"Make start up disk" GUI not working

[ACon125]

Hi everybody, can everyone give me an advice about "Make start up disk" GUI? I love to use this tool to create live USB because is straight forward and beginner friendly , however it does not seems to work in my system. I can't load any .iso file in the upper dialog box.
To be more accurate I can select my .iso file using "other" button however the selection is always ignored and I cannot proceed with disk creation. Am I missing something or there is a problem with it? I'm using Xubuntu 12.04.
Thanks for your help

[sudodus]

Will this method work for you?

usb-creator-gtk -i candidate.iso

Use the real /path/name to the iso file you want to use. See

man usb-creator-gtk

for more details.

[ACon125]

Will this method work for you?

usb-creator-gtk -i candidate.iso

Use the real /path/name to the iso file you want to use. See

man usb-creator-gtk

for more details.

Hi, thanks for your kind suggestion.
I had a go using -i option as you suggested;
I had this output
isoinfo: Unable to find Joliet SVD
program was actually launced but file wasn't loaded and still make start up disk button was disabled.
Moreover I installed imageWriter and even that failed to upload my .iso file (I navigated to the folder containing .iso files but the program did not detect any of them)

[sudodus]

Hi, thanks for your kind suggestion.
I had a go using -i option as you suggested;
I had this output
isoinfo: Unable to find Joliet SVD
program was actually launced but file wasn't loaded and still make start up disk button was disabled.
Moreover I installed imageWriter and even that failed to upload my .iso file (I navigated to the folder containing .iso files but the program did not detect any of them)

I think it is another problem, not with usb-creator-gtk or imagewrite. Maybe your computer cannot read the iso files.

Can you try with a terminal window to list the file and its permissions?

Change directory with cd to the directory where you have the an iso file. You can drag and drop the directory from the file browser Thunar (the blobs at the top of the thunar window)

cd /path-to-iso-file/

ls -l candidate.iso

and post the output of the command in a reply

Edit: Joliet indicates a CD or DVD. Is your iso file on a CD or DVD? Or are you opening the file instead of just selecting it to be imaged to the USB drive?

[ACon125]

output is like this

-rw-rw-r-- 1

and yes there is no CD or DVD involved, I downloaded the file and saved on the HDD
(...yes I'm a newbie if someone is still wondering )
thanks for your help

[sudodus]

output is like this

-rw-rw-r-- 1

and yes there is no CD or DVD involved, I downloaded the file and saved on the HDD
(...yes I'm a newbie if someone is still wondering )
thanks for your help

Read and write for user and group, read only for others. So the file should be readable for everybody.

1. But please show the whole line (change your user name to user, if you don't want to show it).

2. And what about your USB drive, which you want to make bootable with Ubuntu? Please insert it, mount it (if possible) using the file browser and post the output of the following commands

sudo fdisk -lu

sudo blkid

df

These commands will show drives, partitions and file-systems available and mounted (internal as well as external drives). I hope to understand if your USB drive is properly partitioned and formatted from this information.

[ACon125]

I followed your instruction, these are the output I obtained

1. But please show the whole line (change your user name to user, if you don't want to show it).

-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 725921732 Feb 25 23:47 lubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso

2. And what about your USB drive, which you want to make bootable with Ubuntu? Please insert it, mount it (if possible) using the file browser and post the output of the following commands

sudo fdisk -lu

sudo blkid

df

These commands will show drives, partitions and file-systems available and mounted (internal as well as external drives). I hope to understand if your USB drive is properly partitioned and formatted from this information.

sudo fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sdc: 2003 MB, 2003828736 bytes
62 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1018 cylinders, total 3913728 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

sudo blkid

/dev/sdc: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL="USB DISK" UUID="0012-D687" TYPE="vfat"

and finally

df

/dev/sdc         1956608      672   1955936   1% /media/USB DISK

For the sake of brevity I omitted info about hard disk partitions but I can post it if required.

[sudodus]

It's fine with the info you provided

The iso file is yours (not any strange ownership). And the size is reasonable for Lubuntu (I did not check it, but it should be what it is supposed to be).
--
But there is one strange thing with the USB drive. The file system sits on the whole drive. There is no separate partition from the identity of the drive itself. When we edit partitions with gparted on a HDD, SSD or USB flash drive (pendrive), there is the drive name /dev/sdx with the drive letter x, in your case c for the third drive. Then the partitions on the drive have numbers y so the block device name will be /dev/sdxy, in your case it should be 1 if only one partition. But there is no partition /dev/sdc1

It could be mounted according to the output of df, and maybe you can read and write files on that pendrive. But I think it will make the USB creator programs confused.

I suggest that you try to change it. Install gparted into your working Xubuntu with

sudo apt-get install gparted

Then run it with

gksudo gparted

- Select the pendrive at the top right corner of the gparted window. Make sure it is the pendrive (check the size of it).

- Select Device -- Create partition table
and make an MSDOS partition table (the standard one with MBR etc)

- Select Partition or right-click on the graphic field representing the drive space and create a new partition

- Format the partition to FAT32.

- Add a suitable label, for example USB-LU

- Finally click on the tick icon at the top of the gparted window to perform the operations on the USB drive.

And you should be ready to run usb-creator-gtk again, but maybe you'll want to check that there is really a partition /dev/sdc1 first.

[ACon125]

hi there,
first of all thanks so much for your help. I truly appreciate your support
nevertheless I'm still stuck. I installed gparted and run it following your suggestion but something went wrong and I had the following error message (see pic) moreover the USB drive failed to mount since then.
I'm kind of ready to give up.

[sudodus]

No don't give up yet. It is time to get the supertool dd, nick-named 'disk destroyer'. dd is tool, that can write on devices, partitions and file systems at a very low level if necessary. It does what you tell it to do, and asks no questions. So if you ask it to do something stupid, for example wipe your internal drive, that is not backed up, it will wipe it.

But if you know what to do and tell it to do that, it does miracles. But back to engineering language again ...

As long as you have not changed the naming of your devices, so that the USB pendrive remains at /dev/sdc, change directory to where you have the lubuntu iso file. And then run this command

sudo dd if=lubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4096

It asks no questions and won't tell you anything either until it has finished, unless you kick on it with a kill command from another terminal window.

ps -A|grep " dd$"

and use the four digit number from the output in the next command, for example

sudo kill -USR1 5441

That should produce a few lines showing how much it has written and at what speed.

When dd has finished you have a boot drive. The USB drive has the same file system on it as if it were a CD disk.

Good luck