Bootable USB?

RobMunfy · 24 Oct 2008 at 15:32

Hi guys,

Does anyone know if there is any way of making a bootable USB pen drive without having to burn a CD? I want to put eeeXubuntu on my eee, but a) don't have a CD drive on there, b) don't have any CDs!

If it's possible, I can do it on windows or linux as I'm currently dual booting ubuntu and xp.

Cheers, Rob

brummie · 24 Oct 2008 at 15:38

RobMunfy said:
Hi guys,

Does anyone know if there is any way of making a bootable USB pen drive without having to burn a CD? I want to put eeeXubuntu on my eee, but a) don't have a CD drive on there, b) don't have any CDs!

If it's possible, I can do it on windows or linux as I'm currently dual booting ubuntu and xp.

Cheers, Rob

I'm using ubuntu 8.10 and there is a button on there that does it for you.
I know it dont help you directly but its shows its posible.

this will help though: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

RobMunfy · 24 Oct 2008 at 15:54

Cheers brummie.

I found a solution called "unetbootin", a nice little program that does it all for you!

.walls · 24 Oct 2008 at 17:18

or you could use ms-sys (shell based)

EDIT: might want a boot loader as well... grub for that

Chaos · 24 Oct 2008 at 18:21

I think theres something called petousb that lets you do that.

MikeHunt79 · 24 Oct 2008 at 19:33

While we're on the subject, is it possible to run linux from USB?

Does Linux have lots of temp files like windows does that are bad for solid state drives?

.walls · 25 Oct 2008 at 12:05

MikeHunt79 said:
While we're on the subject, is it possible to run linux from USB?

Does Linux have lots of temp files like windows does that are bad for solid state drives?

easily. I have a multi-booting USB pen with nine different OSes on it - including Knoppix, MS DOS and gParted.

basially, put a filesystem on your usb pen (vfat is best) make it bootable, extract your ISO into a folder on your drive, install GRUB and point it at the ISO kernel with suitable kernel options. Linux ISOs usually boot with isolinux, the config from these installations can be modified and appended to menu.lst.

Of course, you can use isolinux instead of GRUB... in which case, they don't have to be modified very much at all, I just know GRUB a lot better