9.10 Netbook Remix no IMG file?

[entropic_existence]

Hi All,

This may seem trivial and as a longtime linux user I will have no problems getting around this but this could be quite frustrating for new users especially so I wanted to start a thread (after searching the forums and not finding anything quite right). Ok so, the most common way to install UNR on netbooks is through a bootable flash drive. For previous releases this was trivial. You downloaded the .img file and used the USBCreator app to make a bootable install USB stick. Pop it in to the netbook and away you go.

In fact this is what the instructions tell you when you are on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix download page currently. The problem is that there is no IMG file to download as far as I can tell, just the default ISO. It doesn't look very good when the Ubuntu instructions refer you to, and work for, a file type that apparently isn't an option for downloading (at least right now on launch day).

Yes you can download the ISO, burn to CD, and use an external drive to install. Or you can use UNetBootin and go through a series of steps that way to get a bootable flash drive to install it through. But shouldn't, given the instructions provided by Canonical, we be provided an IMG file directly which we can use with ImageWriter?

Sorry for the rant folks, this is just frustrating. I know I can easily get around it but for new users especially this is bound to be a very frustrating experience and, it just looks sloppy.:(

[snowpine]

I agree they need to update the instructions on the website.

However, I disagree they should switch back to .img... all Ubuntu versions should have the same distribution method. It doesn't make sense to have one be .img when the others are all .iso. As you point out, it is easy to put an .iso on a usb stick if you don't have an optical drive.

[entropic_existence]

I agree they need to update the instructions on the website.

However, I disagree they should switch back to .img... all Ubuntu versions should have the same distribution method. It doesn't make sense to have one be .img when the others are all .iso. As you point out, it is easy to put an .iso on a usb stick if you don't have an optical drive.

Previously you could download either the .iso or the .img for UNR. I agree that all versions should have the same options, where practically feasible, but it just makes sense from a consumers perspective for those options to be as usable as possible.

Although yes, I supose it would be easy enough for them to say use USB-Creator instead of Image Writer since it will use the .iso to make a bootable usb install disk.

[brunogirin]

Agreed, it would be nice if this page (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles) which is pointed to in step 2 of the download instructions were consistent with the format of the download. So for anybody out there wondering how to create the .img file, go to System -> Administration -> USB Startup Disk Creator, plug your USB stick in, select the ISO and off you go. I'll try that as soon as the UNR ISO has finished downloading here and will report if I encounter any issue.

[entropic_existence]

Agreed, it would be nice if this page (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles) which is pointed to in step 2 of the download instructions were consistent with the format of the download. So for anybody out there wondering how to create the .img file, go to System -> Administration -> USB Startup Disk Creator, plug your USB stick in, select the ISO and off you go. I'll try that as soon as the UNR ISO has finished downloading here and will report if I encounter any issue.

I can report that I at least am experiencing problems. When I try and do this it tells me that

"This is not a desktop install CD and thus cannot be used by this application."

[ElvetPuff]

I can report that I at least am experiencing problems. When I try and do this it tells me that

"This is not a desktop install CD and thus cannot be used by this application."
I am experiencing the exact same problem. Any help would be appreciated.

[ChrisUK]

I started a thread about this yesterday or the day before. I'm new to Ubuntu and found it very confusing being referred to the .IMG file all the time in the instructions.
It does definitely need to be updated.

I used Unetbootin in the end which seemed to work flawlessly but I haven't been able to boot into Ubuntu Netbook Remix without my screen going crazy with different colours. Unfortunately nobody knows what's going on with my install so I've given up and will have to stick with boring old XP on my Samsung NC20.

Hopefully the Ubuntu install on my desktop will go smoother.

[entropic_existence]

I am experiencing the exact same problem. Any help would be appreciated.

Check your md5sum by going to the command-line and running md5sum <filename> on the iso you downloaded. Check this value against the ones found in http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/MD5SUMS

My first downloaded had a bad md5sum that didn't match the one for the UNR in that file so it must have been corrupted somehow. As extra information I downloaded that using my location as Canada and it downloaded very slowly. I downloaded again from the US as my location and it a) went much quicker (1.5-1.7mbps down versus about 70-80kbps down from the Canadian mirror). The md5sum now checks out.

It now accepts the iso file in USB Creator and has successfully copied the bootloader. Currently copying files (seems to be sitting at 92% complete for a pretty long time). Hopefully this works, will try installing after that on my Mini 9.

[entropic_existence]

I started a thread about this yesterday or the day before. I'm new to Ubuntu and found it very confusing being referred to the .IMG file all the time in the instructions.
It does definitely need to be updated.

I used Unetbootin in the end which seemed to work flawlessly but I haven't been able to boot into Ubuntu Netbook Remix without my screen going crazy with different colours. Unfortunately nobody knows what's going on with my install so I've given up and will have to stick with boring old XP on my Samsung NC20.

Hopefully the Ubuntu install on my desktop will go smoother.

