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Thread: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

  1. #1
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    Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    My USB drive, with UbuntuLive installed, does not show up in grub. Apparently I have grub2 installed because "root" is not a command, when I try to follow the guides.


    So what should I do to get grub to recognize the usb?

  2. #2
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    Re: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    Need a bit more information on what partition/distribution GRUB is currently loaded on and also how you created the UbuntuLive USB.

    Normally, to boot a LIVE USB distro (created by something like Unetbootin ) you would set your BIOS to boot from USB before the internal drive. No GRUB required.

    There's lots of info about various methods and distributions etc. on the Pendrivelinux web site.

  3. #3
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    Re: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    Grub is loaded on the same drive/partition with Precise, which also dualboots Windows on another drive.

    I created the Live USB w/Persistence with LinuxLive USB Creator (LiLi) with 12.04.1.

    I can set the BIOS to boot from USB, but I don't want the USB to be first priority. I'd rather to be able to select from grub.

  4. #4
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    Re: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    Plug in your bootable USB drive then in Terminal run:
    Code:
    update-grub
    You should then have the option to boot the drive in grub.

  5. #5
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    Re: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    Quote Originally Posted by C.S.Cameron View Post
    Plug in your bootable USB drive then in Terminal run:
    Code:
    update-grub
    You should then have the option to boot the drive in grub.
    That's all? I'll try it out right now to see if it works, [strikethrough]but I was having space constraint issues, so do you know how much total KB/MB would it use?[/strikethrough]

    Nvm about the space issue thing, it seems it'll be writing to the internal drive.
    Last edited by Aquanet; October 7th, 2012 at 05:15 PM.

  6. #6
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    Re: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    Thanks for the extra info..

    Boot up Precise, insert your USB drive, open a Terminal and issue command

    sudo update-grub

    and hopefully it will discover the install on the USB drive and create a GRUB entry for it..

  7. #7
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    Re: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    It should not take more than a byte or two to add the USB to grub.
    Once the USB is booted nothing is written to the internal drive, unless that is where your casper-rw file or partition is located.

  8. #8
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    Re: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    I updated grub on Precise(not UbuntuLive) with the USB plugged in. I rebooted and it still doesn't show in the grub menu.

    I have two partitions on the USB, the primary is UbuntuLive w/ Persistence(Fat32), the other is blank(ext2). I think that's causing problems.

    If reformatting the blank partition(ext2) to another filesystem could help, I am open to that. There's no information to save.
    Last edited by Aquanet; October 7th, 2012 at 05:53 PM.

  9. #9
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    Re: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    I don't think grub2 is able to boot a live CD in the way you are wanting it to.

    However it is possible to boot to an iso file from grub without copying it as an image, but just using the single ubuntu.iso file.

    See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1838959 for some details which may help you further.

  10. #10
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    Re: Booting USB drive from GRUB menu

    Quote Originally Posted by ajgreeny View Post
    I don't think grub2 is able to boot a live CD in the way you are wanting it to.
    Does grub boot live OSs in other ways?

    However it is possible to boot to an iso file from grub without copying it as an image, but just using the single ubuntu.iso file.

    See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1838959 for some details which may help you further.
    I'm not sure if that'll help since I'll be using Persistence.

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