Ubuntu :: Get A Computer To Boot From USB Flash Drive?
Jan 11, 2010How do I get a computer to boot from a USB flash drive with a bootable image when the computers bios does not have a USB device as a boot choice ?
View 1 RepliesHow do I get a computer to boot from a USB flash drive with a bootable image when the computers bios does not have a USB device as a boot choice ?
View 1 RepliesI recently got a new Lenovo netbook and I want to make sure that what happened to my last laptop doesn't happen to this thing. I got the idea from some Windows software called Predator, that uses a flash drive to lock a computer. I also know that most Linux distros already have the required components to facilitate this (i.e, they know when you plug in a flash drive). My question is, how do I get my netbook to run scripts or programs when a flash drive is unplugged? This is how I want it to work: The flash drive would be tethered to my wrist with a short strap (or a piece of fishing line, maybe a chain). When someone yanks the netbook away from me (i.e, a thief), they would rip the drive out of the USB port in the process. The netbook, immediately sensing that the drive is no longer plugged in, runs miscellaneous programs or scripts in an attempt to thwart the thief, like activating the screensaver, adding a password to grub, sounding an alarm, and whatever else I want it to do.
I would eventually like to expand this to bluetooth headsets, and other devices that Linux can keep track of. It also has to fit in with my current setup. I installed Xubuntu 9.10 on the netbook and set it up to use an ext3 formatted flash drive as /home. I then installed truecrypt and created two file containers, one for the flash drive (small files, like assignments for college and app config), and one in a hidden directory on the hard drive in the netbook (large files, like my VirtualBox images).This way, the system won't work right without the flash drive, and I can even switch flash drives in the future, when the one I'm currently using dies. Ideally, the system locking program/script would only check for a USB connected device with a special file on it. If I can get this set up, it would be one of the coolest Linux tricks ever pulled with a netbook, and possibly the basis for an awesome new security tool for mobile users.
Is it possible to automatically run a program on a USB Flash drive upon plugging it on a computer?the program should create a text file inside the USB flash drive as i plug it on the computer? Is this possible? how can i do this? autorun.inf doesn't work. Are there any solutions? by the way, i am using kernel 1.0 on my computer...
View 1 Replies View RelatedBack in Febuary, my wife bought a Toshiba Satilite from Wal-Mart and a few days ago the hard drive got toasted. So now I'm using an 8gig usb drive as the boot drive. I also have 2 other flash drives for downloads and such but overall I am very pleased.
I'm running 11.04 32 bit and was wandering if 64 bit made a difference. I've got 4 gigs of ddr3. It's slow to boot, but once it's running, it's faster then Windows 7. Very nice.
Is there anything I should chage, use, since I'm running it off a flash drive??
I have 3 seperat drives, 2 x 16 gigs and an 8 gig, and was wandering which one would be best for booting off of? What do I look for??
Here's what I got:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS880 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems Device 9602
00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2)
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I am relatively new to Fedora 15, but used 13 for a while with no issues. Yesterday a windows user put a flash drive into my computer for me to copy something on to. (This may be conincidental.) I then put the computer into suspend or hibernate or whatever and now it won't start up. At all. And I'm stuck as 'everything' I need is on that computer.
View 1 Replies View Relatedi have downgraded from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 10.04. I've had some bumps along the way and finally was able to install 10.04 successfully. Right now, my computer will not boot from the HDD and will only boot from the USB drive that the LiveCD is on. When I reorganize to set HDD as primary boot, i get:id-laptop login:d-laptop password:and I can put that in but then it just gives me a command line that ends with ~$ i believe. How do I get it to boot from the HDD instead of from the USB without running into this problem?
If I resequence the boot to HDD as number two, it will juts go into the LiveCD mode. Am I supposed to reinstall 10.04 again? I know 10.04 was successfully installed because it said it was and it needed to restart so i hit the restart button. It also had my old desktop picture there and all my files AND i checked the system info before restarting (it confirmed that lucid lynx was running).
I am trying to use a Sandisk 2 GB USB flash drive to boot this system but the system is ignoring the drive. The system boots fine from the CD or from the first hard disk.
