Monday, December 22, 2008

Ubuntu 7.10 USB installation tutorial:

Hint: You can drastically speed up the install by Copying and Pasting most commands into the terminal instead of manually typing them out. With the exception of replacing x with your drive letter.

1. Grab the Ubuntu 7.10 ISO and burn it to a CD
2. Insert the CD and your USB flash drive
3. Reboot your computer into Ubuntu from the Live CD
4. Open a terminal window and type sudo su
5. Type fdisk -l to list available drives/partitions. Note which device is your flash drive (example: /dev/sda) Throughout this tutorial, replace x with your flash drive letter. For example, if your flash drive is sdb, replace x with b.
6. Type umount /dev/sdx1
7. Type fdisk /dev/sdx
* type p to show the existing partition and d to delete it
* type p again to show any remaining partitions (if partitions exist, repeat the previous step)
* type n to make a new partition
* type p for primary partition
* type 1 to make this the first partition
* hit enter to use the default 1st cylinder
* type +750M to set the partition size
* type a to make this partition active
* type 1 to select partition 1
* type t to change the partition filesystem
* type 6 to select the fat16 file system
* type n to make another new partition
* type p for primary partition
* type 2 to make this the second partition
* hit enter to use the default cylinder
* hit enter again to use the default last cylinder
* type w to write the new partition table
8. Type umount /dev/sdx1 to ensure the 1st partition is unmounted
9. Type mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n ubuntu710 /dev/sdx1 to format the first partition
10. Type umount /dev/sdx2 just to ensure the 2nd partition is unmounted
11. Type mkfs.ext2 -b 4096 -L casper-rw /dev/sdx2 to format the second partition
12. Remove and Re-insert your flash drive
13. Back at the terminal, type apt-get update
14. Type apt-get install syslinux mtools
15. Type syslinux -sf /dev/sdx1
16. Type cd /cdrom
17. Type cp -rf casper disctree dists install pics pool preseed .disk isolinux/* md5sum.txt README.diskdefines ubuntu.ico casper/vmlinuz casper/initrd.gz /media/ubuntu710/

Ignore any "cannot create symbolic link" errors

18. Type cd /home/ubuntu
19. Type wget pendrivelinux.com/downloads/U710fix.zip
20. Type unzip -o -d /media/ubuntu710/ U710fix.zip
21. Restart your computer, set your BIOS or Boot menu to boot from the USB device and reboot again.

You should now have a USB Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon flash drive that should automatically save your changes, restoring them on boot.

Notes: If your having trouble getting Ubuntu to boot, your memory stick may have a corrupted MBR. To repair the MBR of your USB device, at the terminal type sudo apt-get install lilo then type lilo -M /dev/sdx (replacing x with the letter of your flash device)

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