Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Write tutorials for Linux Mint here
More tutorials on https://github.com/orgs/linuxmint/discu ... /tutorials and (archive) on https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial
Forum rules
Don't add support questions to tutorials; start your own topic in the appropriate sub-forum instead. Before you post read forum rules
jo_3

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by jo_3 »

I have a problem with booting from pendrive (Kingston)

I do everything like in guide, step by step.

When I reboot pc with prepared Flash (ldlinux.sys, unpacked by WinRAR iso, changed names of folder and file) last what I see is message:

Code: Select all

Could notfing kernel image: linux
Boot: 
_______________________
Technical details:
Kingston data traveler
Windows XP
pendrive in fat32
I've tried with few ISOs, not only with Mint, that was ma last hope...

I've found also some advices like placing everywhere "vmlinuz" and "initrd", or make another folder "install". I didn't try any.

___________________
Please.... HELP... My windows is so horrible... it hangs around 2 times for 45 minutes. I have a stupid habit, when i write something with pen and paper, I involuntary look for ctrl+s... Sick, istn't it? : )
xvedejas

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by xvedejas »

jo_3 wrote:I have a problem with booting from pendrive (Kingston)

I do everything like in guide, step by step.

When I reboot pc with prepared Flash (ldlinux.sys, unpacked by WinRAR iso, changed names of folder and file) last what I see is message:

Code: Select all

Could notfing kernel image: linux
Boot: 
_______________________
Technical details:
Kingston data traveler
Windows XP
pendrive in fat32
I've tried with few ISOs, not only with Mint, that was ma last hope...

I've found also some advices like placing everywhere "vmlinuz" and "initrd", or make another folder "install". I didn't try any.
I'm not sure why, but I had this problem too. I redid the entire guide almost exactly and I at least got past that. I think its because I tried doing the partitioning through gparted, that didn't work at all.
xvedejas

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by xvedejas »

Okay, I can't tell you how many times I've gone through this guide, I can't get it to work.... It never lets me mount my USB drive, the only way I can is to manually reinsert the drive...

Unless I'm doing something wrong, the only thing I really differed from the guide was that I used a much newer version of syslinux...
xvedejas

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by xvedejas »

Hey EI, It's me (Zoris) hope you get it working... I'm going to try and help a friend get it working now, hope it actually does something...

Ede: In linux mint 5.0 beta.
L@u

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by L@u »

Hi,

I have used your tutorial to install Ubuntu server 8.04, on a PC without a CD-ROM, it worked great ... till the machine complained it could not mount a CD-ROM !
I can not get passed this point ! !

Any ideas, anyone ?

Cheers,
L@u
L@u

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by L@u »

Hi again,

Eventually, I manage to get around my problem by going to “Load installer components from CD” option, and choosing the mirror component.
(as described in http://kbullock.ringworld.org/2007/2/2/ ... otherboard).

I also had to mount my USB drive as cdrom as described in
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Insta ... omUSBStick

Well, all in all ... it's not as easy as it could be ... but eventually, I have managed to install it ! ;)


Cheers,
L@u
piratesmack

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by piratesmack »

Awesome howto
Just bought a 1GB sony microvault pendrive for $10 at Target, so I decided to give it a go.


Worked great with Linux Mint 5 revision 1

I did have one problem, though. After install /dev/sdb was being mounted as /media/cdrom0, and my DVD drive was being mounted as /media/cdrom1

The fix was easy though:

Code: Select all

sudo gedit /etc/fstab
-delete the line for /dev/sdb
-change mount point for /dev/scd0 to /media/cdrom0

Thanks for the tutorial
runnels
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:32 pm

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by runnels »

I used a method posted in pendrive linux see the following link. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/10/31 ... m-windows/

I get a perfect flashdrive bootable LIVE CD linux mint 5. I (newbie) think that is where you ended up with your technique also. As is obvious today, mint 5 needs some updates and changes. Is there anyway to get a bootable LIVE CD linux mint 5 that can be updated or one that can be installed to the flash drive in a non-live way, i.e., like a regular install on the hard drive, so that it can be updated and other software can be updated and added (Open Office eg).
Larry
piratesmack

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by piratesmack »

runnels wrote:I used a method posted in pendrive linux see the following link. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/10/31 ... m-windows/

I get a perfect flashdrive bootable LIVE CD linux mint 5. I (newbie) think that is where you ended up with your technique also. As is obvious today, mint 5 needs some updates and changes. Is there anyway to get a bootable LIVE CD linux mint 5 that can be updated or one that can be installed to the flash drive in a non-live way, i.e., like a regular install on the hard drive, so that it can be updated and other software can be updated and added (Open Office eg).
Larry

I THINK this is possible, never tried it myself. But you'll need a pretty big flash drive (at least 4 GB, 8 GB preferred)

-Boot from the live cd
-plug in your flash drive
-begin installing. when it gets to the partitioner, make sure you choose to install it on your flash drive (usually /dev/sdb)
-Then at the part where it says something like: "The installer now has all the information it needs, click install to begin installation" choose "Advanced" and I THINK there is an option to choose where to install grub... install grub on the flash drive
-After that, I'm pretty sure you can just boot into a regular installation from the USB device.

