Flash drive unmounting

[planemad]

Hi. I can't get through installation. I've tried on 2 reasonable laptops.
Straight into usb3 port (XPS) or powered USB 3 hub(surface pro)I just tried another distro, more lightweight. The 128gb Kingston, or other USB drive, both new, seem to become unmounted during installation every time. I'm totally new to Linux. I'm seeing a pattern. 2 reasonable laptops. Same or similar problem on both on 2 distros.
I think the problem may be lack of power to the USB hubs.
If any ideas?
Thanks

[yancek]

I've tried on 2 reasonable laptops.

Could you define the above term. Age of the computers, RAM, CPU, etc.
Do you get any messages on screen? Does it or do they all fail at the same point in your installation attempts and if so, what is it?

[planemad]

Surface pro 5 8gb, i7
XPS 9530(2013)16gb.i7.
Both fail at this command, with either flashdrive, with persistence on 1, or install to 2 USB drive. Always at this command.
[ extracting image from... tmp/mount. ]
With AV Linux,Both laptop fail at 11% installation , and flash drive unmounts, with a popup message.. Unmounted, exceed time limit or something..?
Cheers.
Otherwise, they are good laptops No issues

[yancek]

I've never used a Surface Pro but people appear to have more problems with them than other computers. So did you download the Ubuntu iso from the official Ubuntu site? After downloading the iso, did you do an md5checksum to verify the iso was not corrupted during the download process (explained at the Ubuntu download site)? How did you write the iso to the usb you are booting from, what method or software did you use? How does persistence fit in? Did you use some software to create a bootable usb with persistence to use as an installer? Are you trying to install from one usb to another usb or are you trying to install to an internal hard drive? Or, are you trying to install to the same usb you are booting from with the toram option? If the latter, did you create free space on the drive on which to install Ubuntu?

[ extracting image from... tmp/mount. ]

I don't recall ever seeing that error before.

[planemad]

Yes. I heard that. Tho I'm getting identical problem on both laptop. Yes I got the official download and did the checksum check. I'm using Rufus. I've tried every combination. The manual partitioning does a boot position for the kernel, persistence /efi, and ext4 , or a second usb. Setting persistence in Rufus, most of the flash drive

[yancek]

How does persistence fit in here? If you are booting from a usb and trying to install to a hard drive there is no need for persistence. That is usually just used on a 'live' usb so some data can be saved.

Do you have a windows OS installed on either or both machines? If so, did you shrink the windows partition to create free space on which to install Linux? If you have windows, is it an EFI install? If it is, you won't need to create another EFI partition as Ubuntu will create a separate directory on that EFI partition for its boot files. Again, if you have windows installed, do you have a separate physical drive on which you are installing your Linux? If that is the case, you can create a separate EFI partition on that drive but it is not necessary. Also, you don't need a separate boot partition unless you are using the LVM/Encryption method.

If you can boot the install media and open a terminal, try running the command below and posting the output so we have more details. It won't change anything.

sudo parted -l

[planemad]

Windows 10 is on both laptops. I want to run Linux from just USB. So I can plug it into either laptop or other computers and just carry on with program/files etc. I type the command you give me. Yes it shows the USB drive. The problem is it gets unmounted during installation.

[yancek]

What instructions are you using? You are using rufus on windows to try to create a persistent usb, correct? That is not the same as installing Ubuntu to a hard drive or a usb drive. A persistent usb will not be able to do everything you can do with an installed system. The link below explains how to use windows with rufust to create a persistent usb so read through that and compare it to what you have done. In your post above you refer to the manual partitioning method but if you are creating a live usb, rufus should handle that. I haven't used windows in years and have never used rufus as I have never seen the need even when creating a persistent usb. Your responses are a bit cryptic and you don't answer many questions. If you don't know how to do something just say so. I really don't know what would be going on while you are using rufus that would unmount the usb partition but as I said, I've not used rufus. Maybe the link below will help.

https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-persistent-live-usb/

[planemad]

Thanks for the reply and the link. I've tried that 100 times. The same as those instructions. Flash the iso on with Rufus, with or without partition. Boot into it. installation starts fine, then stalls at same place on both laptop, both distros.it's something else. manual partitioning is only option I have in Ubuntu studio, I don't want to delete windows. Avlinux same result. With or without partition

[TheFu]

Windows 10 is on both laptops. I want to run Linux from just USB. So I can plug it into either laptop or other computers and just carry on with program/files etc. I type the command you give me. Yes it shows the USB drive. The problem is it gets unmounted during installation.

Typically, you need 2 different drives. 1 with the ISO file on it and the other to receive the installation. Could this be the issue?

Rufus has been giving people issues for a few years. Maybe try a different ISO copy method? mkusb or cp are how I do it. Of course, if you setup Ventoy, you can have lots of ISOs and boot from any of them and have some persistent storage, but getting persistence storage to work on a bootable flash drive is non-trivial. Best to use an internal HDD.

I wouldn't expect any MS-Surface to run Linux. I didn't look, however. Aren't they basically locked MS-Windows-S platforms?

I've never had issues installing Ubuntu onto any Dell laptop. They sorta "just work", provided the BIOS settings are correct for Linux. There are some that conflict with MS-Windows, however, so it is best to make the BIOS changes BEFORE allowing MS-Windows to finalize that install.

The flash drive that get the ISO on it, doesn't need anything pre-setup. It just needs to work.

Also, don't use any "USB hub" for these storage devices. External USB hubs are known to interfere with lots of different hardware, causing problems. Directly plug in the flash drive with the ISO into a USB port ON THE COMPUTER. Same for the USB drive you are attempting to install onto.

If your computers have nvidia GPUs, you may need to look up specific grub boot commands. For intel and amd iGPUs, I've never had this issue.