Maybe try the USB-Creator method instead of Unetbootin? This was the previous (before 9.04 UNR) method. They already have instructions on the Wiki so all they really need to do is change a paragraph on their download page and link to a new How_To which can be found <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick" target="new>here</a>. USB-Creator is the first method on that page.

[mtmiller]

Hmm, all these solutions seem to assume that I already have Ubuntu installed somewhere; I'm coming at this with only an OS X box at my disposal (the netbook I want to target is 'blank', i.e. no OS). With the .img files I could just 'dd' the image to the USB drive. Not so with the ISO.

I've downloaded 'jolicloud USB creator', here's hoping that it'll work (still waiting for my 9.10 iso to dowload).

-mike

[entropic_existence]

Hmm, all these solutions seem to assume that I already have Ubuntu installed somewhere; I'm coming at this with only an OS X box at my disposal (the netbook I want to target is 'blank', i.e. no OS). With the .img files I could just 'dd' the image to the USB drive. Not so with the ISO.

I've downloaded 'jolicloud USB creator', here's hoping that it'll work (still waiting for my 9.10 iso to dowload).

-mike

Thats true, I don't know what to do from OSX, I only know of the tools available on Ubuntu, Linux in general, and Windows.

As an update:

I can boot from the USB image however if if I boot into the "Try Ubtunu Netbook Remix 9.10 without making any changes to your computer" I get a constant attempt to start Netbook launcher followed by it crashing constantly in an endless cycle which is, of course, unusable. The first time I tried the install option nothing happened, I was booted in to a live version and the install application wouldn't do anything. Tried again and I am now in the install process.

[SorApp]

I have not been able to get a bootable image from the .iso file using "Create a USB startup Disk". I have tried twice now. It looks like all of the files copy to the usb drive but when I try and boot from it I get unbootable drive errors. The 9.04 .img worked fine. This is flipping frustrating. Anyone experiencing this type of problem or have any advice.

[SorApp]

I had to burn the .iso to CD first and then create the usb image from the burned CD instead of the .iso. Works. Major pain, though. I guess you could loopback the .iso, but I haven't tried that.

[mtmiller]

Well, 'jolicloud USB creator' did not work; it wanted a 'hybrid' iso. Still dead in the water on OS X. Very frustrating. Is it just not possible to get an 'img' of 9.10? Is there some way to covert an ISO to an 'img'? It used to be so simple to just 'dd' the thing...

[jayach222]

Sorry for the rant folks, this is just frustrating. I know I can easily get around it but for new users especially this is bound to be a very frustrating experience and, it just looks sloppy.:(

I agree. For a distribution that specifically targets a device w/o a cd drive, not having the img file available is inconvenient at best. Even worse, it will scare away new and casual users.

Further, my own tests with unetbootin on Windows does not create a valid image from an iso with the correct md5sum. This would frustrate many more users (it does me) and creates a bad image for Ubuntu. (pun for comic relief) :)

[entropic_existence]

I have not been able to get a bootable image from the .iso file using "Create a USB startup Disk". I have tried twice now. It looks like all of the files copy to the usb drive but when I try and boot from it I get unbootable drive errors. The 9.04 .img worked fine. This is flipping frustrating. Anyone experiencing this type of problem or have any advice.

I get a bootable device (although there were some glitches as I noted above) but my install failed. I got 79% installed before it existed with errors that it could not copy some files to the drive. Not sure why, I am going to retry and see if it succeeds. I had no issues with doing this for 9.04 and the lpia alternate install iso (I went with the regular 9.04 and the lpia kernel instead of the netbook remix) except that it took some work to do the lpia kernel install.

Maybe this time the install will work. My download has the right checksum and file check on the bootable usb drive (at the boot prompt) checks out ok so there really shouldn't be any errors or corruptions on the drive.

[brunogirin]

The USB Startup Disk Creator seems to be a bit temperamental but I eventually managed to coax it into creating a bootable USB stick from an ISO and I now have Karmic on my Eee PC. Here's a screenshot of what it should look like if that can help anybody.

[plafuro]

I created a bootable usb drive with the live-usb-creator and the UNR image, but when i boot my eee pc with it and try to run any option in the menu, after some time i see several lines stating

/init: line1: can't open /dev/sdb: No medium found

then the busybox promt with the message " Unable to find a medium containing a live file system".

Any ideas?

thank you very much in advance

[winecurmudgeon]

This is quite frustrating. I have tried to convert the iso to an img using usb-creator, unetbootin and even portable linux, and none of them have worked. Portable linux told me the usb stick was corrupt, and I used three different usb sticks -- an ativa 1 gig, a kensington 2 gig and a sony 4 gig.

What is even more frustrating is that I previously installed 9.04 UNR on my Asus EEE using the img that I downloaded and converted under Windows. So that worked, but the Linux versions didn't? Something is not right here.

[entropic_existence]

This is quite frustrating. I have tried to convert the iso to an img using usb-creator, unetbootin and even portable linux, and none of them have worked. Portable linux told me the usb stick was corrupt, and I used three different usb sticks -- an ativa 1 gig, a kensington 2 gig and a sony 4 gig.