Let me know if it works, I'm thinking of trying this out myself
choupique

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by choupique »

Very good discussion here. With all of the "netbooks" coming out lately, this thread is going to become important. I've used it twice now myself.
It might be good to have some of this put more formally into the wiki "HOWTOs - Installation & Boot".
mcurran82

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by mcurran82 »

Husse:

What would be the cleanest way to go about this. I see that my home directory was all copied as well, so I created a new empty directory on my desktop, created the mint file and then did the loop mount and copied the mint folder to the USB.

Can we just delete the extra actual iso file that gets copied into the USB?

Would the best way to do a fully clean live USB, be to create two blank directories: One having the mint folder and one having the iso, doing the loop mount, and then copying ~/mint folder to the USB? That's what I was going to try, but my PC doesn't want to boot from removable media anyways, so I'm going to at least see if my current attempt even works no another PC...

Also, should we change the isolinux.bin and isolinux.cfg.ori file names to syslinux also?

Two more questions:

I saw a tutorial for creating a live usb with another distro. and it explained how you could rm something and use some type of initramfs tools (I think) to install other apps. that are not part of the original iso, so that you had the working programs when running the live USB. I can no longer find these instructions/commands online anywhere; do you have any idea how we could do this with mint, since it'll probably be different anyways?

Can we create two partitions on the live USB, leaving one for saving files, making it somewhat persistent?

(Oh, bye the way, it's still telling me my username is in use when trying to post... Maybe I just need to login first :) - Yeah, it's me: The original mcurran - you're best friend)
mcurran

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by mcurran »

Elyssa works fine with this tutorial.

Husse, I believe making it persistent is as easy as editing casper to casper-rw, extracting initrd.gz, editing one of the boot parameters, and repacking it (because there is an error in our/Hardy's initrd.gz that prevents an auto rebuild of casper to casper-rw - So I think we need to do both)

All the tutorials on Ubuntu ask you to create a second partition as ext3, but many people advise against using journaled file systems on USB's (so, I would use ext2), but most importantly I would like to just stick with the one partition if that would work instead. How can we do this?

Can we just delete the extra isolinux files, or does syslinux still use them?
mporter89

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by mporter89 »

I tried it twice with linuxmint-5-r1 with no success.
Here is the end mesage:

udevd-event [1444] : run_program: '/sbin/modprobe' abnormal exit

BusyBox v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-5ubuntu12) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs)

Thanks though. Any info on how to get mint into an Aspire One that has WIN XP living in it would be greatly appreciated.
Any other options? Shoudld I borrow a usb cd drive?

Thanks.
Mporter88
mcurran

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by mcurran »

Felicia (RC1) works w/ this tutorial. You can also make Felicia persistent with very little effort - I have provided a little instruction below. Elyssa is a lot more complicated, so don't even bother attempting the instruction I give with that release, because you will also have to edit initrd.gz, init, and the casper scripts, which is a pain, because you run into a whole sluth of root requirements when you attempt to extract and re-zip the packages, which led me to have to use the cdrom image on my disk anyways, basically defeating the whole purpose of this exercise. It is possible, but I don't really see any reason why anyone would want to fix Gutsy's broken persistence manually, instead of just using our Intrepid Ibex release(Felicia). If you do want to go through with it, go to pendrivelinux.com and reference their guides on [doing it manually], only keep in mind that there are three parts, which are not all grouped together (editing init.gz, editing init, and also editing the casper scripts - and no, the first two are not the same nor are they posted together in one tutorial anywhere).

The only thing wrong with this howto is that when copying from the directory you mounted the .iso image on, you will also copy everything in it's immediate subdirectory with the /.* suffix. For instance I mounted my .iso to a temporary folder within a temporary folder on my desktop, instead of the cdrom0 drive, so It copied everything in the temporary folder immediately following the mounted folder (my .iso image). If I didn't mount it on another extra folder deep, then the command would start copying everything on my desktop as well... So I don't know if just /* after the image directory with the copy function would work on getting all the hidden pieces, but that's what I'm going to try next time. Because afterwards I always have to delete out the actual .iso image that got partially copied into my USB, sometimes even filling the remaining space before the necessary .disk files get copied, and ruining the whole attempt.

Anyways, with Felicia: You get a persistent install simply by creating three partitions on the USB (FAT 16, EXT2, and EXT2) and then name them "whatever," "home-rw," and "casper-rw" respectively. I named my first partition "felicia," but the other two must be "home-rw" and "casper-rw" for persistence to work, at least for those two areas of saving. I'm only using a 2GB USB, so I made my home-rw partition a lot smaller than my casper-rw partition.

