General :: Creating A Minimalist Boot USB Stick?
Sep 27, 2010
I'd like to create a bootable USB drive containing a Linux minimalist: In fact I want to do is boot from the USB (compatible BIOS), as a minimalist Linux starts, and runs a file Shell, then at the end of this execution, displaying a root prompt (command line) to the execution of some commands summary.
- No GUI
- Network access required
- Minimal Linux system (the minimum necessary to boot and run a file Shell), with selection of preloaded commands (grep, pico, cat, ...)
I saw on the net that is doable with DOS on Windows, but nothing on Linux. So I need help, because everything I find is related to an existing system (Ubuntu, Debian, ...), I want a gold basis the most minimalist and lightweight as possible. What I presented is feasible or not? If yes, how to achieve it?
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Sep 3, 2010
I have used ubuntu off and on for a while on my laptop. After I got my desktop machine I thought it might be fun to try a minimalist distro of linux as a learning experience on the laptop. The problem is the documentation for a lot of these distros talks about things that I have never heard of or have no experience with at all, I have a hard time doing things that I don't understand. I think it would be cool to build a system how I want it, with complete freedom over what goes into it. how did you get to where you are? How does one gain the knowledge to build up from a minimalist system?
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Oct 7, 2010
I am wanting to create the smallest server I can possible. I have a small server I use as a print server and for file sharing. The hard drive is about 80GB. Since I only run cups and samba, I see no reason to take up an addition few GBs with major distros just to run the OS. I know it is possible to get a small distro around 50MB or so. I would even be happy with an OS running around 200MB. what would be the best way to go about doing this? LFS is just too complicated and time consuming for the end result. Would something like Gentoo be better? Anything else that I may not know about?
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May 2, 2010
I want to install Windows on my netbook. In order to to so I need to create a bootable disk-on-key.How do I do that?
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Jan 14, 2011
I am trying to create a bootable USB stick in Windows to install Debian on my laptop. I have looked at the guide on the [URL] website, but it seems to assume you already have access to a Linux machine with the use of zcat and other extractors. Is there anyway to create a bootable Debian USB stick in Windows? By the way, I'm trying to simply get the USB stick to become bootable and then install the OS through the internet on my laptop. My laptop does not have an optical drive, so I have to do it this way.
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Mar 27, 2011
I no longer have access to a Windows machine.
I have been trying for days now to successfully create a usb bootable Windows XP install, but without success.
So, is it possible ? If so, HOW ?
Tools used so far without success:
UNetbootin
And
Startup Disk Creator.
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Jul 10, 2015
I have a problem trying to create an encrypted LUKS partition on a USB pen drive, but I don't know whether it is a hardware or software issue.
I just installed debian on this laptop with non-free packages:
Code: Select allroot@debianpc:~# uname -a
Linux debianpc 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1 (2015-05-24) x86_64 GNU/Linux
Then just to learn cryptsetup I thought it was safer playing with a partition on an old usb pen drive. But when I try the command:
Code: Select allcryptsetup -v --debug --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 512 --hash sha512 --iter-time 3000 --use-urandom --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sdb2
I get the usual message (Are you sure? ...), I type yes then it fails with code 22:
Code: Select all# cryptsetup 1.6.6 processing "cryptsetup -v --debug --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 512 --hash sha512 --iter-time 3000 --use-urandom --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sdb2"
# Running command luksFormat.
# Locking memory.
# Installing SIGINT/SIGTERM handler.
# Unblocking interruption on signal.
WARNING!
========
This will overwrite data on /dev/sdb2 irrevocably.
Are you sure? (Type uppercase yes): yes
# Unlocking memory.
Command failed with code 22: Invalid argument
I had /var/log/messages open in tail on another terminal, but no message appeared. I tried the same command deleting one by one the parameters, but I got the same behaviour, so I don't think it is a parameter problem.
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Apr 20, 2011
I have installed a Debian System on a removable USB-drive just the same way I would do it for a normal harddisk drive.All was working fine until I tried to boot the system.I have set up the USB-stick as first boot device in the BIOS, and written grub in the MBR of the stick.When trying to boot it, "Grub Error 2" will always be risen (I am using grub-0.98).