What is even more frustrating is that I previously installed 9.04 UNR on my Asus EEE using the img that I downloaded and converted under Windows. So that worked, but the Linux versions didn't? Something is not right here.

USB creator doesn't really convert it to an img file I don't think. Did you check the md5sum of your iso to make sure it is correct?

[jheaton5]

USB creator doesn't really convert it to an img file I don't think. Did you check the md5sum of your iso to make sure it is correct?Did you ever get yours to work?

[entropic_existence]

Did you ever get yours to work?

Yeah mine works fine, writing this from 9.10 UNR on my Dell Mini 9 as we speak. It did fail during the first install attempt (not sure why) but ran smoothly the second go round.

[gchaplin]

as a newbie, (currently running mandriva), I have been patiently waiting for 9.10, (which means it's not that simple to install unetbootin as it's not on the install programs list in mandriva) this is very irritating.
It will be rather ironic if I have to use a windows pc to get UNR installed.
G

[jheaton5]

Yeah mine works fine, writing this from 9.10 UNR on my Dell Mini 9 as we speak. It did fail during the first install attempt (not sure why) but ran smoothly the second go round.That's good to know. I also have a mini 9 and plan to upgrade. I'm not sure if NBR is upgradeable or if I have to do a fresh install.

[entropic_existence]

as a newbie, (currently running mandriva), I have been patiently waiting for 9.10, (which means it's not that simple to install unetbootin as it's not on the install programs list in mandriva) this is very irritating.
It will be rather ironic if I have to use a windows pc to get UNR installed.
G

The most straightforward case here is to use a portable optical drive and install that way. Unetbootin may also have other ways to install it manually even though it isn't in Mandriva's list of programs.

[entropic_existence]

That's good to know. I also have a mini 9 and plan to upgrade. I'm not sure if NBR is upgradeable or if I have to do a fresh install.

It should be upgradeable but I've always had bad experiences doing upgrades and prefer fresh installs.

[winecurmudgeon]

USB creator doesn't really convert it to an img file I don't think. Did you check the md5sum of your iso to make sure it is correct?
I downloaded the iso twice, checked the md5sum both times, configured my boot to load the usb drive first, and have done everything I can think of and from what I could find in the forums. I've pretty much given up.

[d4g5h6]

This is quite frustrating. I have tried to convert the iso to an img using usb-creator, unetbootin and even portable linux, and none of them have worked. Portable linux told me the usb stick was corrupt, and I used three different usb sticks -- an ativa 1 gig, a kensington 2 gig and a sony 4 gig.

What is even more frustrating is that I previously installed 9.04 UNR on my Asus EEE using the img that I downloaded and converted under Windows. So that worked, but the Linux versions didn't? Something is not right here.

I basically have the same setup and have tried the similar methods. All fail. Specifically, I have problems with any computer recognizing my USB stick as a bootable. I'm sure in the next few days we'll get a fix for people like us without an external optical drive or who don't want to burn a disc. This is most annoying though for netbook folk.

[winecurmudgeon]

I basically have the same setup and have tried the similar methods. All fail. Specifically, I have problems with any computer recognizing my USB stick as a bootable. I'm sure in the next few days we'll get a fix for people like us without an external optical drive or who don't want to burn a disc. This is most annoying though for netbook folk.

Yep, that's me. I even disabled the hard drive from the boot process and the netbook told me it didn't recognize anything it could boot from.

I'm in the middle of switching all my computers (two desktops, my netboook and an old laptop) from Windows to Ubuntu/Linux, and this is not the sort of thing that inspires confidence. It's a very Microsoft-like approach. I have read the arguments for not using img files for this upgrade, but that only makes sense if the iso to img process is foolproof. Which it obviously isn't.

[entropic_existence]

I basically have the same setup and have tried the similar methods. All fail. Specifically, I have problems with any computer recognizing my USB stick as a bootable. I'm sure in the next few days we'll get a fix for people like us without an external optical drive or who don't want to burn a disc. This is most annoying though for netbook folk.

It seems odd that it is not being recognized as bootable. I had no problems with mine being recognized as a bootable USB stick on my Dell Mini 9.

[entropic_existence]

Yep, that's me. I even disabled the hard drive from the boot process and the netbook told me it didn't recognize anything it could boot from.

I'm in the middle of switching all my computers (two desktops, my netboook and an old laptop) from Windows to Ubuntu/Linux, and this is not the sort of thing that inspires confidence. It's a very Microsoft-like approach. I have read the arguments for not using img files for this upgrade, but that only makes sense if the iso to img process is foolproof. Which it obviously isn't.

Not that it matters but, and someone can correct me if I am wrong, but USB Creator doesn't do an iso -> img conversion. It basically copies the iso to the USB stick (analogous to burning an iso to disc) and makes that disk bootable by putting in an MBR, etc.

Why it isn't being recognized as bootable I don't know. USB Creator has always worked for me in the past and I don't seem to be able to find any threads specific to the EeePC that aren't either upgrades or older installs of the RC and Beta versions of 9.10. Sorry

[d4g5h6]

It seems odd that it is not being recognized as bootable. I had no problems with mine being recognized as a bootable USB stick on my Dell Mini 9.

