Ubuntu 9.10 - Won't make a boot disk

[W1GUH]

So I thought I'd make one of my external hard drives into a boot disk & save myself the trouble of swapping the internal hard drive. After most of an afternoon I gave up....just couldn't do it.

In the "Make boot disk" gui, the first thing it asks for is where to get the image from. So I tried to tell it, over and over. It refused to accept anything. After hitting "open" in the file requester, the file never showed up in the window of the gui. Could be I was telling it the wrong type of file...but then, the instructions said to us the ".iso" file, AND the file requester came up defaulted to that file type. And that's the kind of file it refused to accept. It didn't actually say it didn't accept it...it just didn't put it in the window in the main "Create Boot Disk" gui.

So I thought that maybe it doesn't need to be there, so I told it to make a certain drive a boot drive. It did that wonderfully well! Trouble is....the computer recognized it as a boot disk, but couldn't find a boot image. Well, DUH! Of course it couldn't because the stupid gui didn't put it there because it didn't seem to be talking to the filre requester.

But then things got nasty. Somehow, in this process, that disk became unreadable by linux. No big deal, it started out empty, so nothing's lost. But what depressed me is I couldn't do anything with that hard drive because linux refused. I couldn't even format it. If I tried to linux gave me a snide (well, not really, but after hours of dealing with this it certainly seemed snide! :evil: ) response and said it can't do anything. So.......(Wah! Sob!! Growl!!!) I had to go back to windows to re-format that drive.

Mostly a ranting dump...but if anyone sees anything I did wrong, of course I'd like to hear from you. This kind of stuff really wearies me to the point where now, I'm content to stick to windows because if I boot up linux sure as shinola I'll migrate to fixing this problem....probably only to spend ANOTHER 3 hours finding out that I can't!

:evil: :evil: :evil:

[ad4mg]

So I thought I'd make one of my external hard drives into a boot disk & save myself the trouble of swapping the internal hard drive. After most of an afternoon I gave up....just couldn't do it.

In the "Make boot disk" gui, the first thing it asks for is where to get the image from. So I tried to tell it, over and over. It refused to accept anything. After hitting "open" in the file requester, the file never showed up in the window of the gui. Could be I was telling it the wrong type of file...but then, the instructions said to us the ".iso" file, AND the file requester came up defaulted to that file type. And that's the kind of file it refused to accept. It didn't actually say it didn't accept it...it just didn't put it in the window in the main "Create Boot Disk" gui.

So I thought that maybe it doesn't need to be there, so I told it to make a certain drive a boot drive. It did that wonderfully well! Trouble is....the computer recognized it as a boot disk, but couldn't find a boot image. Well, DUH! Of course it couldn't because the stupid gui didn't put it there because it didn't seem to be talking to the filre requester.

But then things got nasty. Somehow, in this process, that disk became unreadable by linux. No big deal, it started out empty, so nothing's lost. But what depressed me is I couldn't do anything with that hard drive because linux refused. I couldn't even format it. If I tried to linux gave me a snide (well, not really, but after hours of dealing with this it certainly seemed snide! :evil: ) response and said it can't do anything. So.......(Wah! Sob!! Growl!!!) I had to go back to windows to re-format that drive.

Mostly a ranting dump...but if anyone sees anything I did wrong, of course I'd like to hear from you. This kind of stuff really wearies me to the point where now, I'm content to stick to windows because if I boot up linux sure as shinola I'll migrate to fixing this problem....probably only to spend ANOTHER 3 hours finding out that I can't!

:evil: :evil: :evil:
It looks like you went through the proper steps, Paul. I've done this twice, once with an ISO file, and once with a Live CD in the drive. The first time, I made my 4GB USB thumb drive bootable, the second time, I used an external 60GB USB drive. Both times, the process completed without any problems.

One of two possibilities come to mind ...
- a corrupted .iso file
- do you have permissions to open the .iso file ?

