i am entering into a business, where i may need to check some random used laptops. So Ii want a swiss army knife kind of eos, which can run some test scripts from the usb, on each of used laptops. i wont be installing eos on the host machine and hence wont need an installer.
i followed chatgpt adivise to use arch-chroot … but it is getting stuck up at grub-install
any advise from you wise peeps
I wouldn’t use a USB thumbdrive for this. Maybe invest in an SDcard or even a small portable USB drive.
it was a small thing … i should create an EFI directory under /boot/. a distilled guide here … however i am sad that i lost EOS and it has become archusb. is there a eos-chroot on the cards ?
usb thumbdrive and small portable drive. though they were both same. my bad. i have some 4 drives of various types lying around … all of usb 2 … i think. i will also have some SSD lying around in the future … may be buying an SSD enclosure.
A custom ISO could be fun to create too 
I had one in the past: https://youtu.be/3i_Db6WEFU0?si=gRscbAnox7tpnr_S
Not that complicated to add the tools you need to the packages list of the ISO, and removing installer can be done too.
An installed system on a flash-stick is not ideal, but an ISO hybrid live system is able to boot on every machine be it old Bios or new EFI.
yeap, by the way, did not use the some of the intelligence provided in the wiki
I mean also it will,work if you tweak it to fit with the facts depending on downsides and issues with usb-flash-drives installed OS is changable and can get south in many ways… if you have an ISO file its always the same and immutable
understood.
still not sure, what packages will be need for the testing of old laptops. batteries, power and heating are a major issue. upower did a good job … but need to checkout many (for checking cpu, ram, ssd, keyboard) … may be a WM also would not harm. finally write a script that will run and provide a report if exceptions are encountered.
edit: so would carry on with usb for now and once finalised take advantage of immatablity of an ISO