I have formatted my PNY 4gb flash drive a couple of times via the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool as suggested by the instructions in the comments and troubleshooting section.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

I also have used this same stick to install UNR 9.04 via creation in Windows Vista a couple of months back. I could try another stick, but I don't think that's the problem.

[entropic_existence]

I have formatted my PNY 4gb flash drive a couple of times via the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool as suggested by the instructions in the comments and troubleshooting section.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

I also have used this same stick to install UNR 9.04 via creation in Windows Vista a couple of months back. I could try another stick, but I don't think that's the problem.

Yeah, I really have no idea. I've been under the impression that creation of bootable USB sticks has always been a little flaky) but I'm not sure that is totally a Linux/Ubuntu specific problem, its just that it is more common to do on Linux.

[grahamst]

(First post here.)

Just to add my own frustrations. Like others I've tried to install UNR 9.10 via USB and haven't had any success.

I can run 9.04 from my USB on my Acer Aspire 1 (model 110 with 16GB SSD). This used the .img file as processed by Win32DiskImager. Loads and works fine.

I've burned a CD from the UNR 9.10 .iso and I can boot from it onto my desktop PC (which normally runs Windows). From a brief look, this also works fine.

(Both of these are using the just 'Try UNR without making changes to my computer' option, by the way.) My AA1 still, at the moment, has Linpus installed on the SSD.

But when I try to put 9.10 on my USB drive, either via usb-creator from the CD or using unetbootin (both on my Windows PC) on the .iso, the bootup process doesn't work.

After using usb-creator and booting via USB on the AA1, I don't get the language choice screen (which I do get when things work), and the first line of the Ubuntu start menu is truncated to "Try Ubuntu Netbook Remix with". If I choose this I get a black & white 'wheel' logo for a few seconds, then a blank screen.

After using unetbootin and booting via USB on the AA1 I first get a unetbootin menu. (That shouldn't happen, should it?). Then I get a coloured 'wheel' logo + the 'line with dot travelling up & down' underneath, but then it just gives me the timer and hangs.

I've seen other behaviour - I've tried lots of installs in the last 24 hours. I even got as far as a coloured background once. But I've never got near success.

I don't know if I'm missing some obvious step or if the process is just broken. Some people here have reported success, but I've no idea what they're doing that I'm not.

Anyway, I don't know what to do, other than to wait for an .img file or a fixed USB creation process. I don't think I want to install 9.04 then do all the updates before trying to upgrade to 9.10. A clean install ought to be possible. Maybe my last resort is a portable CD drive, but I'd rather not buy one just for this.

Graham

[entropic_existence]

(First post here.)

Just to add my own frustrations. Like others I've tried to install UNR 9.10 via USB and haven't had any success.

I can run 9.04 from my USB on my Acer Aspire 1 (model 110 with 16GB SSD). This used the .img file as processed by Win32DiskImager. Loads and works fine.

I've burned a CD from the UNR 9.10 .iso and I can boot from it onto my desktop PC (which normally runs Windows). From a brief look, this also works fine.

(Both of these are using the just 'Try UNR without making changes to my computer' option, by the way.) My AA1 still, at the moment, has Linpus installed on the SSD.

But when I try to put 9.10 on my USB drive, either via usb-creator from the CD or using unetbootin (both on my Windows PC) on the .iso, the bootup process doesn't work.

After using usb-creator and booting via USB on the AA1, I don't get the language choice screen (which I do get when things work), and the first line of the Ubuntu start menu is truncated to "Try Ubuntu Netbook Remix with". If I choose this I get a black & white 'wheel' logo for a few seconds, then a blank screen.

After using unetbootin and booting via USB on the AA1 I first get a unetbootin menu. (That shouldn't happen, should it?). Then I get a coloured 'wheel' logo + the 'line with dot travelling up & down' underneath, but then it just gives me the timer and hangs.

I've seen other behaviour - I've tried lots of installs in the last 24 hours. I even got as far as a coloured background once. But I've never got near success.

I don't know if I'm missing some obvious step or if the process is just broken. Some people here have reported success, but I've no idea what they're doing that I'm not.

Anyway, I don't know what to do, other than to wait for an .img file or a fixed USB creation process. I don't think I want to install 9.04 then do all the updates before trying to upgrade to 9.10. A clean install ought to be possible. Maybe my last resort is a portable CD drive, but I'd rather not buy one just for this.

Graham

Well here is something that you can try. It's a bit of an odd work around but it is worth a shot. The LiveCD has Ubuntu's USB-Creator installed on it and it works. If you boot into the LiveCD on your desktop and can access the 9.10 UNR iso from there you can use USB-Creator from inside the LiveCD. Thats an option.

I really don't know anything about unetbootin and have only done my installations using USB Creator with an iso, that worked fine for me.