The only drive I have installed except the USB-stick is a SATA-harddisk, so normally the USB-stick is called /dev/sdb.I have already tried changing root in menu.lst to (hd0,0) or the kernel root to /dev/sda1 but nothing seems to help.
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Aug 9, 2010
I can currently boot into a given Linux distro on my hard drive. Is there a generic way, for any given Linux distro, in which a boot CD can be created to boot that particular distribution to a login prompt ? The boot CD would need to bypass booting from the hard disk.
Before you say, use the installation CD ( or DVD ), I have repeatedly run into problems booting into a Linux distribution from the installation CD, for quite a number of distributions. These distributions have a so-called repair mode which quite often does not work, or has been gratuitously removed in some current release.
Before you can say, use SuperGrub ( or SuperGrub2 ), both have failed abysmally on my computer in a number of situations.
I am looking for a generalized cookbook solution for any given ( fairly modern/recent ) Linux distribution for creating such a boot CD for that distribution.
Searches on the Internet yield to me a bewildering series of conflicting info so I am asking here believing that there must be some surefire solution generic to Linux itself.
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Jul 14, 2010
Right direction regarding the creation of a bootable Linux Image for PXE booting. I've already consulted google and the other obvious sources I could think of, but it seems that PXE is mostly used to install stuff, which isn't quite what I need.
The goal here is to have a pool of computers that boot from a central source so maintenance is less of a hassle. Installation of the individual PCs is not desired and I'm supposed to provide a functional Linux via PXE booting.
What I need is basically a way to turn a working Linux into an image that can be booted via network. Or to recreate that Linux as an image that I can boot.
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May 12, 2011
I'm booting Gentoo off of a usb-stick. This has been working previously but now when I try to boot my stick it gets as far as executing the initramfs init script then restarts.The last two lines of my initramfs/init are:
Code:
echo "finished initramfs."
exec switch_root /new-root /sbin/init
[code]...
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Jun 4, 2011
Which packages should be installed? The system should also be able to use scim-pinyin with all its dependency packages.
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Feb 10, 2011
How would i use LVM to add these mounts for example?
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Sep 13, 2009
Here is how I created a Grub2 boot-cd with a (grub.cfg) menu:
mkdir /tmp/cdroot
mkdir /tmp/cdroot/boot
mkdir /tmp/cdroot/boot/grub
cp /boot/grub/grub.cfg /tmp/cdroot/boot/grub
cd /tmp
[code]....
NOTE: The above proceedure assumes you already have a grub.cfg file. If you don't, create one in the /tmp/cdroot/boot/grub directory
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Aug 2, 2010
I have two hard drives in my desktop. One HD has a working Ubuntu system-hence the ability to post here- and the other contains Windows XP Pro. When the XP drive crashed I was able to re-install an image I had saved using Acronis. Unfortunately the dual-boot option at startup is no longer available. I can only boot to Ubuntu. Not so bad really but there are some programs on Windows that I need to use. Is there any way, using Grub perhaps, that I can reconfigure an MBR to include the second hard drive and the Windows system?
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Apr 30, 2011
Is there any way to change the window scrollbars in 11.04 from the frankly annoying minimalist orange strip to the far more user friendly large bar with clickable arrows top and bottom?
I'm using Ubuntu Classic Desktop...if I really couldn't get on with this scrollbar...would I actually have to go back to the previous OS release?
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Oct 18, 2010
I have searched and read threads about the Bitlocker, grub and TPM issues that might show up, but I can't draw any conclusions as some information contradict each other. To make sure I don't screw up my pc as thought I need to make a new post.
