Installing 10.04 without a CD burner.

[Jesdisciple]

It's been a while since I hosed my system, and I finally stopped procrastinating to backup, format, and reinstall. The latest disc I have available is 9.10, and getting new ones is a feat now that Canonical won't mail them to me. So I installed 9.10 and immediately upgraded to 10.04; somewhere in there it asked me where to installed GRUB and I told it sda1 but not sda, which was apparently a mistake.

I got an error about "grub_puts_" being undefined and used this guide (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2#Recover%20Grub%202%20via%20LiveCD) per a relevant thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1397629&page=2). I rebooted and got through GRUB, but now all that comes up is the purple background and my cursor; the mouse doesn't move, not that there's anything for it to click anyway. I went on #ubuntu IRC and was advised to do a clean install rather than an upgrade.

Of course I can just stay with 9.10 but would prefer the latest (of course it's about to be obsolete anyway...). I have also heard that it's possible to install to a USB drive; I'm guessing that likewise requires a CD? I guess what I'm wondering is whether I can use a 9.10 install to download and install 10.04 directly to a different device? Finding someone who has a CD burner is a real hassle.

Thanks.

[oldfred]

Also has links to alternative install -text mode & not liveCD, CD & USB install instructions
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

How to install ubuntu on USB drive and carry entire computing system in pocket?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789528
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

MultiBoot USB with Grub2 (boot directly from iso files)
Basically you just install grub2, create a folder for the isos and edit a grub.cfg to loop mount the isos.
HOWTO: Booting LiveCD ISOs from USB flash drive with Grub2
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1288604

[CharlesA]

I used Grub4DOS to do a multiboot USB.

If you don't have a CD burner, doing a bootable USB would probably be the way to go.

Check out unetbootin or similar tools.

[Jesdisciple]

Well, I guess I need to sit down and read for a few hours some day soon.

But since a USB can be installed onto without a CD, surely we can turn that on its head, basically use a full hard drive in place of the USB? Especially if the USB is running Ubuntu itself, but even without that I have my old Live CD that can.

[oldfred]

You can also boot an ISO from a hard drive. But you cannot install to that same partition or any partition that is mounted. So if same hard drive it just about has to be a primary. Of course if you have a full install on one drive you can boot the ISO from that and install to another drive.

Direct boot on hard drive:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1549847
Boot ISO from harddrive. To install it would have to be different partition
[SOLVED] Using grub 2 to boot an iso off hard drive
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1535864