[jlh68]

On my Acer Aspire One 8.9" sceen, I installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix 8.10 using a .img file and Ubuntu ImageWriter. That was after trying the Ubuntu startup disk creaor (it had another name then but it is still the same application) without success. I next tried unetbootin and still had no success. What worked was the ,img file and Ubuntu ImageWriter

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles

I upgraded online to 9.04. But now I want to do a clean install of 9.10 and I am looking for an .img file to do it.

If someone could conver a .iso file to an .img file I think we all could install UNR 9.10 on our netbooks.

[gchaplin]

As a Acer One linux user with no disc drive, and no desktop of my own not providing a img file does make things difficult. UNR is designed for netbooks without drives and for most people it will be installed via usb so why not make this easy? Hopefully somebody will sort this out and provide one....please

G

[skumrask]

It seems like the solution posted by entropic_existence above is the fastest way to success. I've tried several other ways but without any good results.

It's a bit of a hassle having to burn the .iso to disc and create the bootable stick that way but i think the result is well worth it. Been running 9.20 UNR since yesterday afternoon and it works like a charm on my Aspire One ZG5.

This is what it should have been out of the box!

[winecurmudgeon]

One final thought: I spent much of yesterday afternoon and this morning messing around with this. I burned the iso to a CD and then used startup disk creator on my desktop to burn the cd contents to a usb stick. That didn't work. I tried to copy the iso image to the usb stick via this tutorial (http://ubuntuforums.org/%28https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick#Creating%20bootable%20USB%20manually) . That didn't work. (I didn't try to boot the Live CD to my desktop and then use the startup disk creator, since it's a pain to change the boot sequence on my desktop and since the previous CD to USB solution didn't work.) I even bought a new 1 gig Duracell usb stick and used that. No luck.

This isn't as big a problem as some people are having, like installs failing and screwing up their system. But it's still irritating, and it shouldn't happen. I'll keep working on this -- maybe I'll have the courage to try to install the system from the iso directly to the hard drive, dealing with kernels, etc.

[winecurmudgeon]

Solved! On the Asus 1005 series, anyway, and I suspect most of the others where we have had problems. You don't have to change the boot order in the bios. You have to change the hard drive boot order in the bios.

For some reason, the Asus or something in the iso/img file in Karmic or some quirk of the USB stick architecture doesn't read the USB stick as a secondary drive. It reads it as a hard drive, and names it whatever you have labeled the USB stick. So when we were telling the machine to boot from the secondary drive, it didn't see that there was a secondary drive installed and went straight to the hard drive.

This means that if you use different USB sticks to boot, you'll need to change the hard drive order in the bios each time.

I stumbled on this when I tried to run the Live CD of the Moblin Netbook Remix, and it wouldn't boot either. (The Moblin is blazing fast, but it has a very quirky shutdown process in which you have to gently touch the power button to get a prompt to reboot, shut down, etc.) When the Moblin stick didn't boot, I went back into the bios for about the 10th time and found the hard drive solution.

So forgive me Ubuntu gods for doubting the OS. But I could swear this didn't happen when I installed the 9.04 UNR on my Asus.

[d4g5h6]

Solved! On the Asus 1005 series, anyway, and I suspect most of the others where we have had problems. You don't have to change the boot order in the bios. You have to change the hard drive boot order in the bios.

For some reason, the Asus or something in the iso/img file in Karmic or some quirk of the USB stick architecture doesn't read the USB stick as a secondary drive. It reads it as a hard drive, and names it whatever you have labeled the USB stick. So when we were telling the machine to boot from the secondary drive, it didn't see that there was a secondary drive installed and went straight to the hard drive.

This means that if you use different USB sticks to boot, you'll need to change the hard drive order in the bios each time.

I stumbled on this when I tried to run the Live CD of the Moblin Netbook Remix, and it wouldn't boot either. (The Moblin is blazing fast, but it has a very quirky shutdown process in which you have to gently touch the power button to get a prompt to reboot, shut down, etc.) When the Moblin stick didn't boot, I went back into the bios for about the 10th time and found the hard drive solution.

So forgive me Ubuntu gods for doubting the OS. But I could swear this didn't happen when I installed the 9.04 UNR on my Asus.

I suspected that was the problem. I'm setting my location in the install process and I will let you guys know how the rest of the install goes. BTW, I have an ASUS eeePC 1005HA.

[d4g5h6]

Worked. Thanks all.

[entropic_existence]

Glad the mystery of the eeePC's is finally sorted. It is still a bit of an odd quirk for the machine to see it as a HDD and not as a USB device. But whatever works. Still not something I would have thought of.

And to anyone still playing to try and get a bootable USB stick, USB-Creator really seems to be the best way. Unetbootin seems to be a little hit or miss while USB-Creator is simple and straightforward.

[winecurmudgeon]

One more thought: I think this is a Karmic quirk. I reinstalled 9.04 UNR on the same machine (isn't Linux fun that we can do this?), and the bios saw the USB stick as a USB stick and not as a hard drive. In fact, there was not a select a hard drive choice in the bios.

[entropic_existence]

One more thought: I think this is a Karmic quirk. I reinstalled 9.04 UNR on the same machine (isn't Linux fun that we can do this?), and the bios saw the USB stick as a USB stick and not as a hard drive. In fact, there was not a select a hard drive choice in the bios.

