Howto make USB boot drives

[C.S.Cameron]

Have been doing some testing with unetbootin-windows-661 and Ubuntu 19.04 & 19.05 lately.
Seems to work fine for me, have even managed to replace the Persistent file with a Persistent partition.
(I understand that there have been problems with unetbootin-ubuntu with 18.04 and later, but there are now workarounds.

It seems that Persistent Ubuntu runs mostly in RAM nowadays, wondering if maybe @jahja's RAM is no longer sufficient for the latest Ubuntu.
I am not finding a difference in speed between UNetbootin install and a mkusb install. Will take a closer look.

[sudodus]

Remote login via ssh into a persistent live drive

There is no (publicly known) password for the default user in Ubuntu based flavours and distros. When asked for a password, for example to run sudo, you simply press the Enter key. But ssh wants a password, so it does not work to log in remotely via ssh into a persistent live drive.

I found the following workaround, create a second user with a password, and tested it with Lubuntu Eoan.

After login to the second user it is possible to switch user to the default user ('lubuntu' in Lubuntu persistent live).

There are more details at this link.

[lookchupapp]

Follow this blog https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutoria...ick-on-windows

[uRock]

Follow this blog https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutoria...tick-on-window

404

[sudodus]

Much easier to create persistent live drives with a partition for persistence

Because the new feature alias removed bug in casper it is now much easier to create persistent live drives with a partition for persistence. It is already there in Debian 10 and in Ubuntu Eoan

- So we will soon have it in Ubuntu 19.10

- It will take months (maybe years) until it will appear in Ubuntu 18.04.x LTS.

- We can expect to get it in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Opportunity

This will make it much easier to create persistent live drives with big storage for persistence, and we can expect that most tools will add this feature. See the following link,

- Cloned USB drive with Lubuntu Eoan can be made persistent live

Risk

General tools may start prompting people into trying to create partitions for persistence with Ubuntu 18.04.x LTS. It will fail and people will get frustrated with a USB drive that does not work at all. We should be prepared, and recognize when this happens.

Rufus has released a version with this feature, and I have already seen a few cases at AskUbuntu, where this has happened.

- Can't get Ubuntu 18.04 installed as dual boot on Dell Precision 7540

- USB persistence not working with a discussion between me and @Akeo, the developer of Rufus

This is a typical output from a USB pendrive that does not boot with Ubuntu 18.04.x, when Rufus failed to make it work with a partition for persistence:

(initramfs) mount: mounting /cow on /root failed: invalid argument
overlay mount failed

---

Edit 1: Please remember that mkusb works as usual.

Edit 2: Please read the next post, where @Akeo, the developer of Rufus, gives his version of the risk/problem.

I want to add that I have often recommended Rufus, and I hope to continue to do so. I am glad that Rufus is early to use this new feature alias squashed bug.

But I see a risk here, that people will get frustrated, so I try to let people [who help here] know and recognize what happens, when beginners (and people who do not read warnings) fail to make a working USB boot drive. Knowing the problem will make it easier to help. I think most people need 'only' a live-only USB drive, and cloning is a robust method for that purpose, 'dd-mode' in Rufus.

Please note that it is still possible to create a file in the FAT32 partition with the name 'casper-rw' and an ext file system for persistence in 18.04.x LTS. This risk/problem/discussion will probably be forgotten when Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is released in April 2020.

[Akeo]

You may want to mention that the reason why persistence doesn't work with 18.04 LTS or any pre 19.10 version, when persistence is added through a second partition on the bootable drive, has nothing to do with the utility involved and is due to a major bug in the casper scripts that, unfortunately (and despite multiple reports) has been left unaddressed for years. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...r/+bug/1489855.

Especially, if you manually create a FAT32 and an ext3/ext4 partition on a drive, then copy the content for the 18.04 ISO onto the FAT32 partition and edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg to add add persistence to the kernel options, you will run into the same overlay mount failed issue.

I will also point out that, when creating a bootable drive with in Rufus with an Ubuntu ISO, users do receive a very prominent notification (it will always appears during the creation process) advising them that, because this is an ISOHybrid, they need to choose between writing it in ISO (default) or DD mode and also advising them that, if they encounter any issue when booting in ISO mode, they should recreate the drive in DD mode (in which case persistence will be disabled and they will be able to to boot).

Therefore, people who do pay attention to the Rufus prompts should never be left stranded...

[C.S.Cameron]

@Akeo:

From 14.04 to 19.04 persistent same disk partitions did not work, however putting casper-rw persistence partition on a second USB, or on the internal HDD worked fine.

Thank you for adding persistent partitions to Rufus, I think you are the first to add persistent partitions to a boot disk maker for Windows.

[deadflowr]

404

It was missing the s in windows in the link.
Fixed it.

[uRock]

It was missing the s in windows in the link.
Fixed it.

You're awesome! Thanks for fixing that.

[sudodus]

@Akeo,

I have often recommended Rufus, and I hope to continue to do so. I am glad that Rufus is early to use this new feature alias squashed bug. It is a great tool that works well even for beginners who run Windows and are interested in Linux.

But I see a risk here, that people will get frustrated, so I try to let people [who help here] know and recognize what happens, when beginners (and people who do not read warnings) fail to make a working USB boot drive. Knowing the problem will make it easier to help. I think most people need 'only' a live-only USB drive, and cloning is a robust method for that purpose, 'dd-mode' in Rufus.

I do not want to bash Rufus, only steer away from problems.