Then you edit syslinux.cfg: Copy the whole first boot entry section and paste it immediately above (creating a new boot entry) - I'm not going to get too detailed because I'll just provide my file below, but it's pretty self explanatory - syslinux's configuration file is much like grub's menu.lst file and the first entry begins with "label live...", and then ends with "menu default." Your going to delete menu default from that original entry, and keep it on the new one you just pasted above [if you want it persistent by default]. Then just replace "label live" with "label persistent" and then replace all the ../cdrom0/.. mint.seed append line directory tags with whatever you called your first FAT 16 partition. For instance, I named my first FAT 16 partition "felicia," so I replaced "cdrom0" in every append line to read /felicia/casper/... or whatever, instead of /cdrom0/casper/... or whatever. You can also rename your entry labels to whatever you want, just as long as they match the first partition label (I think you can also just delete that directory tag completely and it might work - haven't tried though). Then add "persistent" as a boot parameter anywhere in the first entry (I just put it before initrd.gz). Save, and then your done. Here is what mine looks like:

default vesamenu.c32
timeout 100

menu background splash.jpg
menu title Welcome to Linux Mint 6 Felicia Main Edition
menu color border 0 #00eeeeee #00000000
menu color sel 7 #ffffffff #33eeeeee
menu color title 0 #ffeeeeee #00000000
menu color tabmsg 0 #ffeeeeee #00000000
menu color unsel 0 #ffeeeeee #00000000
menu color hotsel 0 #ff000000 #ffffffff
menu color hotkey 7 #ffffffff #ff000000
menu color timeout_msg 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu color timeout 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu color cmdline 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu hidden
menu hiddenrow 5
label persistent
menu label Linux Mint 6-RC1 "Felicia" (Persistent Mode)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz
append file=/felicia/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper persistent initrd=/casper/initrd.gz quiet splash --
menu default
label live
menu label Linux Mint 6-RC1 "Felicia" (Live Mode)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz
append file=/felicia/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.gz quiet splash --
label xforcevesa
menu label Linux Mint 6-RC1 "Felicia" (Compatability Mode)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz
append file=/felicia/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper xforcevesa initrd=/casper/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw noapic noapci nosplash irqpoll --
label memtest
menu label Memory Test
kernel memtest
label local
menu label EXIT: Boot Native OS
localboot 0x80
mcurran

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by mcurran »

Does anyone know why localboot 0x80 doesn't work. I figured it was because I need a chainloader, but I used the chain.c32 file as a kernel and that didn't work either. Also, localboot 0x86 doesn't work. I tried all three of these methods and cannot get a native OS to boot on the two PC's or laptop I tried...
Last edited by mcurran on Mon Nov 24, 2008 11:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mcurran

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by mcurran »

If you want to use the newest syslinux (currently: syslinux-3.72 as of this post) then you just download that version and follow Ede's and Husse's instructions on the first page: replacing the directory paths to ../syslinux-3.72 and ../syslinux-3.72/linux respectively (because the unix folder has been replaced by a linux version in the latest release).
RichardH

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by RichardH »

I've been using Unetbootin from the repository to put MintXfceRC1 on an AA1 and another desktop.
Worked fine for me and less hassle. Do have to use Alt & Left-Click to drag some windows to see the buttons.
After install it settles down.

Had to click on the network icon in the tray and select my wireless AP.
But it works like a charm.

[Edit: there is another thread I didn't see on Unetbootin from Windows. Just as easy from Mint.
And just realized how old this thread is. :oops: ]

Gonna have to try merwiz79's line to mount the iso.
Could the iso be started from a grub stanza?
Would really be nice and convenient.
mcurran

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by mcurran »

This thread and my comments explain the process for creating a USB install that is both live and persistent, meaning you can save certain settings/applications or whatever, but the thumbdrive will still act as a live environment that automatically configures itself for use on a new PC or notebook. If you just install with ubiquity, then you will be limited to using the pendrive/USB drive on only the machine you installed it from...
plaressa

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by plaressa »

How would I be able to view usb flash documents without the usb? I've noticed that there are some documents that have been viewed from my computer, and I'm wondering if there's any way I can view them without the usb flash. I don't have it, and I really need to see what was being viewed.
_________________
keyword research ~ keyword tool ~ keyword tracking ~ affiliate elite
Last edited by plaressa on Sat Aug 07, 2010 2:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
mcurran

Re: Howto: Install Mint from a USB Pendrive/SD

Post by mcurran »

Sorry, but you will need to clarify what you are asking, because I can't quite make it out... Are you asking how to see if others have been viewing files on your computer and when? If so, I'm not sure, and I think you would have better luck in a more appropriate thread. Sorry.
Post Reply

Return to “Tutorials”