At work I'm supposed to run Windows 7 and encrypt the win-partition with Bitlocker. I have installed Windows, turned on the encryption and it ties into the TPM. But as I am moving over to the *nix department I want to run Ubuntu as dual boot to check everything rusn fine with all the systems I need. Before I installed Windows I partioned the disk:
1,5 GB for system/bitlocker requirement
147 GB for Windows, C:
85 GB which is empty where I intend to install Ubuntu (not formated yet)
I boot into Windows with my bitlocker/TPM key on an USB-stick. Without the usb-stick the pc won't boot. Now, before I try to install Ubuntu I want to make sure to do it the right so I don't mess up the Windows installation or won't be able to boot the pc at all.
There seem to be several "schools" to this. Some suggest I should have installed Ubuntu first, then Windows and then encrypt. Some say, no worries just fire away and install since you are not planning to read the windows-partition from Ubuntu. Or an alternative, install but make sure to deactive the encryption during installation. Some say, install but make sure grub is installed in (multiple choices) location.
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Jan 17, 2010
So I've been running Ubuntu in a VM environment for a while, seeing if I like it. I think it's something I'd like to have as the primary OS on my netbook, so I downloaded the latest Netbook Remix version (9.10). Problem is, I can't get the thing to boot from my USB stick. Before we get into any lessons on how to set up a USB stick to be bootable, and how to adjust the BIOS's boot priority... let me say that I've used this exact stick and this exact laptop in the past just fine. When my netbook came home from the store with WinXP on it, I created a Live USB using unetbootin v3.56 and made the stick bootable with a gparted-live ISO. I used this to boot from the stick and partition my drive in half so that I could load the Win7 RC onto the other partition. Everything worked great then. I blew away those partitions and went back to a single partition when I loaded up my full Win7 OS a few weeks ago.
I'm wondering if it's possible that Win7 does something special with the bootloader to prevent this stick from being recognized? I know that sounds kinda far fetched, but I have a vague sense of having read this somewhere, but I can't find anything along those lines now. Just to be sure, I went into the BIOS and took out both the CD and the HDD from the boot sequence, so the only thing in there was the "removable device". However, when booting from the stick in this configuration, I got a "please insert an operating system" type message. When I started this process, the stick was still in "LiveUSB" mode with the gparted OS - however, I didn't test it in Win7 to see if it would have booted from it. I just assumed that it would have since the last time I used this USB stick, it was to boot into gparted-live.
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Oct 7, 2010
If I create a usb stick with the applications provided by ubuntu and I choose to save files in the stick (with the available option - cant remember the name), will I be able to install packages and have them available the next time I boot?
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May 1, 2011
I Installed Debian on my laptop using a USB-stick. After the installation, everything seemed ok, though it didn't boot anything, it was just waiting with a flashing marker. I put in the USB-stick and rebooted the system and it worked for some reason, GRUB started this time. Now i've had the system like this for a couple of weeks, I have to put in my USB-stick in order to be able to get GRUB to start, but can remove the USB-stick when the OS has started.
The only thing I could think of, was that GRUB was installed into the USB-stick. So I removed the USB-stick when Debian was started and and reinstalled GRUB using aptitude. Still didn't work. What could be wrong?
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Sep 17, 2010
I tried to boot from live kde opensuse 11.3 and it hung for a while then printed:
Code:
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Oct 20, 2010
Everytime I use my boot stick to boot, it asks me if I want to try ubuntu or to install it. Is there anyway to 'remove' this welcome screen, since I'll always choose 'try ubuntu'?
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Apr 13, 2011
I going to re-install Fedora 14 and several other OS-es on a multi boot system.
Now - my normal procedure is to install fedora 14 last and use the grub boot loader to load the other OS. As I use a hard disk to regularly install an experimental OS I keep my grub boot on a back-up floppy. The installation is done (as root) in this way:
modprobe floppy
fdformat /dev/fd0
mke2fs /dev/fd0
mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/floppy '(fd0)'
cp /boot/grub/grub.conf /mnt/floppy/boot/grub/grub.conf
umount /mnt/floppy
This works great. If your mbr is overwritten by another OS you can use the boot floppy to get into Fedora - no problem.
However - my new system has no longer a floppy disk drive (no connection the motherboard). I wonder if can use a USB stick in stead of a floppy to boot Fedora if my mbr is overwritten. I only have no clue how to do that. The above procedure can obviously not be used, because a stick is no floppy.
