unetbootin doesn't see the fat32 partition on my external hd

[AgelessDrifter]

edit: please see second post. You can ignore this one.


I'm trying to install gparted-live onto my external hd. I made a 1.99 (shot for 200 but 199 is what gparted settled on when I made the partition) fat32 partition on the drive. When I run unetbootin, no drives show up at all when 'type' is set to 'USB'. Dunno what could be up. The rest of that drive is NTFS and it doesn't spot that, either, but I assume that's because it knows I'm installing an ISO so it's only looking for fat32 partitions.

Ubuntu in general finds the drive and the partition -- I've been able to mount it (although I haven't tried writing to it yet), but unetbootin doesn't see it whether it's mounted or not (I assume it shouldn't be, but I figured I'd try).

Any advice is appreciated.

[AgelessDrifter]

Bumping this thread. Shorter. more general question: If I want to run gparted live from my external hard drive to resize the partitions on my internal ones, can I do that, and if so, how? usb-creator-gtk also doesn't see the drive.

The only instructions I could find for doing this start with "boot the OS on the drive". My external HD doesn't have an OS on it, and I don't care to put one on there.

Please help. This is the third consecutive time I've posted a question here and been completely ignored.

[idoitprone]

Bumping this thread. Shorter. more general question: If I want to run gparted live from my external hard drive to resize the partitions on my internal ones, can I do that, and if so, how? usb-creator-gtk also doesn't see the drive.

The only instructions I could find for doing this start with "boot the OS on the drive". My external HD doesn't have an OS on it, and I don't care to put one on there.

Please help. This is the third consecutive time I've posted a question here and been completely ignored.

some of us dont use usb-creator-gtk, because it only work with ubuntu iso files

get unetbootin, there one in ubuntu repos and
here for windows and etc
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

remember the flash drive must be mounted and fat32 in order for unetbootin to work
i dont think that unetbootin would work with ntfs

install the iso file on a fat32 file system

go to bios and boot external flash drive

[AgelessDrifter]

Thanks for the reply, but unetbootin was my first attempt (see first post). It didn't find either partition on the external hard drive, mounted or unmounted, and I wasn't able to discover why.

edit: ALSO, semi-related -- I just found the ubuntu disk utility and figured I'd make the fat32 partition of the external hd in question bootable to see if that helped in some way. It's taken like 12 minutes already and there's no progress bar/no sign of when it might stop or if it's caught in a loop. I'm afraid to interrupt it. startup dink creator says not enough room on the partition, so I'm going to have to delete it anyway. Is it normal for it to take this long? The partition is 209mb (I dunno if that makes a difference).

[idoitprone]

Thanks for the reply, but unetbootin was my first attempt (see first post). It didn't find either partition on the external hard drive, mounted or unmounted, and I wasn't able to discover why.

post output of

blkid

mount

if your usb is mounted

did you run it with root parmission after the usb is mounted
unetbootin s weird like that

sudo unetbootin

?

[kdane4]

hello,

instead of "set to usb", do you see your partition if its set to hard disk in unetbootin?

[AgelessDrifter]

kdane, the only thing listed under hard disk is the drive named "/"

idoitprone:

/dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/joe/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=joe)
/dev/sdb2 on /media/gparted_liv type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,showexec,uhelper=udisks)
/home/joe/Downloads/gparted-live-0.12.0-5.iso on /tmp/tmpeQ7Ny1 type iso9660 (ro)

/dev/sda1: LABEL="TOSHIBA System Volume" UUID="7EE08D83E08D427F" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="SQ004830V03" UUID="B6F28FF6F28FB95F" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="e6b30895-a7b7-46ea-9e58-806371a22a97" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="301fadfe-0dbf-48ba-9570-6ea24bfcc47b" TYPE="swap"

I tried re-opening unetbootin with sudo, and it's the same deal

[oldfred]

If you want an advanced method that once you do it is easy to use and allows more than one ISO per flash drive just install grub2 to the flash drive. I have used FAT, NTFS & ext4 (with journal turned off) and just installed grub2 and copied (not installed like you normally do) the ISOs to the flash drive. The only issue is you have to manually create the grub.cfg with the correct path to the ISO.

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
http://ubuntu-ky.ubuntuforums.org/sh....php?t=1535864
Install grub2 to USB -general info
http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/....html#GRUB_USB

Among my grub2 entries I have two gparted versions. I cannot tell the difference but one works and the other does not. It may just be a space at the end of a line or something else equally difficult to debug. But one works. # or commented out lines are where I was testing different things.

grub.cfg

menuentry "Gparted live" {
#  insmod loopback
#  insmod iso9660
#  set gfxpayload=800x600x16, 800x600
  set isofile="/boot/iso/gparted-live-0.8.0-5.iso"
  loopback loop $isofile
  linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live union=aufs noswap noprompt ip=frommedia toram=filesystem.squashfs findiso=$isofile nomodeset
  initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}

# boot=live config  noswap noprompt  toram=filesystem.squashfs ip=frommedia  nosplash
menuentry "Gparted Live ISO" {
set isofile="/boot/iso/gparted-live-0.8.0-5.iso"
loopback loop $isofile
linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live config union=aufs noswap noprompt ip=frommedia findiso=$isofile toram=filesystem.squashfs nomodeset
initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}

[AgelessDrifter]

thanks, oldfred. That looks a little complicated, but I'll read into it.

Before I go to the trouble, though, will a LiveCD of gparted on my external even allow me to edit my internal? Also, since grub is also used for editing partitions, can I simply install that on the external hd and then *not* install the gparted-live, and use grub2 to repartition my internal hd instead?

Thanks again. I appreciate everyone's input so far.

[idoitprone]

kdane, the only thing listed under hard disk is the drive named "/"

idoitprone:

/dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/joe/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=joe)
/dev/sdb2 on /media/gparted_liv type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,showexec,uhelper=udisks)
/home/joe/Downloads/gparted-live-0.12.0-5.iso on /tmp/tmpeQ7Ny1 type iso9660 (ro)

/dev/sda1: LABEL="TOSHIBA System Volume" UUID="7EE08D83E08D427F" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="SQ004830V03" UUID="B6F28FF6F28FB95F" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="e6b30895-a7b7-46ea-9e58-806371a22a97" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="301fadfe-0dbf-48ba-9570-6ea24bfcc47b" TYPE="swap"

I tried re-opening unetbootin with sudo, and it's the same deal

Oh wise Oldfred, do you have a clue why the usb is mounted but is not picked up by blkid.

Ageless, i wonder if it is a kernel bug?
plugin the usb and paste the result of

dmesg | tail

I am little interested

wait i had a strange thought
is tis external hdd an gpt partition table?
If so, then most of these utilities cannot read a gpt parition table, change it too mbr which means reformat then unetbootin will start working again