You can check and change, if necessary, the permissions from a terminal window. Open a terminal and navigate to where the .iso file is. As an example, I'll use the Ubuntu 8.10 .iso I just copied to my desktop (prompt in green):


lukeb@Acer_E500:~$ cd Desktop
lukeb@Acer_E500:~/Desktop$ ls -l

the owner of the file should be whatever username you use. If it is root, change the owner like so:

lukeb@Acer_E500:~/Desktop$ sudo chown lukeb:lukeb ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso

substitute your username for mine (lukeb) in that command

verify that the permissions allow you to open the file, should be at least - rw - r - - r - - (which is 644 numerically)
it's safe enough to open the permissions wide open long enough to do the disk, so change it to 777 like so:

lukeb@Acer_E500:~/Desktop$ sudo chmod 777 ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso

when you do the "ls -l" command, the permissions for that file should now show: - rwxrwxrwx (777 numerically)
---------------------------------

Those two suggestions are my best guess. I found making an external USB drive a bootable Ubuntu disk very easy.

[KC2UGV]

Well, you could waste an external HD by making it simply a live CD, but why not just install the OS to the UBS drive by booting from the CD?

[ad4mg]

Well, you could waste an external HD by making it simply a live CD, but why not just install the OS to the UBS drive by booting from the CD?
Good suggestion. I chopped off some space and created a small partition to do the job on that larger drive.

For the thumb drive, I marked the installation as "persistent", so I could do a few updates, and store files on it.

[W1GUH]

I doubt if it was protection. I suppose that the symptom of trying to do it from a file I don't have permission to read could be a mute "no action at all, but that's unlikely. As I said, the GUI behaves like somebody forgot to use the path and file name from the file requester.

I found a way to make a boot disk from a terminal, and I'll be trying that eventually. I'll let you know what happens.

BTW....your procedure had a useful effect...reminding me of the "sudo" command. That's a new one for me....I've always just used the root password...but Ubuntu doesn't let you do that!

[n2ize]

So I thought I'd make one of my external hard drives into a boot disk & save myself the trouble of swapping the internal hard drive. After most of an afternoon I gave up....just couldn't do it.



Can't you just simply make a dual boot system ? That's what I do here. There are 2 internal drives in the machine, one for windows and one for fedora. At boot time I simply use GRUB to select which OS want to boot into. No need to swap drives, no need for boot discs, etc.

[W1GUH]

So I thought I'd make one of my external hard drives into a boot disk & save myself the trouble of swapping the internal hard drive. After most of an afternoon I gave up....just couldn't do it.



Can't you just simply make a dual boot system ? That's what I do here. There are 2 internal drives in the machine, one for windows and one for fedora. At boot time I simply use GRUB to select which OS want to boot into. No need to swap drives, no need for boot discs, etc.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm setting out to do, except that the linux drive will be an external USB drive. I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track because one of those external drives "thinks" it's a boot drive (only without the boot image), and I used GRUB last night to telll the computer to boot from the internal drive. Also, I'd bet that the command line procedure from a terminal window will work just fine....I just have to get the energy to swap the disk and try it. Just gotta be "mentally prepared" to spend, possibly, a few hours doing it if things go like they can. You know, where it's almost working, and it takes you, literally hours, to find that one simple thing that'll make it work! The joys of computers. :monkeydance:

[n2ize]

So I thought I'd make one of my external hard drives into a boot disk & save myself the trouble of swapping the internal hard drive. After most of an afternoon I gave up....just couldn't do it.



