Can't install Ubuntu on a USB stick help please

[drillerccg]

I don't need a live USB, I want to install a full version on a 16GB USB stick I have. I was told by someone on this forum to partition to 4 different partitions:

8GB FAT32 for Windows
4GB EXT4 for /
3 GB EXT2 for /home (to make future backups easy
1GB swap

I have used fdisk, Gparted, the partition program during the install but can't get past setting the EXT4 on the USB. I have even tried to install it on one partition (15GB EXT4 and 1 GB swap) by choosing the erase the hole thing and use the whol edrive. I had taken the hard drive out of my laptop and used the USB stick as the only attached storage device.

As soon as I boot the computer from the live CD and try to full install a full copy on the stick, it stalls and says that it was unable to set partition table EXT4. It doesn't matter if I start from a FAT32 stick or format it in gParted or Fdisk to have an EXT4. Any idea?

[josephellengar]

I don't need a live USB, I want to install a full version on a 16GB USB stick I have. I was told by someone on this forum to partition to 4 different partitions:

8GB FAT32 for Windows
4GB EXT4 for /
3 GB EXT2 for /home (to make future backups easy
1GB swap

I have used fdisk, Gparted, the partition program during the install but can't get past setting the EXT4 on the USB. I have even tried to install it on one partition (15GB EXT4 and 1 GB swap) by choosing the erase the hole thing and use the whol edrive. I had taken the hard drive out of my laptop and used the USB stick as the only attached storage device.

As soon as I boot the computer from the live CD and try to full install a full copy on the stick, it stalls and says that it was unable to set partition table EXT4. It doesn't matter if I start from a FAT32 stick or format it in gParted or Fdisk to have an EXT4. Any idea?

I'm not sure if this is accurate, but based on what I have heard, some media is incompatible with some filesystems. In fact, seagate would not repair a drive under warranty a few years ago because I had formatted it to extfs. Perhaps your problem has something to do with that?

[drillerccg]

I'm starting to think the same since I have tried everything. It appears that ext4 or ext3 is problematic with this stick. I however was able to create a persistent USB with it and have a liveUSB out of it. So it's still confusing.

I was succesful in creating this:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent

but can't install a full copy on the USB. Anyone knows of a good USB tat this can be accomplished with? I bought this one off of Ebay for cheap.

[josephellengar]

I just remembered this. Try this tutorial: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-mu...multiboot-usb/ using the casper persistence script. You'll boot from an iso every time but the persistence creates something that can always be mounted as /home so most changes will roll over. It uses a FAT filesystem (I believe) which is likely what your stick came with originally.

[warfacegod]

Try making your ext4 partition into ext3. If you were able to have a persistence file then ext3 should be working on that jump drive. That FAT32 partition might be better in the "back" of the drive. Frankly, I doubt you'll need a swap partition but I could be wrong.

[josephellengar]

Try making your ext4 partition into ext3. If you were able to have a persistence file then ext3 should be working on that jump drive. That FAT32 partition might be better in the "back" of the drive. Frankly, I doubt you'll need a swap partition but I could be wrong.

Some programs swap automatically, so it might be better to have a 500mb swap partition than none at all. It kind of depends on what programs are installed on the drive.

[warfacegod]

I have had no swap for over a year and never needed it. In fact my laptop is a little faster for it. As far as I know the only real need for swap nowadays is video encoding and such and for Hibernating. Unless a computer has under 1 GB or so of RAM, something of an oversimplification, I admit, but I can't really think of any other reasons to have swap.

[josephellengar]

I have had no swap for over a year and never needed it. In fact my laptop is a little faster for it. As far as I know the only real need for swap nowadays is video encoding and such and for Hibernating. Unless a computer has under 1 GB or so of RAM, something of an oversimplification, I admit, but I can't really think of any other reasons to have swap.

I've got a computer with 8gb of ram. I have a 12gb swap partition. I *never* use all of my ram even though I have several directories mounted on ramdisks as tempfs, but I do occasionally see 1 or 2 mb of my swap space used. Because my ram is never fully used, I'm pretty sure that I have something running that goes to swap automatically. I have no idea what it is, but I just suspect. Anyway, I guess these days swap is a matter of opinion. I read several articles on the matter when I set up the computer and just decided to make a partition because I had extra disk space that I would never use and figured that it was safer that way. For a persistent livecd- I guess you aren't likely to be doing anything that needs it.

[warfacegod]

My swap did the same thing. Occasionally hitting a MB or two. Once I even saw it spike up to 150 MB. With no swap, all of that goes to RAM. If it didn't, my laptop would be crashing all the time.

[drillerccg]

I just remembered this. Try this tutorial: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-mu...multiboot-usb/ using the casper persistence script. You'll boot from an iso every time but the persistence creates something that can always be mounted as /home so most changes will roll over. It uses a FAT filesystem (I believe) which is likely what your stick came with originally.

Yes I have done that ut I need an installation that can be updated through the update manager. I assume if I don't install any specific hardware driver I could boot any computer up and transfer files.

My ultimate goal is to have those 4 partitions but can't seem to be able to install / or EXT4 on this USB stick. Any suggestions people?