Installing Ubuntu to an SD Card, but SD card isn't showing as a target

Associate
Joined
12 Nov 2008
Posts
1,228
I'm trying to install Ubuntu to an SD Card, but SD card isn't showing as a target location in the installer.

I'm doing this from a live ubuntu which is running off a usb stick.
OS does see the SD card whenever I plug it in, but for some reason whenever I run the installer I don't have the SD card listed as an option, just the internal HDD and the usb stick which I'm running the live os from.
 
Are you doing it from Windows or Linux? If on Linux what does the device appear as? Type
Code:
lsblk
into a terminal. My own returns the following.

Code:
NAME                                  MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda                                     8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk  
├─sda1                                  8:1    0   243M  0 part  /boot
├─sda2                                  8:2    0     1K  0 part  
└─sda5                                  8:5    0 465.5G  0 part  
  └─sda5_crypt (dm-0)                 252:0    0 465.5G  0 crypt 
    ├─ubuntu--gnome--vg-root (dm-1)   252:1    0 449.6G  0 lvm   /
    └─ubuntu--gnome--vg-swap_1 (dm-2) 252:2    0  15.9G  0 lvm   
sr0                                    11:0    1  1024M  0 rom   
mmcblk0                               179:0    0  14.9G  0 disk  
└─mmcblk0p1                           179:1    0  14.9G  0 part  /media/f1br3/1C17-0EF0

So my SD card is mmcblk0. So to write the image (download the image you want) I do the following;

Code:
sudo dd if=~/Downloads/debian.net.install.iso of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M
 
Last edited:
Lsblk showed the sd card up as mmcblk0.

I was able to use the sd card for a live Linux using Live Linux USB creator.

So I created another live Linux on a usb stick with the intention of installing a proper Linux installation on the SD card, but when I run the installer the sd card isn't showing up as a target location that I can install too.
 
You'll be wanting a "persistent linux usb" install then.

As far as I know, persistent data is stored unencrypted. So you need to take that into consideration if it's important.

Use the startup disk creator. Select your *.iso image. Select your device. "Stored in reserved extra space" select an option you think fits your needs. Consider how much of the card will be used by the entire install (I'm not sure what it is, around 4GB???), so you'd want something of at least several hundred MBs. Hell, if you've got a 16GB card, you could have several GBs.
 
Oh and I'd recommend doing it on both an SD card and a USB. Not everything is going to have an SD card reader. But just about everything will have a USB port.
 
Back
Top Bottom