I would like to use Ubuntu with a USB.

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wiley54

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Somewhere on this form I read a very good set of instruction including an ISO downloader. I can not find this information. Using search I asked for 'ISO USB" nothing came back. Can someone point me to the correct thread. Thank you.
 


I would like to use Ubuntu with a USB.

Do you mean as an installation medium or as a persistent drive
to install using pen-drive
How Do I Install Linux (A General Guide) • Linux Tips
to make a persistent Linux pen-drive [this is for Ubuntu, but will work with most distributions of Linux]
 
OP mentions an "ISO downloader" and the only tool I can think of that does that would be UNetBootIn.
 
Upon further thought, Etcher does have 'flash from URL' which could be what they mean?
 
Maybe this is it.
 
Do you mean as an installation medium or as a persistent drive
to install using pen-drive
How Do I Install Linux (A General Guide) • Linux Tips
to make a persistent Linux pen-drive [this is for Ubuntu, but will work with most distributions of Linux]
Dos, CPM; IBM had to make a a choose, we have to live with it. My personal feeling is to have had IBM go to 68000 instead of Intel. Thermal problem?
 
OP mentions an "ISO downloader" and the only tool I can think of that does that would be UNetBootIn.
BTW, the last 2 times I tried using UNetBootin it was broken.
 
What prevents a person from booting to a live USB, and going through the install process, pointed directly to a second USB device?

Side question relating to this thread: What is the wisdom of putting a persistent OS on a USB pen drive? Pen drives tend to have limited write cycles, so would wear out quickly, especially if moving a lot of data, or swapping. Why not use a portable HDD/SSD instead?
 
What prevents a person from booting to a live USB, and going through the install process, pointed directly to a second USB device?

Nothing. All sorts of people do it that way. Some disconnect any internal drives during the process so that GRUB only sees the USB. They then select USB from the temporary boot menu to boot to the device.
 
What prevents a person from booting to a live USB, and going through the install process, pointed directly to a second USB device?

Side question relating to this thread: What is the wisdom of putting a persistent OS on a USB pen drive? Pen drives tend to have limited write cycles, so would wear out quickly, especially if moving a lot of data, or swapping. Why not use a portable HDD/SSD instead?
If the BIOS doesn't know about the USB device it can't boot to it.
Generally you have go into the Boot section of the BIOS and make the USB device the first selection in the list.
 
Is it just me, or does OP's posts seem like this is a bot account? It has all the classic bad language, inconsistency, and off-topic-ness signs. Just throwing it out there. Checked his/her/(its?) profile and all posts are very similar to how AI converses. Could also just be a fake user, but I'm calling it out. A sentience test using complex themes and sentence structures usually outs it:

@wiley54 your certification probably expired due, but not necessarily, in part -- and some may argue philosophy over science here -- to a machine not being able to think, as well as the fact that further assimilation of knowledge and linguistics fails to produce accurate communication on account of lacking the creative coding found in our own organic neural network. The Web UI fails, probably because I coded it with VS Code. I'm sure if you're an organic sentience, you will react to my thoughts with a combative retort.
 
If the BIOS doesn't know about the USB device it can't boot to it.
Generally you have go into the Boot section of the BIOS and make the USB device the first selection in the list.
I can see how my question sounds like a BIOS question, but it's not. I was asking if there was any reason one could not install directly from a live USB to a second destination USB, which would then be a persistent drive. I know some people install to hard drive, make changes, then image back to a USB to build their persistent drive.
 
I was asking if there was any reason one could not install directly from a live USB to a second destination USB, which would then be a persistent drive.
None whatsoever that's the way I use to do it myself, you need a good quality pen-drive of 8 or 16 gb for the the ISO and another of minimum 32gb clean and formatted FATS or X-FATS as the destination drive, and 2 spare USB ports on your machine,
Put both in the machine and proceed as a normal installation, when you get to the partition manager Make sure you choose the target drive from the drop-down menu and continue, as you are not dual booting on it, you may as well let the partition manager do the work it'self
 
Although this thread's started by a bot/fake account, it'll come up on Google/Bing's results for someone looking to do this. In the interests of that poor person:

Tutorial: Install My Distro to a Flashdrive the Simplest Way
This is to install an ISO to a USB storage device (as in install, not image it, a'la dd) It worked as of 2020/21-ish, I don't remember and IDK if some things have changed by the time someone reads this.