Here are some details:
ASUS P6T SE mother board
Cooler Master HAF case
Ubuntu v 9.10 64 bit
Sandisk 2GB USB flash drive
I have plugged the flash drive into a convenient front panel USB connector, right next to where the floppy drive is plugged in. I used the USB Startup Disk Creator to copy a disk file containing Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD onto the flash drive, then I used install-mbr on that drive. I can use the usual tools such as nautilis to examine the contents of the flash drive, and for fdisk -l I get:
Quote:
Disk /dev/sdh: 2000 MB, 2000682496 bytes
64 heads, 63 sectors/track, 969 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 = 2064384 bytes
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which seems to say that the flash drive is bootable. I am suspecting that the problem is in the mother board and/or BIOS. The BIOS is set up to boot in the following order: CDROM, removable device, first hard disk. I thought that "removable device" included USB drives but the system seems to ignore that drive. There are lots of USB connectors in this system. There is a keyboard, a mouse , a loudspeaker set, a floppy drive, and the aforementioned USB flash drive plugged into various USB connectors on both the front and back sides of the cabinet.
Would it be possible, and would it make sense, to copy the whole utuntu file system to a portable flash drive, and then plug it into another computer and run ubuntu on that computer?
View 8 Replies View Relatedi am trying to make a windows XP boot flash drive for one of my copmputers. i delete all the partitions on my flash drive and run "dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/sdb" and ubuntu can read it and its got all the contents of the CD but windows machines say i need to format it and no computer can boot off of it. did i do something wrong?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI am trying to make an iso boot from a 8GB SanDisk Cruzer USB drive through UNetBootin, and it's just not happening. I have tried several times, but always had the same disappointing result. It looks like when UNetBootin goes through the process of putting it on the flash drive, it completely skips aking it bootable. Any suggestions? Maybe it is just UNetBootin.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have a linux server running ubuntu 10.04, kernel Linux server 2.6.32-22-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 28 13:28:05 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux. A few months ago I installed ubuntu to a USB flash drive (Patriot 16GB) and was able to successfully boot off it, and everything was running fine. Then all of a sudden I noticed that the root filesystem was read-only, and I saw errors in the kernel log:
[ 725.528732] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Unhandled sense code
[ 725.528742] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[ 725.528750] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
[ 725.528759] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[ 725.528768] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 1e 00 cc 00 00 d0 00
I tried reading the drive to see if there was a problem with the drive itself:
root@server:~# dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/null
dd: reading `/dev/sdc': Input/output error
1966184+0 records in
1966184+0 records out
1006686208 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 2.12427 s, 474 MB/s
But the strange thing is that if I put that usb stick in a different linux server, I'm able to read the whole drive. If I run fsck, it fixes a bunch of errors, but when I put the drive back in the original PC it will work for a while and then fail with the same type of I/O error (not at the same offset though). I had this same problem occur on a different USB stick in the same server, I had thought it was bad media so I replaced it, but now the same problem is happening on a different usb drive. I have backups of the data, but I would really like to figure out what is causing this before I throw in the towel and buy a new PC.
After many failed attempts, I finally got Ubuntu on my Flash Drive (16gb). This was completed by downloading Ubuntu Desktop Edition (ubuntu.com), and using The Universal USB Installer to put the .iso on my Flash Drive.
When I try to boot my PC from the flash drive, I get a black screen saying...
"No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found! Boot:"
I am trying to install Xubuntu from a flash drive on my PC. I used UNetBootin to get it on my flash drive. When it boots up I get to the Pre Splash screen and I choose Install Xubuntu, it goes to the Xubuntu Splash screen and just hangs there and hangs and hangs. Even if I click Try before Install, it just hangs.
I have a Pentium 4
20GB Hard Drive
512MB of Ram...
Is there a Text install? If so if I install that way will it install the desktop to or just command line? I figured maybe something went wrong when I put it on the flash drive so I am trying again.
The Ubuntu installer think my /boot partition is (hd0,0). This is what it writes into grub menu.lst. My computer won't boot after install completes. The Ubuntu live CD shows this boot partition is (hd4,0) (sde1). But that doesn't work and after editing grub menu.lst to (hd4,0), the computer still won't boot. Some searching at the grub command line show the correct value is actually (hd1,0).
