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CaptSaltyJack
November 3rd, 2008, 05:20 PM
I used intrepid's new USB startup drive creator. It worked fine, but I can't seem to boot off the USB stick. I tried two machines, a MacBook Pro, and a Dell Optiplex 745. The MacBook only showed the main hard drive as bootable. The Dell Optiplex just froze up on a black screen when I try to boot off the USB stick.

Any help would be appreciated.

suewolf
November 3rd, 2008, 06:11 PM
I have a pair of 2 GB flash drives, both formatted FAT32. The USB Startup Drive creator in Intrepid (live CD) crashes when I use the first one. The second one installs fine, but I get a black screen with BOOT ERROR when I try to boot from it. My PC boots from other flash drives, using previous Linux distros.

CaptSaltyJack
November 3rd, 2008, 06:14 PM
Sounds like a bug that needs squashing. ;)

suewolf
November 3rd, 2008, 08:21 PM
This method from pendrivelinux.com worked just great, as far as I can tell:

1. Download the Ubuntu 8.10 ISO and burn it to a CD
2. Restart your computer, booting from the Live CD
3. Insert a 2GB or larger USB flash drive
4. Open a terminal and type the following into the terminal window:

wget pendrivelinux.com/downloads/u810/u810.sh

chmod +x u810.sh && sh u810.sh

5. Follow the onscreen instructions
6. Once the script has finished, reboot your computer and set your BIOS or boot menu to boot from the USB device

Their web site is

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2008/10/15/ubuntu-810-persistent-flash-drive-install-from-live-cd/

or

http://tinyurl.com/6njspg

CaptSaltyJack
November 3rd, 2008, 09:33 PM
Thanks for the info!

Can anyone else confirm this (Intrepid's built-in USB startup disk maker) is not working properly?

C.S.Cameron
November 3rd, 2008, 09:52 PM
Usb-creator still seems to have a few problems.
Works great for me with a 2G Kingston, but not with 4G or 8G Kingstons.

Installs on all of them ok but the 4G and 8G don't boot.
get everything from "grub_" to busybox with (initramfs)

CaptSaltyJack
November 3rd, 2008, 09:57 PM
Weird, why would the USB drive capacity make a difference, I wonder?

C.S.Cameron
November 4th, 2008, 01:10 AM
Have tried dozens of times using usb-creator to install to a 4 gig Kingston, without success.
This is what finally worked:
Booted Live CD.
Plugged in flash drive.
Started Partition Editor
Created 1 GB FAT32 partition, (on the left side of the bar).
Created a 1.5 GB ext3 partition to the right of this, labeled it "casper-rw".
Created a partition in the remaining space and labeled it "home-rw".
Closed Partition Editor.
Un-mounted and re-mounted flash drive.
Started "Create a live usb startup disk", (usb-creator).
Selected minimum "Stored in reserved extra space", (128 MB).
Pressed "Make Startup Disk".
When usb-creator finished, ran "gksu nautilus"
Selected disk and deleted casper-rw.
Shutdown, removed CD, rebooted.
Changed desktop background, connected to wireless and installed FontForge.
Rebooted, changes were persistent.

C.S.Cameron
November 4th, 2008, 01:14 AM
Oops, double post.

CaptSaltyJack
November 6th, 2008, 10:47 PM
Have tried dozens of times using usb-creator to install to a 4 gig Kingston, without success.
This is what finally worked:
Booted Live CD.
Plugged in flash drive.
Started Partition Editor
Created 1 GB FAT32 partition, (on the left side of the bar).
Created a 1.5 GB ext3 partition to the right of this, labeled it "casper-rw".
Created a partition in the remaining space and labeled it "home-rw".
Closed Partition Editor.
Un-mounted and re-mounted flash drive.
Started "Create a live usb startup disk", (usb-creator).
Selected minimum "Stored in reserved extra space", (128 MB).
Pressed "Make Startup Disk".
When usb-creator finished, ran "gksu nautilus"
Selected disk and deleted casper-rw.
Shutdown, removed CD, rebooted.
Changed desktop background, connected to wireless and installed FontForge.
Rebooted, changes were persistent.