Can't you just simply make a dual boot system ? That's what I do here. There are 2 internal drives in the machine, one for windows and one for fedora. At boot time I simply use GRUB to select which OS want to boot into. No need to swap drives, no need for boot discs, etc.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm setting out to do, except that the linux drive will be an external USB drive. I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track because one of those external drives "thinks" it's a boot drive (only without the boot image), and I used GRUB last night to telll the computer to boot from the internal drive. Also, I'd bet that the command line procedure from a terminal window will work just fine....I just have to get the energy to swap the disk and try it. Just gotta be "mentally prepared" to spend, possibly, a few hours doing it if things go like they can. You know, where it's almost working, and it takes you, literally hours, to find that one simple thing that'll make it work! The joys of computers. :monkeydance:

Okay I gotcha... A few weeks ago I spend a few days trying to resolve an issue with a wi-fi card on a laptop. Twas so close to working but not quite. Eventually turned out the hard drive was beginning to fail and it was encountering subtle read/write/seek errors. Once I replaced the drive everything gelled.

I generally hate troubleshooting and fixing computers. I much prefer using them to perform useful tasks. Round here I do mostly Lisp, C, and Assembly programming and a lot of number crunching, recursions, etc.

[KC2UGV]

I generally hate troubleshooting and fixing computers. I much prefer using them to perform useful tasks. Round here I do mostly Lisp, C, and Assembly programming and a lot of number crunching, recursions, etc.

I thought you said you prefer using them for "useful tasks".... Lisp!? C?!?! Assembly!?!?!?!! Try perl, or python. It will appear a whole new world to you.

:rofl:

[n2ize]

I generally hate troubleshooting and fixing computers. I much prefer using them to perform useful tasks. Round here I do mostly Lisp, C, and Assembly programming and a lot of number crunching, recursions, etc.

I thought you said you prefer using them for "useful tasks".... Lisp!? C?!?! Assembly!?!?!?!! Try perl, or python. It will appear a whole new world to you.

:rofl:

Lisp IS quite useful.

I've been using Perl for over a decade. It's a great language. Useful for many tasks and often my language of choice when I need to cook up something quick and efficient. I probably write in Perl more often than anything else.

For low level routines I generally like to dabble around with a combo of C and Assembly. Assembly less often these days because most compilers can optimize things better than i can. Nonetheless a working knowledge of Assembly helps one to understand what's going on "under the hood". It also helps to better understand some of those messages the debugger spits out. It also helps in gaining a clearer understanding of just how the machine manipulates things like floating point arithmetic.

Lisp may be old and conjure up images of the ancient and archaic days of computing. But don't sell Lisp short. For some projects Lisp cannot be surpassed. As a mathematician I find that I can translate abstract or semi-abstract ideas into workable code quicker and more efficiently with Lisp than with C, Perl, Java, etc. I can often accomplish with Lisp is a couple of lines of code what it would take many more lines in other languages. Lisp does have a certain robust adaptability and flexibility not found in many other languages. There is good reason why it was/is favoured by the artificial intelligence community. I am not alone. To this date Lisp retains an active community of users among academics, professionals and hackers alike. There is a certain elegance to Lisp that is quite valid and makes it particularly useful.

That said, I see computer languages as tools to complete a job. I have no favourite language in the sense that I have no favourite tool. rather the tool that is best suited for the task at hand is the one I favour at any given moment. For some things I would jump right to Perl and never even consider Lisp. For other things I would jump right to C. And for other jobs Lisp fits the bill perfectly.

Speaking of Python I hope to learn that language one of these days.

[KC2UGV]

Just for you 'ize:

http://calltopower.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/xkcd_lisp_braces.png

I would have mentioned PHP, but I see you at least "dabble" in that already. FWIW, I don't think PHP is inherently insecure either :cheers:

[n2ize]

The success or practicality of Lisp in today's world is largely dependent upon who uses it. I would say those that acclimate to Lisp because they think it's cool should never use Lisp. I would go so far as to say Lisp should almost never be used in today's world. It is far too dangerous in the hands of most. There are only a select few who can use Lisp in a way that makes sense. I am one of those few/

[W1GUH]

The whole world should switch over to Ada. Great error checking! Unbelievablly strong typing! Totally verbose coding! Totally inefficient image size and execution speed! Simple mistakes create copious verbiage in the error dump!

[W1GUH]

Tried again, with limited success...