View 8 Replies View RelatedI have been playing around with a Ubunto 10.04 live cd (32bit) on my mac. I want to be able to boot this OS (or similar) on my Mac, and on any other computer (PC or Mac). I also want it to remember changes and files. From looking around this is possible from a USB (with a Casper RW loop file I think). I have used the Live CD to create a bootable flash drive, which works on PC's but not my mac. Using these instructions: [URL] I was able to get my Mac to see the Linux at boot but once I clicked the Tux icon it would hang/ freeze. I let it sit for 10+ min and nothing happened. I started over (with a fresh formatting) and got the same results. I have reformatted the flash drive and am ready to try over. I think that I am goofing up in terminal steps as I am not use to doing that. After the last step in the terminal I get an error, something like invalid number or similar, it is not the one mentioned in the instructions.
I know that this for advanced users, I am not yet but working that way. I an a (retired) power windows user, moderate Mac user and a new Linux user. I want to learn which is why I am asking. I am not in a spot to install Linux directly on my Mac, so I I am seeking help to do it on a flash drive. I want the ability to run off any computer and I see this as I way to get there.
I have a 2GB usb flash drive and I wanted to boot a linux distro from it. My dilemma is that I'm having a hard time balancing size with quality.I've been going the virtual route so far in my linux studies but the variety with hardware is so limited. If I had a bigger flash drive it wouldn't be a concern but I need to make do with what I have.So what's a good learning distro that has good features but can be installed onto a 2GB flash drive? I'm sure there is more than one but I'd like to get some different input from more seasoned users.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI follow the RHEL6 installation guide to make a USB minimal boot media. The document told me the only thing i need to do is:
Code:
dd if=boot.iso of=/dev/sdb
Where boot.iso is a 200MB ISO image i downloaded from the Red Hat Customer Portal and /dev/sdb is my USB flash drive. But i failed to boot. The USB flash drive's size is 2GB, and my PC's bios supports boot from USB.
I wanted to keep kon-boot and ubuntu live on USB drives instead of CDs for the ease of carrying around. I wonder if its at all possible to put both tools on same USB drive instead of keeping them on two separate ones?
View 3 Replies View RelatedSo here is my situation: I am unable to boot from a CD I am unable to boot from a Flash Drive I have Ubuntu installed with Wubi, and can boot into it successfully I have a Ubuntu Installation CD I have created a partition into which I'd like to install Ubuntu. Is it possible to boot into my current Wubi Ubuntu installation, and then launch the Ubuntu installer from the installation CD, and then direct this installation to the empty partition I have waiting?
Basically, I think my question is this: Does anybody know what file to run manually from the CD in order to launch the installer?
I am trying to create a boot-able flash drive of Windows 7. I have the .iso and the flash drive.[URL].That article covers the creation process rather well, however i have one problem. I cannot seem to get ms-sys installed to create a boot record. I download the newest stable build from Sourceforge, navigate to the directory, and execute the make command. After that it says to issue the install command, and it quits with errors.
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I'm still quite new to Linux. What could I be doing wrong?
I have built a small spare computer and I dont have a cd/dvd rom. I would like to install ubuntu 10.04 from a flash drive. The bios is AwardBios 3.01. I cant seem to boot from flash drive. I disable everything in the boot menu at the exeption of "removable device". In this sub menu I have; "LS120", "ZIP-100" and "ATAPI MO". In the "other boot device" menu I have "SCSI BOOT DEVICE". I have also changed USB to "primary" instead of "auto". There could also be a chance that I havent prepared the files on the flash drive properly.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI downloaded 11.04 last night and installed it onto a flash drive, but after I restart the computer and select the USB to boot first, it comes up with a boot error. I tried this on another computer to see if the iso didn't install right but it works completely fine. I don't know what else to do. I tried reinstalling the iso and redownloading also just for the hell of it.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI am trying to install ubuntu 11.04 from a bootable USB flash drive. As i couldnt create the USB using the inbuilt usb creator which came with the .iso file i had downloaded, i had used universal USB installer to create it. It took a lot of time to created the bootable pendrive.
I had copied the contents of the pendrive thus created to a folder on my hard disk and named it 'PENDRIVE'. Later i had formatted the pendrive and used it for other purposes.
