you could forsee yourself making money.  Look in depth - find out how people really do it.  Most information is freely available in some form, so formulate a complete plan - give me details about how you would make money, and the choices that you make.  Be sure to look up (using online dictionaries or Wikipedia) any terms that are new to you so that you can fully understand what you are getting yourself into......

Have fun.  See you later      
~PFunk

I am throwing out my TV

The other night I saw a commercial on TV that made me absolutely apoplectic. Brooke Shields was doing a commercial for a new prescription pharmaceutical to help grow thicker, fuller EYELASHES!

Is this what the world has come to? We have solved all the big problems that medicine can solve, so now we are looking into what we can do for people with eyelashe deficiencies? Please tell me this was originally an attempt to find a cure for blindness with an odd side effect. Please tell me that no one sat down and consciously set out to find the miracle cure for sparse eyelashes.

I am so perplexed by this. We have so many real problems in this country and this world, but we have no problem finding the next cure for limp linguine or thin eyelashes. Next will there be a test available to check for unibrow in utero? With prescription drug prices through the roof, and the justification of R & D, is this a signal of the coming apocolypse? This can't end well if people can't afford heart medication, but we can fund research and development of medical mascara.

Aaaaaaargggghhhhhhhh! Stop the stupidity, I want to get off!!!!

Hugh Douglas is not a credible reporter

As I was getting dressed and ready for work this morning, I had the tv tuned to FOX29 for local news. (Myphl17 looks like they are running it out of someone's basement - completely unwatchable).

Hugh Douglas is a great personality, and excels at breaking down sports highlights (not so much with the reading scores part), and they are looking to see how much they can do with him. However, Hugh Douglas is NOT a credible reporter.

This morning's segment featured Hugh in a E85 Flex Fuel Chevy Avalanche going over all of the great features. Having previously shopped for one (WAY USED), I can tell you it is an innovative, roomy and powerful truck. It also goes for $56,000 new. Hugh, being an ex Defensive End (hint: one of the higher paying positions on the football field), went on at the end of the segment to talk about how that truck was a great buy for the money. You know, for the guy towing his boat to the shore.....

(Aside to GM executives: the old rule of thumb was to spend a couple of times your annual salary on a house, not a car. Get in line with reality - I will buy one off the used car lot in 5 years and pay less than 20k for it. Probably less than 15k. This is why automakers suck. And FAIL.)

Are you kidding me? A former pro athlete telling me that the big rims and chrome accents make that truck worth 56k? A guy who made that kind of money in a week, telling me that I should sell my wife's WIC checks to put money down on one of those. Ridiculous, and not the least bit credible. Meanwhile the blonde car model is doing Sports......

I guess my biggest problem with it is, I understand the difference in what is a good value for my money, what fulfills my needs, and what is a waste. We are a country that was nearly toppled from debt and overspending. Credit is tightening, and with new rules, credit card companies are going to look for new ways to get the advantage on consumers. I understand this, but a lot of people do not. Just like the results from last nights reality show is not news, the reality show is not reality. People are so hypnotized by the television that they don't understand that their reality is nothing like television. There are stories about how the economy is struggling, but there is no education for people to improve their own circumstance. Athletes and entertainers are paid exorbitant sums of money, spend ridiculous amounts on sunglasses, shoes, cars, and are then held up as the standards that our children should aspire to.

And when the "crisis" is over, the schools and the media will go back to failing people again - failing to educate, and selling the same snake oil reality that nearly ruined the people on the other side of the cameras.

Onscreen keyboard too! With smiley faces no less! Too much fun. Great update! O:-)

Update!

I am so excited!  I just got an update to my phone, and there were a couple of small differences right off the bat, but the first BIG one I noticed is.......A Camcorder! Yay! Finally video capability comes to the G1. I tried market apps, but they were a little weak. I am very excited to try it.  Can't wait to see what other goodies are in here. Thank you Android!

Post heading

Not just SMS, but e-mail too. This will be good for sending those cool (or cute) pics on the go!

Tweet!

More cool ways to blog.....text message. Guess this is blogger's answer to tweets. Works 4 me!

Hatin on Jon and Kate

After reading all of the drama (and blistering that they were getting) on the front page of practically every news source, I watched for the one and only time "Jon and Kate Plus 8".

I could see why she is not viewed as a very sympathetic person, and I really, after a bit, didn't have much for him either. What kind of "reality" do these two live in? They have furniture in one room that costs more than all of the furniture in my house. Who gets their birthday cake made at Charm City, while Duff entertains their kids? (HEY DUFF - Can I stop by with the wife and kids? I really screwed up her birthday and mothers day and could use a save. Call me. pfunk) Who has dinner with Emeril? This is not reality anymore. It was reality when they struggled to put diapers on the babies. It was reality when 6 completely helpless children needed their parents to care for them, hold them, feed them. It was reality when they were part of a community that supported them, and they appreciated the help.