Entirely possible. Was the 9.04 UNR done from an img file as opposed to an iso? If so it could be some sort of error in USB Creator versus Image Writer as well.

[winecurmudgeon]

Entirely possible. Was the 9.04 UNR done from an img file as opposed to an iso? If so it could be some sort of error in USB Creator versus Image Writer as well.

Yes, the 9.04 install was off an img file, which is all there was. I actually looked for an 9.04 iso file to see what would have happened with it, but there weren't any.

[e_james]

I stumbled onto this thread while I was looking for the iso only - no img problem and I found enough clues to solve it for me. I think it might help someone else if I describe my experience.

First the PC in question is Eee PC 901 with 2GB ram. I have already installed the standard 9.04 on the 2nd. ssd using a portable usb CD drive. I also made a bootable usb stick from UNR 9.04 using the img file. The stick is a Transend JF V30 4GB. I changed the hard drive order in the bios to get the normal 9.04 boot automatically without using the BBS popup. I still have Xandros installed but it won't boot until I restore the original hdd order. I use the BBS popup to boot from usb (stick or CD).

I decided to use the Transend stick to experiment with UNR 9.10 so I plugged it in and started "USB Startup Disk Creator". I have several different 9.10 iso files stored on a 16GB SDHC device. I selected UNR 9.10 iso and the usb stick and got an error message that there was insufficient space on the stick. So I opened up GParted which showed the stick as FAT32 but otherwise unreadable. Then I told it to reformat the stick to FAT32. This produced an error message and deleted the partition. OK. Make a new partition. At this point GParted had to initialise the drive (MSDOS). After this I created three 850MB partitions and one 1200MB, all FAT32 and all Primary; labelled pry1, pry2, pry3 and pry4.

So then I went back to "USB Startup Disk Creator" and selectd UNR 9.10 iso again and pry1 on the stick. About 2 minutes later - job complete. Reboot using BBS popup - no problem. So I used the same procedure to put the standard 9.10 on pry2. At the reboot I only had one choice on the Transend stick - standard 9.10. On examination with GParted, I found that the boot flag was set on pry2 only. If I set the boot flag on pry1, it is cleared from pry2 and the UNR 9.10 boots on the stick. As a further experiment I put Xubuntu 9.10 on pry3. The end result, so far, is that I can boot from pry1 or pry2 or pry3 (using BBS popup) by first setting the boot flag accordingly.

That's about as far as I have progressed so far except that xubuntu seems to be having some difficulty connecting properly to the internet, after successfully connecting to the wireless router with the appropriate WEP key.

[jlh68]

I used a 2GiB Kingston Flash drive and the Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix .iso file and the USB Boot Creator to work just fine on my Acer Aspire ONE 8.9" netbook. The USB drive was listed first when I did an "F2" at boot up to check boot order. UNR installed from the USB drive just fine.

So now I guess one does not need the .img file as the .iso will work.

[E Gardner]

Hi there-

I found this discussion when trying to figure out how to get Ubuntu 9.10 NBR onto an EEE PC.

I want to second the original poster's frustration with the lack of .img file for the latest version. I'm a linux amateur, and I only have access to Mac computers.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to get a bootable version of 9.10 onto a USB drive in my situation! Is this true? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[jlh68]

Try using the procedure in my post below. It works. It did not work with 9.04, but it works with 9.10. At least it did for me.


I used a 2GiB Kingston Flash drive and the Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix .iso file and the USB Boot Creator to work just fine on my Acer Aspire ONE 8.9" netbook. The USB drive was listed first when I did an "F2" at boot up to check boot order. UNR installed from the USB drive just fine.

So now I guess one does not need the .img file as the .iso will work.

To get to the Book Creator: Click on "System" > "Administration" > "USB Startup Disk Creator" then follow the prompts.

[e_james]

E Gardner

I'm sure there's a way to do it without a CD writer but that's beyond my current level of expertise. I recommend that you need access to a CD writer which you can attach to your eeePC or one already fitted to another PC which you can use both to write the iso file to a CD and to boot up from that CD. If you can get Ubuntu 9.04 or 9.10 running on any PC with a usb2 socket, the rest is very straightforward.

I installed ubuntu 9.04 on my own eeePC 901 using an external CD drive and have since transferred several different iso files to usb sticks using the Usb Startup Disk Creator.

Edit
2 things I forgot to mention.

I changed the partitioning on my usb sticks and, with at least one of them, I found that I had to delete all partitions and re-initialise the drive before creating the new primary fat32 partitions I wanted.

The eeePC 901 comes with Xandros already installed. I repartitioned the second drive to get space for ubuntu but Xandros is still there in dual boot with ubuntu. I am confident that Xandros doesn't have the Usb Startup Disk Creator utility but it is still linux and it should be possible to get it to mount an iso file and boot from it - perhaps by using VirtualBox. Maybe another forum user can provide some details here. If your eeePC is currently running Windows XP, similar options are available. XP can run linux as a virtual machine and there is also a Windows version of VirtualBox. The big problem I can see is that the virtual machine may be unwilling to write to the usb stick. This is where my lack of expertise kicks in.