I am NOT asking for a full Fedora on the stick!!! I only want t use the stick to boot my hard drive based Fedora if the mbr is overwritten.
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Feb 8, 2010
I've followed the instructions at Live USB stick - openSUSE for creating a bootable USB stick. I have attempted this with both a 32 bit and 64 bit image. Unfortunately my system will not boot up the stick - it just loads my hard disk as normal.
Background info
1. I have checked the iso images against the checksum and they are ok;
2. I have used the same images to create bootable CDs which work fine;
3. My machine IS capable of booting a USB stick - by copying syslinux onto the stick, the machine does see the stick
4. The order of boot in BIOS is stick first. Again, I have proven this works ok using a utility called USB Boot Tester.
I am unsure what to try next. I recall reading on this forum there was a problem booting from USB stick if the computer also had a CD drive. That was in an early version of LiveCD. Could the problem still be extant? I can't find the actual thread unfortunately otherwise I would link to it.
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Jan 10, 2010
I'm trying to install Ubuntu 9.10 from USB stick. I used System>Admin>USB Start up Disk Creator and a 9.10 .ISO version to create the bootable USB stick.
When I plug my USB key into my computer, my computer doesn't boot from it. I tried on several other computers and none of them boot from my USB key. The bios settings on all my computers boot from removable media first.
I repeated the above steps with a different USB key and I still can't boot from the USB key. When I browse the USB key directories, I can see all the necessary files to install ubuntu.
Last year, I didn't have trouble installing ubuntu 9.04 from USB key. Not sure what I'm doing wrong this time.
Can anyone tell me how to trouble shoot this problem?
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Jun 14, 2010
I am new to ubuntu and linux in general, I've been using it for about a week and I like it very much. The only problem is that I have an ipod touch and I purchase music and video from the itunes store from the device. I can import music but not the items purchased as it is encrypted so I need to use itunes. I installed virtualbox so that I could use xp (only to allow me to use itunes) but as I have a netbook with no disk drive I want to boot from a usb memory stick. Virtualbox doesn't appear to allow this so I am a bit stuck.
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Aug 26, 2010
Is it possible to use usb startup disk creator to create an upgradable usb disk from the ubuntu live cd? There is information available on customizing the live cd, but it would be much better to boot from a usb stick and use apt-get to keep it up-to-date. My iMac will boot from a usb stick with an mbr installed and using the plop boot manager (won't work with refit), but any changes won't be persistent. Creating a file to hold changes won't help either because synaptic doesn't recognize it; besides I need more space for the package cache than fits into my RAM. And the maximum size for the storage file is 4 GB which still uses less than the available space (8 GB) on my stick. Can I tweak the filesystem on the stick to make changes persistent and use all the disk space? It is possible to install directly onto the stick, but this means it will be recognized as an external disk, and the iMac won't boot from it. Also, such an install is terribly slow.
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May 18, 2010
sure you've noticed while installing slackware 13 you are prompt to create a usb boot stick...
I was not able to create one in case my slackware won't boot after installing windows...
My question is how to create a usb boot stick or recovery boot stick so that a can su lilo back to its configuration, so that I can select windows or linux on loader prompt(lilo)...?
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Mar 20, 2011
I would like to use a USB flash drive as a boot disk. I have 2 hard drives. I will have Windows 7 as Drive 1 and Linux as Drive 2.I would like to not touch Drive 1 at all NO grub or other boot-loader. My old system I used a floppy drive as a boot disk.This worked if floppy was inserted: It booted grub giving me the choice of Windows(drive 1)or Linux(drive 2). I would like to replace the floppy with a USB stick. I have a couple of 64 MB (LOL) flash drives to use.
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Oct 1, 2010
i was writing a .img file to my usb stick with ImageWriter, but it didn't seem to do anything so i clicked the close gtk button and pulled the stick out of my pc. now my pc gives my an when i try to open the stick. is there any way to fix this. I can use win xp pro, win xp media center, win 7 starter, ubuntu 9.10 and ubuntu 10.04
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