USB Not Loading As Live Demo

[sheepman39]

I am new to the Linux operating system so please pardon if I use the wrong terminology. Also, I am not sure which information is important so I am putting as much as I can here.

I am attempting to turn a USB drive into a live USB where I can plug it into any computer and keep on working on it. I do not want to install it on any one drive for portability. I am using version ubuntu-mate-18.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso and using Rufus version 3.9.1624 to install it on my 64Gb USB drive. Partition scheme is MBR and the target system is BIOS. I set the persistent partition to 18Gb and left the file system as Large FAT 32. Cluster size is 32.
When I boot up I select on the menu "Try ubuntu without installing". Then after a couple of seconds, this error pops up:

I would greatly appreciate any guidance or help with this!

[tiox]

Try to use software specific for flashing. While it is closed-source and proprietary, Balena Etcher can't be argued with as a good solution to create universal boot media.

Get it for your system from https://etcher.io. After you flash an ISO for Ubuntu MATE to your drive, try booting from the USB once again and report.

[sheepman39]

I used etcher and it did boot with the user interface, however crashed after 30 seconds or so. It was unresponsive and then showed a screen with the logo and said, "Please remove installation medium and hit enter. " I do not want it to install on my computer, I just want to run it on the flash drive so it is portable.

[jymm]

Do you have the USB boot flag checked? You can use gparted to check that. I have had that trouble with some USB installations, and if the boot flag is not checked, it won't boot.

[sheepman39]

Where can I find the boot flag? Etcher has no option for that or am I supposed to flash gparted onto the drive? Thank you.

[tiox]

Etcher should make the drive boot automatically. I also think this isn't the issue, but in Windows Disk Management (or other more-capable third-party tools like EaseUS Partition Master) you can set the partition as active to make it bootable.

It's even more straight-forward in gparted on open-source systems; Choose to Manage Flags and toggle the boot flag to enable.

Had you tried with a different media? Could it also be the BIOS' SecureBoot setting or lack of compatibility support module / legacy device setting being enabled? I am uncertain of your problem, just tossing science to the wall and seeing what sticks.

[lah7]

Welcome @sheepman39! I'd suggest verifying the ISO file and USB drive for corruption, which could explain these issues.

To check your download is OK,on Windows, download a checksum tool like this one:

MD5 & SHA Checksum Utility

The MD5 for ubuntu-mate-18.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso should be:

1d929104587a6036925808eda738d8f0 (Source)

If it doesn't match, try downloading again.

---

Once it's on the USB drive, to check everything's intact, choose Check disc for defects from the boot menu:

To my knowledge, boot flags shouldn't be a worry for normal flashes - a tool like Etcher should restore the ISO image bit by bit, which overwrites the MBR of the drive.

@sheepman39

using Rufus version 3.9.1624 to install it on my 64Gb USB drive. Partition scheme is MBR and the target system is BIOS. I set the persistent partition to 18Gb and left the file system as Large FAT 32. Cluster size is 32.

Are you looking to persist your changes, or have this USB as a fresh session each time? If the former, Etcher may not be the right tool.

[Tim]

Hi everyone,
Well, like Sheepman says: "I am attempting to turn a USB drive into a live USB where I can plug it into any computer and keep on working on it.". So, I assume he's looking to persist the changes in a usb like in a HDD or SSD (live usb, not usb installer).

Other utilities I remember did the job perfectly a few years ago was Unetbootin and mkusb, that creates an ext casper-rw persistence partition. But it seems since Ubuntu Xenial this partition don't works very good. In fact, Rufus is an excellent software but possibly the problem is the same. I'm not sure, but I thing it's no so easy that it seems.

What I would to do is to "clone" a previous ubuntu system to usb, sector by sector (dd), and repair the grub if necessary with Grub-repair or SuperGrub2. It's not difficult to do it with VirtualBox, that allow to mount an usb with VBoxManage internalcommands. And the whole job is possible to do it without login out Ubuntu, although it's a bit large.
"Partition scheme is MBR and the target system is BIOS". Sure this live usb (MBR boot partition) will boot in BIOS legacy mode, so you'll have to change boot options in the machine you'll boot it. Other question is live-usb works and boots quite slow, depending of your CPU, usb port and pendrive (2.0, 3.0, +).

