At the close of the Boise Linux Group Meeting, one of the members asked for help on creating a LiveUSB bootable device using Ubuntu 9.10. We tried it on both the member's machine and my demo computer, where it would consistently fail and only one time (a glitch) did we get even the opportunity to try to create the LiveUSB drive. We concluded, erroneously, that it was the USB drive that was being used.
The next day, I tried to create the LiveUSB drive with Ubuntu 9.10 in my "lab" using my own USB drives and on two different computers. Using Ubuntu 9.10, it failed, horribly. All I succeded in doing was wiping two USB drives clean. Okay, somethings is wrong here. I then tried Ubuntu 9.04 and creating a LiveUSB bootable drive and it worked flawlessly, first time, out of the box, LiveUSB was created, rebooted computer, and Ubuntu 9.04 came right up booting from the USB drive. Arrgg. Another strike against Ubuntu 9.10! Why would Ubuntu have let such a buggy version (9.10) out the door!
I did a google search on "ubuntu 9.10 usb install" and while it did not produce any trouble reports, it did provide some useful references that may work in creating a LiveUSB drive with Ubuntu 9.10:
InstallationFromUSBStick
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick
Note: link above provides teh following insights into successful USB Creation. In order to install a fully working Ubuntu operating system on your USB Flash drive make sure that:
• Your Flash Drive has more than 2GB of memory
• Your Flash Drive is bootable
• Your Flash Drive has a high read/write speed and is USB 2.0 enabled
Install Ubuntu 9.10 to a Flash Drive from Windows
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/create-a-ubuntu-9-10-live-usb-in-windows/
(Honestly, why do we keep having to use Windows???)
Or you can just use Ubuntu 9.04 which works....
Note: Using UNetbootin, I was able to succesfully install Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop i386 to a 2 GB drive which booted without any issues. More information on UNetbootin can be found below.
And not that I want to be accused of pushing Fedora 12 but I came across this utility to make a LiveUSB:
Fedora 12 LiveUSB-Creator
https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/
I played with the Fedora LiveUSB Creator since the meeting and it works pretty well, however, working with different sizes of USB drives, I could not get a succesful boot with a 2 GB drive, regardless of persistent drive settings but with a 4 GB or larger USB drive, I was able to succesfully build LiveUSB bootable drives for both Fedora 12 - gnome and KDE (i686) as well as Omega-12 LiveDVD. A couple of notes in usage. First, always clean/format the USB drive before using, especially if you have a "failed" LiveUSB install already present on the USB drive as it will limit how much persistent space you can allocate. Two, on about my second try, I learned to open a terminal session, sudo to root, and then start the LiveUSB creator at the shell prompt # "liveusb-creator --reset-mbr" (no quotes).
Other USB creation tools are available. One that gets a lot of rave reviews is UNetbootin which can be found at http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net where you find versions for both Windows and Linux (Windows works better acording to the site) along with instructions as to use. And there is the Pendrive website which offers a number of distribution specific solutions for booting from a USB, ie, Pendrive http://www.pendrivelinux.com. Back in December of 2008, our meeting was all about using USB drives and the notes from that meeting can be found at http://www.boiselug.org/node/13.
Another link of possible interest - How To: Install Portable Linux Ubuntu on a bootable USB Flash Drive from VirtualBox
http://iwebdevel.com/2010/02/13/how-to-install-portable-linux-ubuntu-on-...
Note 02/17/2010: Latest kernel update to Ubuntu 9.10 still does not fix problem with using the Live USBCreator tool as it still fails. I did test the Live USBCreator in LinuxMint 8, which is based on Ubuntu 9.10, and it did work however it a little was suspect due to not being able to format the root drive and the bus error message. However, it did boot and run okay. Tried the same 8GB drive using Ubuntu 9.04 and it worked flawlessly to create a Ubuntu 9.10 LiveUSB Drive.
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