I tried the command line procedure I'd found, but the very first step, fdisk, gronked. fdisk couldn't open any of the USB disks. Scratch that idea...

Then I booted Ubuntu from the CD with the "Try Ubuntu without changing your computer" option. It came up OK (took a while). When it came up I again tried System->Administration->Make Boot Disk.

Voila! It finally put something in the <source> window (forget the official name), it had the drive I wanted to put it on in the lower window, so I hit the create button and all was wonderful. Worked just fine.

There was a quirk...the progress bar was only at something like 4% when I got the Success! screen. Nice surprise, I guess.

So I booted from the USB drive, and it came up just fine.

BUT.....even though the CD was Ubuntu 9.10, what I got from the newly-created boot disk was 9.04.

Oops! Yep, I believe I never burned a 9.10 disk...that was a direct download. So I guess I'm home free? Maybe I can just upgrade the new USB disk to 9.10. I guess. Maybe. The 9.10 I see on the desktop identifying the CD DOESN'T mean that's what's on the disk. I guess. Maybe.

:-? :-? :-? :-? :-? :-? :-? :-? :-?

And there's a funny thing. The creator gui looked for .iso files, and I'm pretty sure that's what I burned to the CD, but when I look at the CD from Ubuntu, I don't get see an .iso file, I see a bunch of files and folders.

Guessing that Ubuntu automatically expands the .iso file? Must be...that's what I installed from in the first place.

Whatever...think I'll go buy "Linux for Dummies". There is SO MUCH stuff between the lines in anything I try to do with Linux, or maybe it's just Ubuntu (like what I've gone through with this project) that any supposedly "little" thing turns into a major research project into what the freak is happening. But I'll persist as time and patience allow!

[W1GUH]

Grrrrrrr.....grrrrrrrr......grrrrrrrrrrrr

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

So....the way I got it to boot from the USB drive was used the "Try Ubuntu without changing my computer" option, which worked as it should...but it's not what I wanted to do.

What I wound up doing is installing Ubuntu from the CD onto the USB drive. To do that I had to go into the Advanced stuff to specify the drive...otherwise it would have put it on the internal drive.

That worked just fine, got the "Successful Installation Screen". Yea!!!! And restarted the computer.

GRONKGRONKGRONKGRONK

I told it to boot from the USB drive. The drive was read briefly, and then...

Nothing Nada Zilch F-all

WTF?

So I restard yet AGAIN and told it to boot from the internal drive, where Ubuntu has been running from.

GRUBBY!!!!!!!!!! I wanna type all the swear words I know....

Now I get Grub error 21 or 22. Tried it 3-4 times. No luck.

A quick search turned up a bunch of hits about this....

Hi Ho - Hi Ho, off the google and yet another web search.....

:evil: :evil:

One thing I'm VERY GLAD of....and take this as a recommendation....

With all these problems, I'm so glad that I'm doing linux with a new internal drive, and Windows (Boo!) is safely tucked away from the reach of malignant Ubuntu bugs.

OK....off to find out WTF to do. Maybe I'm stuck with always swapping the HD to go between linux and windows, or maybe it's time to try another brand of linux. Or maybe the grubby error is easy to fix.

Rantrantrantrantrant!

[KC2UGV]

1)Download ISO of Ubunutu
2)Insert Burned CD Rom of ISO into CD-ROM drive
3)Boot from CD ROM
4)Install Ubuntu to USB drive (Device names vary)
5)Install Grub to USB drive's boot record

After that, if you want to boot to Ubuntu, plug in USB drive, and select the option to boot from it.

I have to admit I was having problems trying to figure out why you were just installing the live CD image to the Hard drive... It's why you have to keep selecting "Don't modify computer" option. The USB drive just had a copy of the ISO there.

[W1GUH]

1)Download ISO of Ubunutu
2)Insert Burned CD Rom of ISO into CD-ROM drive
3)Boot from CD ROM
4)Install Ubuntu to USB drive (Device names vary)
5)Install Grub to USB drive's boot record

After that, if you want to boot to Ubuntu, plug in USB drive, and select the option to boot from it.