[mdooley]

If you are looking for a persistent live USB, please see -

Creating a persistent live USB using Unetbootin

You can find Unetbootin at the following ppa - https://launchpad.net/~gezakovacs/+archive/ubuntu/ppa The ppa has versions for bionic and previous. There is a questions/answers section for those with problems of one sort or another. Once you have added the ppa to your system and downloaded and installed Unetbootin, you can use it to create a bootable live USB. You can also create a persistent live USB that allows you to save settings, install a needed wireless driver, and configure your live U…

[tiox]

There was another software from pendrivelinux called Universal USB Creator which allowed for persistence, however I never used it and its capabilities of writing a SecureBoot-compatible media is slim to none; no luck where Etcher succeeded.

In fact I would argue it is better for him to produce a non-persistent live session and make a single-part install for Ubuntu on a larger USB media. It'll be slow as but work a hell of a lot better since it's a more "Conventional" installation method. The OP says they used Balena and is still encountering issues, so he can't even use the system once he writes it, which could mean bad USB media or corrupted ISO as @lah7 suggested.

We'll just have to see if he can bother re-downloading it. (Or if his data plan allows him to.) Torrent is certainly the way to go but because of people's proclivity to use it as a tool for crime with illicit P2P filesharing his ISP might not allow use of BitTorrent, in spite of the fact this particular use — acquisition of a freely-distributed, legally-obtainable operating system — would be better than downloading via HTTP.

[sheepman39]

I verified the ISO file and checked the USB drive for corruption and they both turned out okay. To clarify, I am looking for a live usb that can persist the changes between boots. I tried the guide that @mdooley posted, but my computer won't even try to boot into that. In the boot menu, when I select it, the screen just flashes and takes me back to the boot menu. Since other methods have not worked either, I am going to try @tiox idea and install it on another USB drive. When installing, is there a way to choose which drive to install to? I just want to make sure so I don't accidently erase any data on my computer.

Also, just want to say thank you for all of your help in this. I really appreciate it!

[tiox]

ubiquity is pretty straight-forward. However, there are a few things to keep in mind;

• Pick Something Else as an installation method.
• Ubiquity will always default to using device UUID for partition names if you create them in there, so manage the destination device with gnome-disks or gparted, and do not format in Ubiquity the installation partition, but also choose what format it is.
  • Yes, it's weird, but that's how it works. Fortunately your choice is simple: Ubuntu will only install in ext4 partitions, so setup in gnome-disks or gparted is straight-forward.
• Ubiquity will always use available swap partitions, no matter what. So for users who have a lot of them it's easier to modify the installation's /etc/fstab post-install. Else you can de-assign swap parts during installation.
  • Since this is a USB media (I assume USB 2.0), it will not matter where swap is, so don't bother making one: A swapfile will be made instead, and you probably won't need it.
• Always assign the root device as bootloader so GRUB2 doesn't overwrite NT loader or otherwise make inaccessible your copy of Microsoft Windows. Example: If installing to sdc1, make bootloader reside in sdc.

If you go without a swap part, you may still be interested in using ZRAM for putting swap contents in. Functions similarly to ZSWAP without the need to make a swap part from my knowledge, and Ubuntu has an easy script for configuring ZRAM as a swap device. Check this out after you've finished your Ubuntu installation to another USB device. (Thanks for this @mdooley!)

[sheepman39]

Good news, I got the live USB to work! I tried something that was kinda low-tech but worked just fine. I took one of my older laptops, removed the drive in it, and properly installed it on the USB. It works fine on my current computer after it crashed a couple of times. Thank you all so much for your help on this.

[tiox]

I should have mentoned when I was writing about ZRAM: The purpose of installing zram-config and rebooting to enable it is to reduce I / O writes, since ZRAM is more write-efficient than traditional swap. From The Linux Kernel Archives:

The zram module creates RAM based block devices named /dev/zram
( = 0, 1, ...). Pages written to these disks are compressed and stored
in memory itself. These disks allow very fast I/O and compression provides
good amounts of memory savings. Some of the usecases include /tmp storage,
use as swap disks, various caches under /var and maybe many more

I'll toss up a guide about it later on since it seems so simple to set up, that I can bang something out.