Howto: Create LiveUSBs from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

[OBnascar]

Of course I know this is not the correct place to be posting this, but I can not find the correct place.

I was looking for a Linux Unetbootin USB install tutorial. I can not get my installs persistent and want to find out why, pretty much useless if they are not persistent.

Could some one please point me in the right direction ?

thanks,
obnascar

[minhmeoke]

@people getting black screens: could you post your syslinux.cfg here? Also, can you enable debugging by removing the "quiet splash" options in the append: line in syslinux.cfg? If UNetbootin does not work for you, then you can try Pendrivelinux http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ or the built-in USB creator in Ubuntu 8.10. If none of these work, then there may be something wrong with your motherboard's BIOS settings that prevents you from booting from USB.

@Timber_Wolf: LiveUSB is a usb-drive that boots a full operating system in RAM, but does not save your changes when you shut down. Persistent USB install saves your changes, but it also causes the USB drive to wear out faster due to more write cycles.

@OBnascar: Ubuntu 8.10 includes a tool to create live and persistent USBs, but if you want to use UNetbootin you can follow the instructions in http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...0&postcount=38 . You should also add the "persistent" option to the "append" line in syslinux.cfg as described in http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...54&postcount=4

[martinveasey]

Hi - thanks for the great utility. Really easy to use.

Hope you don't mind but I have a question on the subsequent installation that is bugging me. I have a new PC which I want to set up as a server. It has no CD-ROM installed (in the event, I think I'll buy a cheap SATA internal and use it just for the installation or use a USB external).

Anyway, I've used UNetbootin to prep up an external hard disk (USB) to mirror the ISO files and it boots up fine to the first 8.10 server menu. I select install server and the first two stages (language and keyboard selection) work fine. The third stage of the install enables the selection of the source CDROM. This isn't autodetected and the installer defaults to allowing you to select modules and devices to continue.

It ought to be easy - no module required and simply select the relevant /dev/sdb1 in my case, but the attach doesn't work. Dropping to one of the simple text terminals indicates that the mount simply doesn't work - mount -t msdos /dev/sdb1 /cdrom.

Is anyone aware of a troubleshooting guide that I can read through?

Cheers,

Martin

[Philip390]

EDIT: This apparently doesn't work anymore on 8.04 (I last tested this on 7.10), see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent for instructions instead



Go to http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/diskimg/ and download one of the files (128mb.zip, 256mb.zip, or 512mb.zip) corresponding to the amount of persistent space you want (make sure the size of the persistent disk image is smaller than the free space you have on your USB drive).

Now extract the file "casper.rw" from the zip file to your USB drive.

Now edit D:\syslinux.cfg (assuming D:\ is where your USB drive is) and add in "persistent" at the end of the line that begins with "append", and save the file, so your syslinux.cfg should look something like this:

default unetbootin
label unetbootin
	kernel /ubnkern
	append initrd=/ubninit file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash persistent --

For more info see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD/Persistence

Hopefully I'll get this automated in the next version or so.

Are there any files for making a larger casper-rw file? Very useful btw

[thisisasignin]

Hi,

I've just tried to install the 8.10 x64 on my usb device and when I boot up it says

"Could not find kernel image: linux"

I have done an MD5 check on the iso and it is not corrupted.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Hello. I get this error as well.

I have tried Ubuntu (Hardy & Intrepid) as well as Puppy and Mint.
They all work when booting from my 8GB USB drive in a laptop.
However, when trying to use the same 8GB USB drive in a desktop, I get the kernel image error.

I do not understand why I would get the error on one machine, but not another.
Any insight would be appreciated and thank you in advance.

[minhmeoke]

@ martinveasey: What is the error message you get when you try to mount? If the system just hangs, then maybe the device is very large and mounting it takes a long time.
1) Can the system see the USB device at all, check with "lsusb".
2) Are you sure that the location that the system assigns the drive is sdb1, check "dmesg | tail" after plugging in the usb drive.
3) is /cdrom already being occupied by another device(check "mount"), or is its fstab entry somehow conflicting?
4) try creating a new mount node using "mknod", try mounting there.
Edit: there's a guide here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=48126

@ Philip390: As far as I can tell, casper.rw is just a standard ext3 filesystem labelled as casper-rw, so you should be able to create it yourself with the partition editor as described here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6192609

@ thisisasignin: That is strange, there could be a resource conflict or some other hardware-specific problem. Could you post logs, if available? I'll notify tuxcantfly, the UNetbootin developer.

[mhh91]

i've used unetbootin before,but now it doesn't install the bootloader,why?


when i boot using the USB option,it ignores it and boots from my hard disk,what did i do wrong??

[shane wiley]

I installed ubuntu from a memory disk using unetbootin (the cd drive is not working too well).
Seemed fine, but after install the USB ports will not properly mount a memory stick (have tried a number of different sticks that work fine on my other computers with ubuntu). The screen will display the name of the memory stick, just not allow it to be opened.
The USB ports do 'talk to' a USB floppy drive, and do talk to printers.

[thisisasignin]

@ thisisasignin: That is strange, there could be a resource conflict or some other hardware-specific problem. Could you post logs, if available? I'll notify tuxcantfly, the UNetbootin developer.

Hello, thank you for your reply.
If there is a log available, where/how would I be able to locate it?
As far as I can tell, nothing gets written to the USB drive.
Would there be a log in the ram?

[Indycent]

Ok, I can get this to work perfectly with <8.10 desktop i386>, but whenever I try to install <server 8.04 i386> I get the following error.

Loading /ubnkern................................
Loading /ubninit........................................... ...............................ready.
[ 0.000000] initrd extends beyond end of memory (0x1f6864f8 > 0x1f686000)
[ 26.074621] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(104.1)

Anybody have a suggestion? EDIT: I have tried formating in both FAT and FAT32... same error for both.

UPDATE:I DL'ed the <8.10 server i386> and I get the same error that martinveasey(@7 posts above) gets. It says it cannot find the cdrom. I have tried some of the suggestions of minhmeoke to no avail.
1. "lsusb" which is "not found", I assume it is not included in the limited built-in shell.
2. "dmesg | tail" the message I get:

[9.297697] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[9.297701] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[9.301040] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 3915776 512-byte hardware sectors (2005 MB)
[9.301786] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[9.301802] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[9.302021] sdb: sdb1
[9.303636] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[9.304025] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[490.560762] Intel ISA PCIC probe: not found.

3. I see nothing about fstab or cdrom at all when I "mount".
4. No clue about usage of mknod.(I used to use UNIX/AIX a lot, but I am no admin)

P.S. I am using a mini-pc that has no CD/DVD... hell if it had more than one SATA port I would use the CD instead of the USB.