However I get stuck soon after…
“No common CD-ROM was drive detected”

Have been hitting a wall for hours now!

Also, Sony probably included the instructions on VHS because Sony is dumb and holds business grudges. Sony actually isn’t the creator of the VHS standard. JVC set that. Sony’s potential cassette standard was a much higher quality Beta tape. You couldn’t get nearly as much run time, but the cassettes were smaller and supported higher resolution and generally better clarity on screen than VHS tapes. VHS became the standard because JVC’s and VHS-supporting companies’ systems were lower cost than Beta systems (especially those by Sony). So my theory is that Sony didn’t care to think past their failure to set a standard and decided to use the medium you weren’t yet able to access to instruct a way to access the medium. Kinda like how there are previews of Blu-Ray content, HD content, and 3D content all over standard definition TV stations these days. Haha.

- Ben

But it’s stopped working with the latest oneiric. I’m getting Debootstrap Error “failed to determine the codename for the release.” You can get this error if the script can’t loop mount the iso image, but that’s not the case for me. It’s mounting fine, but something else is failing in the post-base-install.

The official method (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick) is to use grub4dos, which I’d rather not do because I’ve got a bunch of stuff on one usb stick and everything else uses syslinux.

I’ll keep poking at it but wonder if you have any suggestions.

Reminds me of back when VHS tape recorders first came out and Sony shipped the instructions on how to set one up on a VHS tape.

I think something a little more basic is required here.

Need it.

dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdb1

where /dev/sdb1 - is unmounted usb device.

Works juts fine

I’ll do it with this example:

32-bit computer (desktop -or laptop-, not netbook)
USB flash drive of 4 GB
Persistence option desired (casper-rw file will exist for that)
Personal files will take up more than half of the memory or space

1. Download the required ISO file: http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download (and choose and click) or ftp://swtsrv.informatik.uni-mannheim…sktop-i386.iso (or from other country ….)
2. Plug the USB flash drive
3. Copy the files you want to keep to another drive
4. Hold Alt key and press F2 . Type gnome-terminal and press Enter
5. Type sudo bash and press Enter. Enter your password
6. Type ls /dev/disk/by-id/*usb* -l and press Enter . At the end of the first line there should be something like sdb or sdc or sdd … In my case sdb
7. Type fdisk -l and press Enter . After /dev/sdb I see /dev/sdb1 (there is only 1 partition; no divisions in my USB flash drive)
8. Type umount /dev/sdb1 and press Enter
9. Type fdisk /dev/sdb and press Enter
10. Type m and press Enter to see the options
11. Type p and press Enter to see the partitions (in my case /dev/sdb1 )
12. Type d and press Enter (fdisk selects the only partition I have)
13. Type p and press Enter (now there is no partition so no /dev/sdb1 is shown)
14. Type n and press Enter then p and Enter then 1 (number of partition) and Enter then Enter (to use the default beginning: 1) then 600 (something more than the half) and Enter
15. Type p and press Enter. I see /dev/sdb1 with Id of 83 (Linux file system)
16. We want change it to FAT32: Type l and press Enter . We see that c is our option (W95 FAT32 (LBA) file system)
17. We change it: Type t and press Enter (it selects the only partition up to now). Type c and press Enter
18. Type p and press Enter . We see Id of c (W95 FAT32 (LBA) file system)
19. Type n and press Enter then p and Enter then 2 and Enter then Enter (to use the default: just after first partition) then Enter (to use the default: all the free space, to the end)
20. Type p and press Enter . We see also /dev/sdb2 . With Id of 83
21. Type t and press Enter then 2 and Enter then c and Enter
22. Type p and press Enter . We see Id of c bor both
23. Type w and press Enter. Changes are written on disk
24. Type fdisk -l and press Enter . Now we see the 2 partitions.
25. Now we format the first one: type mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1 and press Enter
26. Now we format the second one: type mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb2 and press Enter
27. Close the terminal or console
28. Hold Alt key and press F2 . Type gnome-control-center and press Enter
29. Click on USB Startup Disk Creator (under Hardware)
30. Click on the button named Other.. (up-right) and choose and open the downloaded ISO file
31. Under Disk to use click on /dev/sdb2
32. Down, select Stored in reserved extra space
33. Move the How much button almost to the limit. In my case the limit is 876.0 MB but I put it in 851.0 (just in case I need to modify some file of booting, …)
34. Click on the button Make Startup Disk
35. When it finishes click on Exit

FINISHED !!!

Now if we open the terminal and we use fdisk -l we see that there is a * for Boot in /dev/sdb2 . So the second partition is bootable (where Ubuntu GNU/Linux, the operating system, is located)

To see this working reboot the computer and press the key stated by the BIOS to go to the boot menu (F12, F11, …, then use the arrows to select the USB flash drive and then press Enter). If no boot menu, go to the BIOS main menu (with F2 or Del …), then to boot options ….

The first time in the middle of the boot we have to choose the language and click on Try Ubuntu v 10.04.1 LTS

If we click on Places menu and then on 2.4 GB Filesystem the first partition is mounted and the Nautilus File Browser opens there. We can copy, create, delete, edit, open … our personal files: songs, photos, videos, documents …

If the USB flash drive is inserted in a PC running old operating systems like Windows XP we still can use our personal files, and easily and safely !!

ENJOY !!!

NB: If you only have 1 FAT32 (usual in USB flash drives) partition in your Live USB and make casper-rw not to take up all the free space of the Ubuntu files you can also use the remaining space for your personal files, both from the Ubuntu of the Live USB, from an installed (in a hard drive) Ubuntu, Windows XP, … But they are mixed with the OS files (there is risk to delete them) and if you boot from the Live USB the personal files have to be in a not-easy-to-reach place of the file system and you have to be root to manage them …. (if I remember well)

NB2: The proposed method separates the files of the operating system from the personal data. This way they are better organized and safer: for example Windows XP can only access to the personal files’ partition.