Another thing. When I installed ubuntu on my eeePC, I followed the recommendation to create ext2 partitions and no swap partition because of the solid state drive. This might be the reason why the behaviour of the netbook is slightly odd compared with my other ubuntu machines. It seems to find some tasks unexpectedly difficult. e.g. editing this message.

[Swagman]

ISO to Netbook = Epic, EPIC fail

We installed 9:04 on my eldest daughters Eeepc 701 some months ago and it was soooo easy from img.

Well it's christmas day and my two younger daughters have received the two 701's we bought them about six months ago and I decided to update their machines to UNR

So.. before I risk stuffing up their pressies on xmas day we'll test it on the one already running 9:04 as a live usb.

So

Download ISO.. and notice there's NO img file anywhere... Use the usb startup creator thingy.

success.. boot with 16gb Kingston pen drive in and press F2. Removable drive is already selected in BIOS.. so boot. FAIL

Live USB Pendrive is not seen and it just boots into 9:04


Giving up (It's dinnertime and I've had enough of this crap anyway).Why the heck they changed the install method from IMG to ISO for netbook installs defies ALL comprehension.

[Jesus]

I'm in basically the same position as swagman. I'm trying to install UNR on the netbooks we got for my daughters this Christmas. Back when I installed 9.04 on my own netbook using the img file was trivial. Converting iso to img is unreliable because usb-creator is flaky. Netbooks don't have CD drives so it doesn't make a lot of sense to distribute ISOs and then expect the user to convert it to the appropriate format.

I'm currently downloading the 9.04 img. This might turn out to be for the best since I think that 9.10 is a crummy release, so I won't bother doing a dist-upgrade.

[bapoumba]

I'm sorry I have not read the whole thread (my bad..).

I just installed UNR this morning on an Archos 10 netbook for my son. I downloaded the karmic CD iso here : http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download-netbook and made a bootable usb flash drive. The only problem I had was with the flash drive itself. It was a no brand drive that would not work even with command line to make it bootable. Once I used another sandisk drive, all went through smoothly with USB Disk Creator.

Wireless and all the jazz work fine.

[Swagman]

Just put 9:04 back on my usb stick. Will install it tomorrow.

Shame. I'd have liked to have used Karmic

[bleepbloop]

Hmm, all these solutions seem to assume that I already have Ubuntu installed somewhere; I'm coming at this with only an OS X box at my disposal (the netbook I want to target is 'blank', i.e. no OS). With the .img files I could just 'dd' the image to the USB drive. Not so with the ISO.

I've downloaded 'jolicloud USB creator', here's hoping that it'll work (still waiting for my 9.10 iso to dowload).

-mike
Did you ever make any progress with this? I'm in a very similar situation, so any tips would be great.

I think my main issue is, with my macbook running mac os 10.5.8, how do I convert the .iso file to a .img file so that I can put it on the flash drive for my netbook?

[Swagman]

I can't believe you just answered within seconds of me posting !!

lol

[jlh68]

Change BIOS to boot first from USB HARD DRIVE, rather than USB Flash drive. Then the computer will boot from the USB Flash Drive with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix or even Ubuntu.

[Ofloo]

You know i used the default tool to write a iso to an usb stick i found out trying to install it was looking data on cdrom and said it didn't existed, .. so bring back the img files ! at least they work

[xCAFEBABE]

This is totally crap!!!!

I spent two hours unsuccessfully trying to create the usb bootable.

Why it so hard? Why dont simply put the img file for download... This is so frustrating..

It is impossible to convince a windows normal user to install this in their netbooks.

I go to sleep ... too late .. I'll do it tomorrow and will make a download link somewhere ....

[e_james]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/243423-14-image-flash

[xCAFEBABE]

Ok!!! for Windows User you can use UNetBootIn to make a bootable usb using the offical UNR iso file. Then you can boot and install UNR in your netbook.

It's important to update the wiki about this.

[llazarte]

Ubuntu 9.04 introduced the excellent Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR).

One of the strengths of this release was the availability of a .img file, which could be directly copied to a USB Flash Driver to make it bootable.

This optiion dissapeared with UNR 9.10, which is a pity. I could no longer give away Live USB Ubuntus to my friends.

Does anybody know if this .img will be back in 10.04? Or where could I get information about this possibility?

Thanks!
Leonardo

[FuturePilot]

You can still create a live USB with the ISO as well.

[cariboo]

I've been using unetbootin, which is in the repositories to create Live USB devices.

[llazarte]

You can still create a live USB with the ISO as well.

Perhaps, but all the Howtos I found were outdated or did not work (even the official one).

Anyway, what was the reason for no longer making it available? It was perhaps one of the best ways to promote Ubuntu.

[FuturePilot]

Perhaps, but all the Howtos I found were outdated or did not work (even the official one).

Anyway, what was the reason for no longer making it available? It was perhaps one of the best ways to promote Ubuntu.