Is it any wonder their marriage may be on the rocks? (don't really care, I truthfully am not a fan of our voyeurism culture as ironic as that may be.) He mentioned about how they used to work as a team, could fill each other's gaps, you know - parent like a married couple. Now either she is out of town doing book signings (which, why are the pictures she was signing of her and not her kids, which - she insisted - is what it is "all about". No one would care about her at all if she didn't have all those kids), or she is jetting across the country for spa treatments (they have them in Philly and New York too. Probably one in Reading, couple in KoP). When she gets back to town, he runs off. Snow boarding in Park City? What about Blue Mt? Jack Frost, even frickin Vermont - When you live in rural PA, Park City is for celebs.

Turn it back into a reality show - instead of the "reported" $47,000 per episode (next week is #100 btw) that they are getting, how about it gets put into a trust fund for the children that cannot be touched until they are 18?

No there is no more reality there, and they deserve all the pain and misery they receive for their selfish exploitations. There are plenty of real people who raise kids and go through struggles every day - comes with the territory. These two are just spoiled, ungrateful, miserable people whose children are on a fast track to infamous.

Time to turn off the cameras - then the reality really comes home.

Argh! Windows!!!!!

I am living in a Linux world - I have been 'Windows Free' for almost a year now. However, sometimes the best tool for the job is Windows software. In this case, it was Dreamweaver.

I am working on a website, and like to use WYSIWYG editors to get the basic structure and such banged out real quickly. Setting up pages is just much faster than hand coding everything, plus the added advantage of being able to see how thing are working on the page makes WYSIWYG the easy way to get started. After trying several Linux based options, I decided that Dreamweaver was the best tool for the job, so I decided to reboot into my Vista partition.

On the whole, I don't think Vista is as bad as advertised. My problems are with Windows overall and the way it hogs resources, requires 40 different helper apps to start everytime, etc. Just way too much overhead that eats up everything that should make my computer faster.

Before I got into coding, I had to do a little housekeeping, since I hadn't booted into Vista in over 4 months. Like the nag screen from my expired anti-virus subscription. I don't use it much, so I really wasn't worried about viruses, but wanted to update to be sure. So I disabled the anti-virus and downloaded Avira (free-av.com) - the url says it all. I also had some updates that needed to be downloaded (fix all those security holes), removed some of the crapware that came pre-loaded on the system, and updated Firefox as well.

An hour and a half later ..............................................my system scan with the anti-virus is still not done. I just don't have these issues on my Linux box! Argh! The windows update needs a reboot ....this thing is killing me. I spent two hours (at least) doing all the housekeeping - not optimization or serious upgrading, housekeeping - on this Windows box, and still have not accomplished a damn thing.

Finally, around lunch time, after all the scanning and rebooting was done, I was able to get to work. Happy Time. Productivity ensued. Much work was completed, and before I knew it, it was time to go home. Click on shut down and install updates (more updates - I thought I......oh well, sure).

Installing update 1 of 17 - do not turn off or unplug your computer. Ok, I have a couple minutes before I have to go, let me run to the john.

Installing update 1 of 17 - do not turn off or unplug your computer. Your kidding, right? I washed my hands and everything! (stomping away in disgust).

Installing update 1 of 17 - do not turn off or unplug your computer. All right - SCREW THIS! I have to go, it's a laptop, I am taking the damn thing.

When I got on my train, I opened the laptop to find it on update 7. After a total time of NO LESS THAN 40 MINUTES, it finished all the updates..........then failed on something and proceeded to spend another 10 minutes rolling back the changes.

Windows. ARGH!!!!

P.S. Yes, I am going to install it in Wine.

Get a REAL Stimulus!

Attention President Obama and Members of the 111th Congress:

Stop giving the money to just anyone. Stop giving MY money away.

I have a proposal for a real stimulus.....a stimulus package that would end the recession, unfreeze the credit markets, create jobs, save struggling retailers, help the poor and unemployed and close the ever expanding gap between the rich and everyone else.

$25,000. Tax Free.

$25,000 to every taxpayer with incomes up to 100k.

$50,000 to married couples up to 150k.

$10,000 to those on Social Security who file returns.

Give some real money to the people that will drive this economy. You keep trying to 'trickle down' money, and these things are doing nothing to help the rest of us who are hurting. $600 is spit. $20 a week is nothing. Useless. We the People need real money.

With $25,000, real people can:

• Pay Down Debt (freeing up more money every month to spend on purchases, food, etc.)


• Pay off those bad mortgages (taking 'bad debt' off the books, boosting home values)


• Buy a house (some people are actually looking for a place to live. With a good downpayment and six months bills in the bank, more people will be confident to buy houses.)


• Make household and vehicle repairs (the simple everyday things that the rest of us have to deal with.)


• Splurge (helping drive retail sales across the board, across the country.)


• Invest for their future (so we can avoid this mess again.)


