tools on USB thumb drive / other media

[o5gmmob8]

Hi all,

I've been wanting to create a thumb drive that is not bootable, but merely contains a bunch of useful tools for debugging a system. I would plan to use this either on my server in the event I need to monitor network traffic, logs, etc. I would like to keep these binaries on a remote media so that the server itself could have a small footprint for both size concerns as well as security. Then, when I need it, I could simply mount it and use it.

Is this a common practice for system administrators or security-minded personnel? In gentoo this would be relatively easy as I could customize how the binaries will be built and what libraries they will reference.

In some cases, I would want to have a full, bootable system, but I'd like to also have the tools accessible so I can run them on a live system.

Thoughts?

Walter

[avx]

Depends on what you're planning to do exactly. If it's any stuff related to intrusion detection, that won't help much if at all. For any other stuff, sure that's possible, if you statically link them/provide all deps.

Personall, I'd prefer the real bootable system, can always chroot into the system in question when needed.
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[o5gmmob8]

Hi,

Thanks for your response. That is true, I was looking to save space, but it won't really simplify building the system any, but probably make it more complicated.


Walter