I have to admit I was having problems trying to figure out why you were just installing the live CD image to the Hard drive... It's why you have to keep selecting "Don't modify computer" option. The USB drive just had a copy of the ISO there.

Did all but step 5 as outlined in my latest rant :-? . Now wonder I've got gubbie problems.

The error happens when I try to boot from the internal drive. When I try to boot from the USB drive with the newly installed Ubuntu nothing comes up on the screen. The GUI for installing implied that step 5 wasn't needed, nor was it needed when I originally installed to the internal drive.

A web search turned up someone else to whom this happened. In her case she also managed to wipe out Windows.

Found something called Super Grub that's my next move. It claims to be a super tool to repair grubs. Quien Sabe?

Swapping drive, yet again!

[W1GUH]

Ok, grub is fixed, well, sorta....

I went to Super Grub http://www.supergrubdisk.org/ and made a super grub boot CD. Now, when I boot from that CD, Ubuntu 9.10 comes up just fine, and all's well with it. But it won't boot by itself....I gotta boot it using the super grub CD. Somehow I gotta make the magic it performs permanent. Well, this isn't a big hassle, so this could be the way it can stay.

Now...on to seeing if this helps the external USB.

A few more googles in my future, it would appear. :roll:

[KC2UGV]

Remove the hard drive from the system that is internal and try to boot from the USB drive. It's sounding almost like you installed to the wrong drive.

[W1GUH]

Well, that's the way it's going to remain....booting from the internal disk using the super grub disk. I've searched around for getting a grub file on the external USB drive and, if the information was there it was buried amongst a bunch of linux stuff that I couldn't make heads nor tails of, and anyway, I've been at this for 5 hours now and I'm burnt out.

The external drive looks for all the world like a good linux system disk. Got an MBR, it's got a whole and intact filesystem...just guess it's missing a grub file? Dunno....

[ad4mg]

Well, that's the way it's going to remain....booting from the internal disk using the super grub disk. I've searched around for getting a grub file on the external USB drive and, if the information was there it was buried amongst a bunch of linux stuff that I couldn't make heads nor tails of, and anyway, I've been at this for 5 hours now and I'm burnt out.

The external drive looks for all the world like a good linux system disk. Got an MBR, it's got a whole and intact filesystem...just guess it's missing a grub file? Dunno....
Perhaps the partition on the USB drive isn't flagged as a "boot" partition?

You could use GParted to check. It's usually under "System" , "Administration", and it may just be called "Partition Editor". If it isn't, it will have to be unmounted before you can change the properties of that partition.

I'll have to follow the sequence of events that resulted in your not being able to boot normally, Doug. I'll have to look at it a bit later when I have some time. This can be fixed!

[n2ize]

The whole world should switch over to Ada. Great error checking! Unbelievablly strong typing! Totally verbose coding! Totally inefficient image size and execution speed! Simple mistakes create copious verbiage in the error dump!

Sea-Lisp.

[W1GUH]

Finally


I got it to boot from the external disk. Dunno what I did...I just cleaned that disk and installed again. Didn't do anything differently, so I don't know what was wrong the first time.

Now I can install either Ubutu 9.10 or 9.04 with the internal HD that's in there now. Not too useful. The acid test is choosing between Windows or Ubuntu.

But, it's done....only took a whole day. Cheesh!

[W1GUH]

C'est fine!

Now I can boot windows from the internal disk and linux from the external drive. All done. Well, not really, I still have to upgrade the 9.04 to 9.10, but what the heck...that's easy compared to what I just went through.

I'm leaving it in a state where I have to use the Super Grub CD to boot linux. Maybe eventually I'll figure out how to get a grub file on the external disk, if that's even possible, but the way it is now I'm a little, or a lot more protected from blasting windows, and that's a good thing. There's no way I want to risk having to reinstall that.

Relaxin' time!