DriveDroid: Puppy ISO on smartphone

Under development: PCMCIA, wireless, etc.
Post Reply
Message
Author
niftyprose
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed 01 Aug 2012, 09:23

DriveDroid: Puppy ISO on smartphone

#1 Post by niftyprose »

Hi chaps, liliputing.com has an interesting story about DriveDroid, a neat smartphone app which lets you load a Linux ISO from your phone to any computer. The developers, Softwarebakery (http://softwarebakery.com/drivedroid-released) have made a number of distros available, including Slitaz -- but no Puppy. I've written to them saying that Puppy would be an ace candidate for their service. I guess the 'boot from USB' thing goes out the window if we're booting from a phone, but Puppys range of friendly wizards makes it a snap for loading on different PCs. Worth exploring? Best, W.

niftyprose
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed 01 Aug 2012, 09:23

Follow-up from developers

#2 Post by niftyprose »

Hi chaps, I contacted the developers of DriveDroid to recommend that they make Puppy available within DD. Interesting reply -- here it is:

"Since DriveDroid only emulates USB drives on most devices (atm), the ISO files need to be compatible with USB drives (they need to be 'hybrid'). I've tried Puppy Linux before, but they do not distribute their ISO files as hybrid. It might be that they don't know the benefit of hybrid ISOs, but they could also have a good reason not to do it.
Apart from that it is easy to convert those ISO files if you're on a Linux system. Just issue the following command:
$ isohybrid precise-5.4.3.iso
And after that copy the iso over to your phone."

I don't know the meaning of the term 'hybrid' in this context -- can anyone elucidate?

Best, W.

User avatar
01micko
Posts: 8741
Joined: Sat 11 Oct 2008, 13:39
Location: qld
Contact:

Re: Follow-up from developers

#3 Post by 01micko »

niftyprose wrote:Hi chaps, I contacted the developers of DriveDroid to recommend that they make Puppy available within DD. Interesting reply -- here it is:

"Since DriveDroid only emulates USB drives on most devices (atm), the ISO files need to be compatible with USB drives (they need to be 'hybrid'). I've tried Puppy Linux before, but they do not distribute their ISO files as hybrid. It might be that they don't know the benefit of hybrid ISOs, but they could also have a good reason not to do it.
Apart from that it is easy to convert those ISO files if you're on a Linux system. Just issue the following command:
$ isohybrid precise-5.4.3.iso
And after that copy the iso over to your phone."

I don't know the meaning of the term 'hybrid' in this context -- can anyone elucidate?

Best, W.
Yeah, it's been recommended to Barry, I'll push it again... (isohybrid)
Puppy Linux Blog - contact me for access

seaside
Posts: 934
Joined: Thu 12 Apr 2007, 00:19

#4 Post by seaside »

Didn't Technosaurus have a rough prototype for booting Puppy over the internet a while back.

I don't remember if this went any further, however.

s

User avatar
ally
Posts: 1957
Joined: Sat 19 May 2012, 19:29
Location: lincoln, uk
Contact:

#5 Post by ally »

fatdogs are hybrids................

:)

nooby
Posts: 10369
Joined: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 19:05
Location: SwedenEurope

#6 Post by nooby »

Not any criticism but for clarity and less misunderstanding
the title can give wrong impression? Or I am just dummy obviously.

"DriveDroid, a neat smartphone app which lets you load
a Linux ISO from your phone to any computer"

So you have your smartphone with you and visit a friend
and then using wifi or cable from smartphone you load the linux iso
over to the other computers and then boot that iso on that computer?

Could not many persons get the notion that the title says
that one boot puppy iso on the smartphone so one have it running
on the smartphone. Now it is more like the smartphone is a usb drive
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

amigo
Posts: 2629
Joined: Mon 02 Apr 2007, 06:52

#7 Post by amigo »

'hybrid' means that the OS image file can be seen as both an iso9660 image and a hard-drive image. isohybrid is a python program which simply alters a few bytes of an isoimage so that it can be seen/used as a hard-disk image -but it only works for bootable iso9660 images created using syslinux -not for grub or other bootloader.

nooby, it simply means having a copy of puppy or other bootable OS stored on sdc on the phone, and then connecting the phone via USB cable to any computer which can boot from USB. Really no different from using a regular flash thumb-drive. The phone itself has nothing to do with the other computer.

FrozenCow
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu 28 Feb 2013, 12:48

#8 Post by FrozenCow »

amigo is right. A hybrid iso can be used for CD as well as USB drives. When a distro uses a recent version of isolinux. It is reasonably easy to make such an iso hybrid using isohybrid.

One bonus of a hybrid iso is that tools like unetbootin aren't needed anymore, since simple tools like dd can write the image to a usb drive 'as-is' (without modification).

At the moment most Android devices can only emulate USB drives, which is why DriveDroid needs a hybrid-iso (or a USB image). Converting images on a mobile phone is really inefficient: all of it happens on a sdcard and all of it (filesystem-tools, partitioning-tools, etc) needs to be rewritten in Java to support all devices. That's why I'm asking Linux distros to consider distributing hybrid isos. Once distros have downloadable hybrid isos (or usb images), I'll add the distro to DriveDroids download menu. That way the isos can be downloaded through the application right to the sdcard and the file can be 'hosted' by the phone as-is.

The benefit of DriveDroid over USB-sticks is that you can have multiple ISO/IMG files on your phone and easily switch between them without rewriting USB sticks (or burn CDs). Adding such files is also easier (especially on Windows), since it does not require any extra tools, like unetbootin of ImageWriter, plus you can even download many of the distros through the application. It is also possible to host two or more USB drives, so you can have a OS-drive and a data-drive hosted together. Another added bonus is using USB tethering so that you can always have internet no matter what ethernet/wireless hardware is in the PC.

I have to add that I'm also working on true CDrom emulation, which will allow the use of all ISOs as-is, but this will require a new kernel on the phone. My guess is that not many people can benefit from the CD-rom emulation, so that's why I'm asking distros to change to hybrid isos.

Post Reply