Today, i wanted to install ubuntu on another computer, so i copied the contents of this folder to my pendrive (instead of creating a bootable usb drive using universal USB installer again) and renamed my pendrive as 'PENDRIVE'. But when i tried to boot from it (i had changed the boot order of my computer accordingly) i got this message, 'remove any removable cd or media and press any button to restart'. Until i removed the pendrive my system refused to start and i was unable to install ubuntu. Why did this happen?
I am new to Linux, but after installing Ubuntu 10.4LTS I am wrapped. To be able to use Ubuntu everywhere, I installed Ubuntu 10.4LTS on an
8GB USB-Flashdrive using "Startup-disk Creator". When I restart the PC with USB-Flashdrive plugged in, the PC starts to load from the Flashdrive. It goes only to the Purple Screen with the Dots that change Red/White and than nothing else happens.
Im taking the class now in college once a week. My professor said that we need to install any Linux operating systems so I chose Fedora, but he said we need at least 16GB free of space to install it in our computer, sadly i only have 1GB space left remaining. I told him about it and he told me about installing Fedora in my flash drive that has space of 16GB. I really am interested in this course and want to understand all of this stuff so can anyone tell me the process to install Fedora into flash drive so I can boot it anywhere else other than home? Also since he said I need 16GB to install it don't I got to buy 32GB flash drive at least?
View 2 Replies View Relatedhow to boot Ubuntu from USB flash drive that is formatted ext4?That is, making a portable ubuntu. But not merely a LiveUSB created using the 'Universal USB Installer' or 'UNetbootin' because the LiveUSBs created using these applications are formatted in FAT32 and uses a persistent partition just to save the changes and files.If I have your attention, what we want to achieve is a portable and bootable Ubuntu in a flash drive that is formatted in ext4.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have made several live Cd's and img for my flash drive and tried to even preview Ubuntu before install, but nothing seems to be working. it makes it to the screen that says Ubuntu with the dots and the dots "cycle" then afew seconds later, weather cd or flash drive, everything just stops and my computer freezes. Tried nomodeset and everything i could find between here and google to no avail.
cant get past that load screen. Ive been lurking on the forum for days and finally got fed up enough to post this because im fresh and have no clue what im doing when it comes to this. all i know is i want something better than windows(lol) and Ubuntu seems like its right up my alley...user, my "skills" if you will, are better than most, but Linux.its like trying to reed Greek for me.Also, computer specs...Toshiba A505-S6025 4gb Memory Nvidia GeForce 310M (from what i read i will have trouble with this) Realtek RTL8191SE wlan (also will have problems with this)
EDIT: just ran live cd with virtual box and it started the demo of Ubuntu with no problem with no options(like nomodeset) checked off... apparently i think im doing something wrong when it comes to booting the other way...
I am trying to use the usb startup creator to make a xubuntu 10.10 ( with downloaded .iso) startup disk to a 2gb flash drive. I formatted the drive to ext4, and when I start the usb creator I get this error: "Failed to install the bootloader."
1. Should I have formatted the drive to ext4? In the usb creator instructions the author used ext3 as an example.
2. I am using the 64bit .iso file. I am trying to make the drive from a 64bit pc running ubuntu 10.04 (64bit).
3. If I can get this to work, will the 64bit flash drive then boot using a 32bit pc? (I wouldn't want to install it, but rather boot to use as a portable OS.)
First time poster and recent Ubuntu adopter. I recently installed 10.10 on my main HD alongside a separate windows (xp) partition (it worked perfectly). Then I decided to get fancy and installed 10.10 to a flash drive directly from a live cd. I attempted to boot from the flash drive, and got a black screen with a blinking underscore for about 10 minutes, then I forcefully rebooted. Now, whenever I attempt to boot at all from my main HD I get "error: no such device and a ton of misc numbers. And the flash drive will not allow me to boot from it. Currently, I'm working within the Live CD.
I have a few projects I need to complete with Dreamweaver inside XP, so recovering it completely would be nice.
Code:
Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010
============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================
=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #1 for (,msdos1)/boot/grub.
=> No boot loader is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdf
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I start my new netbook and hit esc and I get my bootup options but it never shows my flash drive that I know is formatted correctly. Can anyone shed some light on this?
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