How to create a LiveUSB for Ubuntu

For those of you intending to install Ubuntu but do not have access to an external USB CD drive, you might have a look at this tool http://klik.atekon.de/liveusb/.

What it does is prepare a LiveUSB drive from an Ubuntu LiveCD. You will need another machine with a CD drive but it doesn't matter which OS it runs, no changes will be made to it. All you do is boot from the LiveCD, install the LiveUSB .deb package (which you can get from the above site) and run the liveusb application.

It asks you which USB drive to use and with a single click it creates a partition, makes the USB drive bootable and copies the installation files across.

This leaves you with a bootable USB drive that can be used in exactly the same way as the Ubuntu LiveCD. You can use it to run Ubuntu without installing anything to the machine's hard disk or it can be used as an installation to install Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04 - the current version) onto your hard disk.

BTW If you downloaded 8.04 when it was first released, there is a slightly newer version 8.04.1 (or is that 8.04-1 I forget) which I suggest you download. 8.04 caused problems when trying to install on the MSI Wind whereas 8.04.1 worked fine (except for the wireless card but that can be made to work).

 

There's also lots of information in the Ubuntu community documentation. I used the manual instructions there to successfully install Ubuntu (7.10 and 8.04) on my EeePC.

 

I am trying this now... I will report back..

 

Ubuntu is up and running and everything is working.. I got wireless working with this tutorial:

http://brunoabinader.blogspot.com/2008/ ... heron.html

 

that is great news

 

Yes, that is great news. Other people have had trouble with the wireless card (as I anticipated) so it's good to know that it definitely does work.

What about the other oddities such as hotkeys and suspend/resume? Are they working OK?

 

Excellent. Thinking over some of the hurdles from the EeePC, here are some ideas for other things to test:

• Wired networking[/*:m:cva5rnhc]
• Sound[/*:m:cva5rnhc]
• Hotkeys[/*:m:cva5rnhc]
• OSD for hotkeys[/*:m:cva5rnhc]
• SDHC slots[/*:m:cva5rnhc]
• Suspend/resume[/*:m:cva5rnhc]
• All of the above after a suspend/resume[/*:m:cva5rnhc]
• Boot time[/*:m:cva5rnhc]
• Battery life[/*:m:cva5rnhc]

Isn't it great being a guinea pig?

 

Also, that's essentially the identical procedure for getting Wifi to work on the EeePC. If you're not familiar with it, I can warn you that after certain OS updates (like the kernel), Wifi may stop working. If you kept the source tree around, you should only have to do a "make clean; make; sudo make install" to get it working again.

 

One of the great things about Ubuntu (and all the Debian based distros) is how well apt-get works both for installing and updating. I would much prefer to avoid manual installations but when you install kernel modules you really have no choice.

With any luck, by the autumn the code will be rolled into 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and we shan't have to faff around with manual installation like this, but at least we know it works.

 

I've done some further testing and I am happy to report that almost everything is working. Wirless, Wired Networking, Sound, Video Effects are all working normally. Problem areas I have noticed are the Suspend / Hibernate feature and the microphone / video camera. I am troubleshooting now and will report back if I find a solution..

 

Suspend is fixed by upgrading to newer madwifi drivers.. Just need the MIC to work now so I can use this thing with skype..

 

What's the sound device show up as? (Make/model)

 

I'm still fighting with the WiFi. I tried NDISWRAPPER, tried various MadWiFi-versions (also the one from the guide posted here), but the result is always the same:
I can see the other networks - but I can't connect to them (I'm trying to use WEP).

Any ideas?
I'm on Kubuntu 8.04 KDE4 Remix...

 

hey, smacman if you got a few minutes can you post up where to get the drivers for ubuntu, ill mirror them for the site as well. thx.

 

How to make the settings persistent?
This Ubuntu is very fast, even on my slow pen and with the compiz things.
Very nice indeed for such a cheap and small laptop

 

If you really want to do this, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent.

However, it is fairly easy to install a real Ubuntu distro (ie not "live") onto a USB flash drive. it generally works better and is, by its nature, persistent. If you intend to run Ubuntu from a USB flash disk as a permanent arrangement, I strongly recommend this approach.

The only issue you will face in doing this is that grub changes the drive numbering and you will need to edit your grub.conf after installation. If you need help with this PM me, I've must have done it about 30 times so I am very familiar with the process.

 

make sure you guys get the 8.04.1 like the OP mentionned, i am getting some wierd errors.