[sf-lug] Ubuntu on a stick

[Akkana Peck]

Christian Einfeldt writes:
> Darn, I should have attended the last SF-LUG meeting!  I just went out and
> bought a USB drive and I am now attempting to put 10.04 on it.  I might need
> that rubber Tux soon, if you were available to hook up!  Are you in the

I never had much luck making bootable USB sticks of 10.04.
Supposedly it's possible, but it only seems to work if you're
already running a 10.04 that's exactly the same as what you're trying
to put on the stick (e.g. burn a CD first and boot from that).

If you're willing to run a beta OS, Ubuntu Oneiric (currently in
beta 2) is MUCH easier to put on a USB stick than earlier versions.
You can just use dd to copy the ISO file to the stick, like you can
with Fedora.  For Natty (11.04), I had success with unetbootin for
making a bootable USB stick (I had no luck with usb-cd-creator).
Of course, neither of those is a long-term-support release.

And neither dd nor unetbootin sets up the USB stick so it can save
your settings from one boot to the next. It should be possible to
do that after the fact, but it doesn't seem to be documented anywhere.

	...Akkana