Easiest way is using the USB Creator under System > Administration > USB Startup Disk Creator.

[llazarte]

I've been using unetbootin, which is in the repositories to create Live USB devices.

Yes, I have some colleagues which managed to make live USBs with unetbootin. Unfortunately I was not lucky enough (as well as many others).

Why eliminate the simplest way of doing it? ( dd if=xxxxx.img of=/dev/yyy )

Does anybody know if there will be a .img distribution for UNR 10.4? Or where could I get this info?

Thanks!

[llazarte]

Easiest way is using the USB Creator under System > Administration > USB Startup Disk Creator.

I wish it worked!

[llazarte]

Ok!!! for Windows User you can use UNetBootIn to make a bootable usb using the offical UNR iso file. Then you can boot and install UNR in your netbook.

It's important to update the wiki about this.

No! I think it is important to bring .IMG back!

I dont know enough about the Ubuntu community. Could anybody point me to the right person to suggest bringing the easy way back?

Thanks!

[cariboo]

Probably the best thing to do is create a bug on bugs.launchpad.net (https://bugs.launchpad.net). You'll have to create an account first though.

[Artemis3]

It works perfect for me, i did one yesterday using UNR 10.4 beta which was then installed into an HP Mini 2133.

Did you read this?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

[tica vun]

Confirming usb-creator-gtk works for me.

[llazarte]

It works perfect for me, i did one yesterday using UNR 10.4 beta which was then installed into an HP Mini 2133.

Thanks for your reply, as I said, it worked ok for some of my colleagues, unfortunately it did not work on some other configurations :(


Did you read this?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

Yes, unfortunately :( this documment is outdated and incorrect.

Anyway, sorry if I didn't make myself clear. I am not looking for a way of making a live USB. What I would like to know is WHO should I contact to request bringing the easy way back, not for me, but for the thousands which have given up after trying the hard ways, or following wrong documentation.

[llazarte]

Probably the best thing to do is create a bug on bugs.launchpad.net (https://bugs.launchpad.net). You'll have to create an account first though.

Thanks for your suggestion. I will try to post a request there. I already added a comment to a related issue.

[FuturePilot]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/MobileUNRImageTypes

I doubt this is changing anytime soon. Perhaps it would be better to troubleshoot why the USB Creator isn't working for you. It's definitely more user friendly than dd.

[speedwell68]

Unetbootin FTW. It is crossplatform for one and it can handle ISOs for most distros.

[cariboo]

Merged two threads on the same subject.

[llazarte]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/MobileUNRImageTypes
I doubt this is changing anytime soon.

If that will be the case, I think is an unfortunate decision.

We have .ISO files for CDs, we burn them, and we have live CDs.
That simple.

I think we should have .IMG files, copy them to USB sticks and have them bootable.

USBs are replacing CDs, and the everyday more popular Netbooks don't have CD players.


Perhaps it would be better to troubleshoot why the USB Creator isn't working for you.Perhaps. If USB Creator creates a "clean" bootable USB, could be a second best alternative
(I mean "clean" as opposed to Unetbootin, which appears before Ubuntu while booting).


It's definitely more user friendly than dd.Easier than two letters? :wink:

[Swagman]

Well now that this thread has been resurrected I will admit to succumbing to a ID 10T error.

re: Asus EeePC. Don't go into BIOS. Just press esc and select boot from usb.

Doh!

[azelter]

I certainly agree making a bootable usb flash drive is no easy thing. The UNR instructions still talk about (non existent) image files. I've used linux for years, and am still on about hour 3 of trying to figure how to setup a usb flash drive to install 10.04 UNR from. Part of the reason is that I keep thinking there should be an img file somewhere as so many of the instructions point to it. Apparently there is not ... and I need to convert the iso.

[chappajar]

I don't understand what the problem is. I'm installing to a netbook from a Flash drive right now, for the first time.
I just followed the instructions, and haven't had any trouble at all.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick
All .iso here, with one small section down the bottom mentioning .img in case you are a little behind :p :D

[azelter]

There is no real problem. The link on the download page points to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles
I believe there is now a small note that says you can no longer get img files. Previously, however, there was no such note. As the whole page talks about installing using an img file and not an iso file it was rather confusing to me and I spent some time trying to find where I could get an img file from. Once I realized the 2 img files available from the repos were not relevant for a standard i386 installation I used the iso. My point was just that there should either be an img file available (easily) or the link off the download page should point to a document talking about iso files and not img files.

[chappajar]

There is no real problem. The link on the download page points to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles
I believe there is now a small note that says you can no longer get img files. Previously, however, there was no such note. As the whole page talks about installing using an img file and not an iso file it was rather confusing to me and I spent some time trying to find where I could get an img file from. Once I realized the 2 img files available from the repos were not relevant for a standard i386 installation I used the iso. My point was just that there should either be an img file available (easily) or the link off the download page should point to a document talking about iso files and not img files.

I see. The right hand side of the download page still has the old link you're referring to.
Section 2 in the centre of the page has the correct link that I (luckily) followed.
I agree, they should update that right hand link.