Dual boot: inatallion to usb only - no modificaton of local hdd

I want to install OS 15.6 on a tablet/laptop to a bootable usb stick.
I don’t want to make any modifications to the builtin drive or the system,
Do I have to (or can I at all) change any settings regarding booting during installation?
(of course I set the partitions to be only on the usb drive)

Select manual partitioning and make sure that the EFI partition on the hhd won’t be mounted.

how do I avoid writing anything to the BIOS? eg. bootloader

Unselect updating NVRAM in the boot loader settings.

I wouldn’t do the installation that way, just grab the live media and put that on a USB drive and use that.

Simply use a Live version, as already suggested by @hendersj … no need to complicate it :+1:

It is based on overlayfs (which does have some limitations and will consume extra space over time) and you cannot update kernel/bootloader and likely some more low level packages, at least with standard package management.

Live is intended for short term, not as permanent installation.

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When you install a system to an USB-drive the resulting system will in some respect be “tailored” to the hardware environment used at installation time.

If you want to use that USB-drive with different machines you can run into troubles (e.g. missing graphic card drivers, missing device firmwares, …).

A LIVE system will not show this problem but might be limited as far as updates are concerned.

I have 15.6 installed on an external drive (USB). I am not having any of those problems.

Install went smoothly. I do have it set up to use NetworkManager, because if it uses “wicked” that ties it to specific hardware. And I have it configured to boot with either UEFI or legacy BIOS booting.

I did not have any serious problems installing. I used manual partitioning. I created both BIOS boot partition and an EFI partition (using GPT partitioning). I installed for legacy BIOS booting, and manually ran “shim-install” to add support for UEFI booting.

That would be:

shim-install --removable --no-nvram

I used “ext4” for the root file system, with a separate “/boot” using “ext2”. The BIOS boot partition, the EFI partition and “/boot” are the first three physical partitions. That’s to avoid problems booting on systems with an older BIOS that cannot see all the way into the disk.

Nothing in the original post suggests it.

Nothing stops you from using non host specific “giant” initrd.

I know. That is why I used “if”. Probably I should have used “In case” (I promise to work hard to improve my English capabilities).

I didn’t say that it is impossible to build a system that will run on many hardware setups without a problem.

But if users do a standard installation

  • they will not get the capability of boot on UEFI and MBR systems (as described by @nrickert) out-of-the-box. However it is possible to create a system that can handle it.

  • and happen to have no NVIDIA card in their system at installation time they will not get nouveau (the non-kernel part).

  • and do not have an Intel wifi card in their system at installation time they will not get the Intel wifi firmware package (at least not if they install openSUSE Tumbleweed, openSUSE Leap may behave different).

Yes all this can be solved in advance or when needed.

Nevertheless I think it is a good idea to make people aware of those “traps”.

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