• Save (you know, put money in the banks - just like you are, except this time, my money will still be my money after it goes into the bank).

I still have a job, pay my bills and am up to date with my home loan payments. I struggle every day to keep doing it, and this latest 'stimulus' plan of yours does NOTHING for me.

Stimulate the economy. HELP. Put the money in the hands of those you represent, the masses that elected you, the true people whose interests you are supposed to be serving in Washington.

It is time for the people of this country to make their voices heard. Click the link below and lets get some momentum to getting us ALL our lives back. Let's ALL have a chance at the AMERICAN DREAM!

Putting a USB ISO on the USB

How to find and access the USB device and then get the image (USB ready) to the Drive entirely within Linux.

I have found lots of different instruction sets, but none seemed to work entirely within Linux - there was always a Windows hitch to it. I have collected a bunch of different instructions from around the 'net to get this to work. My target OS was BackTrack Linux, but I think that this should work with any USB ready ISO image. There are other steps required to take a standard ISO image and get it USB ready - your on your own for that.

*Of course, insert the USB first!*

First step was to open terminal and type sudo su - the command had no prompt (but maybe because I had already issued sudo before and so was already 'logged in') and had no discernible output.

Next fdisk -l (Lowercase L) - lists partitions. Without the su command previous, I was unable to open and view the partitions. Now I am able to identify the primary partition on the USB flash drive. In this case, the drive is /dev/sdb with the primary partition /dev/sdb1 .

next mkdir -p /mnt/distroname This creates a directory (with parents as necessary) that the iso image will be attached to with the next command.

mount -o loop bt3final_usb.iso /mnt/backtrack

This command was issued from within the folder where the iso image was stored (being lazy - did not want to mess with relative pathnames as well). -o sets options, in this case the loop option. At this point unclear what it (loop) does, but it is consistantly mentioned in instructions, so I am using it here to be safe. Now the ISO image appears as a folder which can be viewed and accessed normally.

uh-oh.......here is where Linux gets screwy - poor instructions that leave out the little things. The next command is

cfdisk /dev/sdb - which is a semi-graphical utility for viewing and modifying disk partitions. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL TO DO HERE! The instructions just said use this command, not what to do once I am in here. My guess was to change to bootable and make it a Linux filesystem (changed the 'type') and 'Write' to commit changes.

*Update* - What a wrong choice that was. As long as the USB is formatted FAT32, everything is just fine. No need to make bootable, as this is done later. On an already working drive, it is possible that this step may be skipped.

*reminder* - uh....make sure when using cfdisk to change partition information you are looking at the correct device. Otherwise you might overwrite the MBR on you HDD (hypothetically, of course :)

mkfs.ext2 -b1024 -m0 -L'Linux Live USB' -O sparse_super /dev/sdb1

This next command was actually to make a filesystem, but I have one, and when I tried to execute the command, it tells me the device is mounted, and basically, beat it. so I tried umount except that tells me the device is busy, and I have no way of shutting it down now. So, I skipped that step.

*Update* - See above - no need to do this, and it seems to me that FAT32 is the better option anyway......

Next, tune the file system I couldn't create. That didn't work either.

tune2fs -c0 -i0 /dev/sdb1

Next is the process of creating another target directory in mnt for the usb drive - mkdir -p /mnt/bt_usb where bt was short for the distro I was copying, and usb, well, that should be self explanatory.

Now, mount the usb drive - mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/bt_usb

• went without a hitch.

Now, since the iso image that I have is ready for usb, I am just going to copy the files in the image directly to the usb stick and hope that it works with no further modifications (see references on the web to syslinux & isolinux.) However, my copy process

cp -avR /mnt/distroname/* /mnt/bt_usb/

(archive, verbose, recursive)

is barking after every file that it cannot 'preserve ownership' for the files. Don't know if this will be a deal breaker. Only time will tell..........but I am counting on trying this again real soon.

(follow up: the files all exist on the drive, despite the barking)

I think that I may need to go in through the gui filemanager and unmount the usb from there. Maybe then I can get all of the other functions to work correctly. For now, I will hope that this just works.

*Update and Resolution*

After much trial and more error, I have finally succeeded, and hope that these instruction will follow for any USB.ISO.

Once the FAT32 partition is there (no need to specify bootable, as this is accomplished later), just copy over the files from the ISO image to the usb (mounted as above).

Here was another one of those tricky situations....My distro had a file in the Boot folder called Bootinst.sh, which is the executable to make the filesystem (and O.S.) bootable. Unfortunately, as a DOS/Windows chump and Linux n00b, I kept trying to just type the command and kept getting the same result - no such command. Turns out to launch the program, it needs to be proceeded by "dot slash" - e.g. ./bootinst.sh - just like when running configure to create executables (which I have done maybe twice). Once I figured out how to actually execute the damn program, it was all smooth sailing.

I now have a fully bootable Linux USB key - created entirely within Linux - no Windows required.