1. Required: qemu/kvm + ovmf
1.1 On Debian-family (eg: Ubuntu/Mint/et al), install with: apt-get install qemu qemu-kvm ovmf -y

2. Preparation
2.1 Now make a directory to do this. We'll use ~/temp in the example.
2.2 Copy the ISO file (I'll call it "mydistro.iso") to ~/temp

3. Now, you're going to have to get a little info:
3.1 If you have plugged in your flashdrive, run: lsblk and you should be able to tell the device node it is by looking at the size alone. Chances are it's the last /dev/sd, but if you're not sure, run lsblk before and after plugging in your flashdrive; it's the new device. I'm calling it /dev/sdz for this tutorial.
3.2 If your CPU has 4 or cores, give your VM half, else give it only 1. Note that. I'll be using 4.
3.3 If you have 8GB or more RAM, give your VM 4GB (4096 Mb) RAM, otherwise, give it half your available memory (RAM). Note that memory is specified in Mb, so multiply GB by 1024, eg: 2GB = 2048. I'm using 4096. Note it.
3.4 I'm omitting sound and and other hardware. Also I'll explain the parameters later.

4. Execution. Now we can type our entire list of qemu parameters out, but it'll be a mess. So we'll use a shell script. I'll also explain the relevant parameters that pertain to this (you can research the rest).
4.1 Copy + paste the below code (collapse the spoiler) to a text file and save it as startvm.sh
Code:
#! /bin/sh

# NOTE: the bios ROM path should be configured when you installed ovmf
kvm\
 -enable-kvm\
 -bios /usr/share/qemu/OVMF.fd\
 -drive format=raw,media=cdrom,file=mydistro.iso\
 -hdb /dev/sdz\
 -m 4096\
 -smp cores=4\
 -net nic\
 -net user

Quick explanation:

-enable-kvm
This allows Type 1 hypervisor, which is very simply put, sends the instructions from the VM to your CPU instead of emulating it. If you have problems, you may need to enable KVM and IOMMU in your host machine's BIOS.

-bios /usr/share/qemu/OVMF.fd
The path to the BIOS ROM your VM will use instead of the standard one, which does not support the plethora of UEFI extensions that OVMF does.

-drive format=raw,media=cdrom,file=mydistro.iso
This just adds a drive, a "CD-ROM" (DVD as well), with the ISO "mydistro.iso" (the one you're installing) inside the "tray".

-hdb /dev/sdz
Assign a host storage device node as a physical storage device in the VM. Range: hda, hdb, hdc, ... and so on. "hda" is in use here, so we use hdb.

-m 4096
Memory (RAM) allocated in MB.

-smp cores=4
Number of logical cores to use (you may call them "threads") to give your VM. Do not overtax the host (your PC), it's better to let the VM run slower. General safe rule if give the VM half your logical cores, but really, you should check your host's resource use. The installation also won't benefit much, if any, from over 4 cores. If you were using it for something else, then I'd stick to the 50/50 split.

-net nic
Enable access to your host primary/default network interface. You can use options to further fiddle with this.

-net user
Plain English: setup a virtual DHCP server with the VM's own subnet and NAT to give the guest machine access to your host's network and the internet.

\
Means a newline that continues the one above in a shell.
4.2 Now save the file, exit and make it executable chmod +x startvm.sh
4.3 Right, you're done. Run startvm.sh from the CLI ./startvm.sh and then you can treat the entire thing as a normal installation.

5. Installation.
5.1 Do what you normally do, guided (or not) by the installer.
5.2 Say "yay!"
 
I once created a Persistent Drive Flash Drive with Linux Mint as the OS...thought it would be a wonderful idea but turned out to be a complete wast of time.
mad0016.gif


The bloody thing was just too slow...not to mention the Drive Flash Drive wouldn't last long either.
sad0018.gif
 
I am inclined to agree with friend James @Fanboi on this one.

I am placing a lock for now on this and other Threads by the OP, with a view to review.

If the OP has any questions in this regard he can PM me.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz
 
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