This worked great, thanks! The only thing I found confusing is the "delete casper-rw" step. There's actually a FILE called casper-rw on the "disk" partition. I was looking at the casper-rw partition and wondering how/why I would delete it. :)

dryicebomb
February 2nd, 2009, 08:01 PM
Have tried dozens of times using usb-creator to install to a 4 gig Kingston, without success.
This is what finally worked:
Booted Live CD.
Plugged in flash drive.
Started Partition Editor
Created 1 GB FAT32 partition, (on the left side of the bar).
Created a 1.5 GB ext3 partition to the right of this, labeled it "casper-rw".
Created a partition in the remaining space and labeled it "home-rw".
Closed Partition Editor.
Un-mounted and re-mounted flash drive.
Started "Create a live usb startup disk", (usb-creator).
Selected minimum "Stored in reserved extra space", (128 MB).
Pressed "Make Startup Disk".
When usb-creator finished, ran "gksu nautilus"
Selected disk and deleted casper-rw.
Shutdown, removed CD, rebooted.
Changed desktop background, connected to wireless and installed FontForge.
Rebooted, changes were persistent.

All of this worked for me, except i had to do one additional step to make it work. From the terminal i had to type install-mbr /dev/sdX (X being the letter assigned to my USB drive)

Rubicon421
February 5th, 2009, 11:00 PM
I think I could follow this if I had to, but is there an easier way to get around this problem? I made a usb start up disk from a live cd of 8.10 on an 8GB PNY jump drive. Installed fine but wont boot. My bios dont support booting from USB so I downloaded and burned the iso for the usb boot disk and restarted with both disks in. I got the menu shown in the screenshot above, the one that says press enter to boot from usb. Then I get the error about busybox and initramfs. Tried the same usb and boot disc in another machine and got the same thing.

caraboy
February 17th, 2009, 12:08 AM
I used a 4GB usb flash drive formatted in Windows (FAT32) and it did not work the first time. I got an error about "invalid or damaged bootable partition".

Managed to make it work this way:
1. Install Gparted
2. In Gparted, erase the existing partition (first unmount the stick).
3. Make a new partition on your stick, fat32.
4. Now you can use the System > Administration > Create a USB startup disk option. It will boot this time.

Hope it works, for me it did! :D

CaptSaltyJack
February 17th, 2009, 12:31 AM
All of this worked for me, except i had to do one additional step to make it work. From the terminal i had to type install-mbr /dev/sdX (X being the letter assigned to my USB drive)

Confirmed - I had to do install-mbr to get it working, too.

malexous
February 19th, 2009, 12:11 AM
I used a 4GB usb flash drive formatted in Windows (FAT32) and it did not work the first time. I got an error about "invalid or damaged bootable partition".

Managed to make it work this way:
1. Install Gparted
2. In Gparted, erase the existing partition (first unmount the stick).
3. Make a new partition on your stick, fat32.
4. Now you can use the System > Administration > Create a USB startup disk option. It will boot this time.

Hope it works, for me it did! :DThanks! Luckily I searched for my problem before posting a new thread.

I was doing the same as you with a 2GB flash drive and getting the same error. I used Gparted on the Live CD and everything works flawlessly :D

rasmus91
February 22nd, 2009, 08:43 PM
I used a 4GB usb flash drive formatted in Windows (FAT32) and it did not work the first time. I got an error about "invalid or damaged bootable partition".

Managed to make it work this way:
1. Install Gparted
2. In Gparted, erase the existing partition (first unmount the stick).
3. Make a new partition on your stick, fat32.
4. Now you can use the System > Administration > Create a USB startup disk option. It will boot this time.

Hope it works, for me it did!

THANKS SO MUCH! I have a 4 GB TDK flash drive. And i did this, and it works when i follow your guide. :)