Hardy on AA1 from Live USB Drive

W00t! Just had to post this tonight. Will try to add the details when I get time in a day or so.

A couple of weeks ago I set up a "Live USB Drive" for running/installing Ubuntu 8.04.1. I used info from the Ubuntu community docs as a guide. In fact, I got kind of fancy with it: I used a 2GB drive and partitioned it so that when running in live mode it is possible to save files to the second partition and then take them with you. On top of that, the first partition also has U3 software and will mount as a U3 drive in Windows. Quite a handy little gadget. (The whole project was inspired by the article on "Billix" in a recent edition of Linux Journal.)

So tonight I put the thing in my six-day old One and started up. In very short order I had Hardy Heron running on the One from the USB drive. I only did a quick test and then had to quit for another commitment, but it appears that most everything worked except wireless. Should be no problem to install from the USB drive and them make the recommended tweaks.

Maybe ... should I? ... :lol:

 

Here's some more info on how I set up my Live USB Drive with Hardy Heron 8.04.1. As noted above, I have used this drive to run Ubuntu on my Acer Aspire One in order to check out compatibility.

Short version: I followed the "Manual Approach" instructions contained in

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Insta ... omUSBStick

However, I added one step that I think is needed (at least it didn't hurt). I found this step in the article entitled "Billix: a Sysadmin's Swiss Army Knife" on page 52 of the August issue of Linux Journal, by Bill Childers.

That step is to run the following command:

install-mbr -p1 <device>

prior to running syslinux. (That's "p one" and not "p el", and <device> refers to the USB drive, e.g., /dev/sdb. Make sure you are specifying the correct device!)

This made a bootable Live USB Drive that has tested out OK on a couple of different computers, including the One.

Long Version: The USB drive that I am using started out as a SanDisk Cruzer 2GB U3 drive. Now, this U3 drive is different from any that I have seen before. The U3 software can not only be disabled and enabled from the U3 control panel that runs from the drive (in Windows), it can also be completely removed via the U3 control panel without having to download the U3 uninstaller. Also, all of the drive appears to be accessible with Gparted, unlike earlier versions where nothing but the U3 installer would allow you to access and free up the special U3 partition.

Using my main laptop running Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, I copied the U3 files from the USB drive and stored them in a safe place. Then I used Gparted to examine the drive. I noted that the drive was formatted as FAT16 as expected, and had about four MB of unallocated space at the front of the drive. (Perhaps this is used by the U3 software somehow?) I deleted the existing partition and replaced it with two partitions of roughly equal size. I retained the four MB of unallocated space at the front of the drive. I chose to use FAT 32 for my partitions. My plan was to see if the second partition would mount while running Ubuntu from the first partition so that it would be possible to download files, create documents, etc. and place them on the second partition while running the OS from the first partition.

I prepared the first partition using the instructions described above. Once completed, I copied the U3 files back on to the first partition.

I tested the drive with my laptop and found that it would boot and run Ubuntu just like a Live CD, and that the second partition mounted automatically.

Next, I removed the drive and booted into Windows XP (the laptop is set up for dual boot). I inserted the USB drive and the U3 software came right up and ran normally. However, Windows was unable to see the second partition.

To fine tune the setup I used Gparted to increase the size of the first partition and reduce the size of the second partition so that I would have a bit more room to install U3 software if desired. After doing that the drive would no longer boot Ubuntu, but running install-mbr -p1 <device> fixed that problem.

I have used this drive to run Ubuntu on my One for one short test. My plan now is to take some time to fully explore what does and does not work, and give some serious thought to Installing Ubuntu on my One. I think I can, in general, follow the instructions contained here, but will not need the LiveUSB DEB file since I have already manually accomplished what it is intended to do:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne

By the way, the Live USB Drive appears to boot in a reasonable amount of time. Once the OS is up and running, applications start and run pretty quickly.

 

help: ive decided not to install it, but rather run it off an 8gb flash drive. so i made a liveusb with the option of read-write. it boots fine and i have over 6gb for storage. however when i try to install stuff, like a theme or the wifi thing, it says that i do not have enough disk space and it shows that i have absolutely 0kb disk space.

why isnt it letting me use the 6gigs even though /home/ubuntu all that stuff is on there and works fine.

 

Link this Thread - Thanks

 

Just guessing, but I assume that the software still "thinks" it's on a CD which, of course, could not be written to. Interesting question, though, and I will have to explore more. By the way, I assumed this would be the case and that's why I created the second mountable partition on the USB drive. That lets me save files that I download or create, but doesn't solve the problem in installing things to the OS. It would be neat if you could modify the Live installation so that WiFi would work.

I know it is possible to create a Live CD with a custom configuration, but it looks like quite a bit of work.

 

well, turns out the /ubuntu (home) directory does have 6.3gb free. but the filesystem only has 230mb free so i guess it partitioned it or something. you can store stuff in the home but you cant install much onto the filesystem (updates dont fit) i'm going to try to find a way to increase the filesystem without messing up my liveUSB. or else i'll just install ubuntu onto the usb and use it that way. thanks for the response.

 

Well, I tried it on my HP laptop (I used that for the test since WiFi works with the Live OS) and was actually able to "install" software from the repositories, but, as expected, once I rebooted back into the Live USB drive everything was gone.

Maybe installing the OS on a USB drive would be a good solution, although I don't know what would be required with regard to grub and menu.lst.

 

The answer lies in the use of unionfs or aufs. Puppy Linux does this, and I use Puppy Linux, but I don't understand the mechanism enough to be able to duplicate it with another distro.