I’ve been banging my head against the wall for the past year, looking for a solution on how to get Ubuntu to install from a USB flash drive.
The underlying idea is to avoid CDs, thereby giving an option to machines lacking CDROM drives, or with defective drives. I’ve run into more than one laptop that needed an optical drive replacement that might have benefitted from the install CD on a USB stick.
It would also benefit multiple installations, and maybe open an option for customized installation setups.
That’s what it looks like on paper anyway. In reality, I’m in pretty deep. I managed to get the drive to boot, and managed to get the installer to run, but the installation sequence (and by that, I mean the alternate CD text-based installer) tries to detect the installation CD in a CD drive, and I don’t see a way around that.
If anyone can humor me with an idea here, I’m willing to listen. I’ve been using the syslinux method to boot the flash drive a la PenDriveLinux.com’s Knoppix tutorial, but that’s not necessarily the right way.
I am no linux expert, so take these suggestions as just ideas.
Is it possible to use the iso9660 module in grub2 to boot the .iso from the flash card? Don’t know exactly what the module does (may only provide read capabilities to the .iso file).
try reading this link. Maybe it will work?
http://ftp.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/dists/breezy/main/installer-i386/current/doc/manual/en/ch05s01.html#usb-boot
JIcemanL: Yes, I believe so. I know there is a howto on the forums for booting a machine from an ISO. I haven’t used it, but I want to try it sometime. Here it is …
Lanzaa: That looks similar to what I had done, but I’m willing to try it again. The problem I was running into was that the actual installer program itself won’t seek the packages from anywhere but the CDROM drive. So even though the packages were sitting and waiting on the USB stick, and I could mount the directory that held them and actually access each package, the installer was hard-wired to look only to the CDROM and nowhere else. It was a little frustrating.
I’ll look at that method and try it again. I’m in the mood for some experimentation.
for what it’s worth
slackware linux 10.1 will install from usb CD (ISO) but I have a problem installing to a 4G CF disk , 2G cards work fine.
Kernal is 2.4
tried Ubuntu for the latest Kernal for 4G support. your right it doesnt load from USB CD but a look at the slackware distrib might help you work through it. I have not done that yet
Have you tried this method:
http://learn.clemsonlinux.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Install_from_USB_drive
I’ve been using the guide Lanzaa talks about for more than two years. It works like a charm, you’re able to use the method with iso and the method without (using an internet connection). Sadly the link is dead today, but debian still hosts it.
um ok anon thanks for actually telling us the new link location
With my DVD Drive Dead, I spent several sleepless nights trying to install Ubuntu from USB and finally managed to do it as follows.: First, follow the instructions from http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/21/usb-ubuntu-704-persistent-install/
but ultimately the guide works and includes all you need to do to boot Ubuntu from USB. Next, with Ubuntu running from USB, just follow the Ubiquity Install guide to get it to sit on your HDD but keep in mind that when trying to partition the HDD a strange problem that’s somehow related to the Swap Space comes up, preventing the installer from continuing. If you partition your drive manually withouth the Linux-Swap partition and just click through the warnings it will work for you - you can then add the swap space later on. Hope this helps.
You might have to improvise a bit if one or the other step doesn’t work (for instance i encountered a problem when trying to format a USB partition under ext2 - error message was ‘bad revision’
Peace,
Pascal
Thanks, I had seen that a long time ago and I think I tried to get it working. But I don’t have a machine that will true-boot from USB now, so I’m more or less out of the loop for USB boots. If anything else works for anyone, please let us know.
the method that I’ve used to install Elive, PCLinuxOS and other distros (though not Ubuntu yet) is in outline as follows:
1. Get SLAX or another LiveCD / small distro (I personally rely on Puppy as my main desktop) that has QEMU; SLAX Kill Bill comes with it pre-installed. Boot into that either from USB drive, or if that doesn’t work, using WinGRUB or GRUB4DOS from your HDD partition to boot files from your USB.
2. Unmount all your hard drive partitions - you must do this or QEMU could corrupt your file system. Keep your pen drive mounted.
3. Start QEMU from within the distro, setting it to boot up by treating the Ubuntu ISO image file as a CD drive and asking it to treat the real hard drive as the virtual hard drive (see QEMU documentation to see how to do this). Also, make sure you give QEMU a command line option to limit the amount of memory it uses.
4. Run the installer, etc. It will be slow but it should be ok. Probably best to partition your hard drive beforehand using some other tool. Of course, don’t let it install GRUB or LILO.
5. Adjust GRUB’s menu file to include Ubuntu’s partition and reboot.
6. You should have everything running fine. However you will probably have to tweak the video settings, since they would be based on the QEMU virtual machine’s video card rather than your actual one.
HOpe this would work!
I’ve just discovered unetbootin:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=427540
which lets you install from the net without a CD, USB or anything.
Just tried it off a Win98 partition (it works from Linux too) to install Gutsy and it worked like a charm!
There are versions for other distros too, including Arch.