Installing Distros on USB Sticks with Unetbootin
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REVIEWS Unetbootin Andrew Horwitz, 123RF Horwitz, Andrew Installing distros on USB sticks with Unetbootin LITTLE BOOTS Unetbootin lets users set up almost any distribution on a bootable USB These steps should work for other distri- butions as well. stick. BY KRISTIAN KISSLING Preparing the USB Stick ampire hunter Van Helsing al- fault selection of distributions supported Before you dive into Unetbootin, you ways has some holy water along by Unetbootin, you can feed the tool an might want to prepare your USB stick for Vfor emergencies; Daywalker ISO file for your favorite distro. Time- installation by deleting the existing data Blade relies on silver stakes. Experienced consuming workarounds necessitated by and reformatting the stick. On open- Linux users are more likely to resort to alternative tools such as Pendrivelinux SUSE, type su root to become root; on Linux on a USB stick to exorcise viruses [1] are thus a thing of the past. Ubuntu, add sudo to the start of the from infected Windows computers. To install Unetbootin, copy unetboo- command line. Thanks to Unetbootin, setting up an tin-linux-323 (from the DVD that came To start, type sudo umount /dev/sdb1 electronic emergency tool on a stick does with this issue or from the website [2]) to mount the stick, replacing /dev/sdb1 not take much time. The installer lets to your home directory and make it exe- used in this example with the correct you install various Linux distributions cutable: mount point. To discover the mount quickly and securely on an empty USB point ID, launch a terminal and type tail stick. Then you can use the stick to boot $chmod u+x unetbootin-linux-323 -f /var/log/messages shortly before un- other computers. plugging the stick. The sdb: sdb1 line Unetbootin will roll out live versions The “Installing Unetbootin” box de- tells you that your system has assigned a as well as installation and netboot vari- scribes the steps for setting up Unetboo- device file of /dev/sdb to the stick, which ants. If you are not happy with the de- tin in openSUSE 11.1 and Ubuntu 9.04. has a partition called /dev/sdb1. 44 ISSUE 105 AUGUST 2009 Unetbootin REVIEWS Installing Unetbootin take a couple of minutes. Linux writes blocks of In openSUSE 11.1, make sure you have 4KB (as defined by the -b administrative privileges by typing su 4096 option) to speed up root, then type ./unetbootin-linux-323 to the process. If you want to launch the file. For the sake of complete- ness, you might prefer running YaST store Windows files on and installing the p7zip package before the stick, you need to run you start, although the software will run the mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/ without this dependency. sdb1 command to create a On Ubuntu 9.04, working with a normal FAT32 partition. The user account, type your administrative drawback to this option is password after launching Unetbootin that FAT32 does not sup- with the ./unetbootin-linux-323 com- port files of more than mand. Additionally, you can use Synap- 4GB. tic to install the p7zip-full package, After completing the Figure 2: If you select a distribution the software supports, which the software requires. format, unplug the stick, Unetbootin will retrieve it from an FTP server and install the plug it back in to the USB distribution on your memory stick. Now, working as root, type fdisk /dev/ port, and make sure the sdb to launch the Fdisk partitioning tool; system mounts it again. In the file man- speed up the process, pass in the ISO file the tool is controlled from the keyboard. ager, you should now see a Lost+Found manually. To do so quickly, download Type P to discover how many partitions folder – but nothing else. the ISO via BitTorrent and, in the Unet- are on the stick. Then press D and type bootin GUI, specify the path to the ISO the partition number to delete the parti- Unetbootin in Action file as your Image. If you want, you can tions. If the stick only contains one parti- With the empty, mounted stick prepared, even specify the kernel and initrd file tion, you do not need to specify a num- it is now time to launch Unetbootin. In versions. This makes sense if you use a ber. After deleting the partitions, press N the Distribution pull-down menu select non-standard kernel with a specific fea- to create a new partition; it needs to be a your favorite distribution and the match- ture or one that works better with your primary partition (P). To use the first ing version number on the right (Figure hardware. partition, select -1 then press Enter twice 1). The small text box below this tells Often, it is quite useful to add a couple to use all the sectors on the stick. Press- you something about your choice of dis- of Options to the boot process to make ing A and -1 enables the partition you tribution. At the bottom, select USB drive sure that Linux works with your hard- created by setting the boot flag; now fin- as the Type, and select the newly created ware. Favorite kernel parameters in the ish the preparation work by pressing W sdb1 partition from the drop-down menu case of hardware problems include ide (for “write”). Fdisk now writes all the to the right. If you choose Show all =nodma (for problematic IDE drives) changes to the stick; you can cancel at drives, Unetbootin will list other drives – and acpi=off (to avoid trouble with non- any time before this. this is useful if you are not sure you have functional or missing power manage- The next step is to format the empty – found your USB stick. Pressing OK ment). and still unmounted – partition with the launches Unetbootin – sink or swim ext3 filesystem. To do so, become root time (Figure 2). Conclusions and type mkfs.ext3 -b 4096 /dev/sdb1, If everything goes as expected, the All told, Unetbootin is not just a conve- again replacing sdb with the device file software will download an ISO from an nient piece of software but a pretty ma- for your USB stick. Linux will now write FTP server, unpack the ISO, copy it to ture one, too. However, nothing is per- a fresh filesystem to the stick; this can the stick, and generate a matching con- fect. For example, you still might not be figuration file for the Sys- able to install certain distributions. As a linux bootloader. Unet- case in point, in our lab, we had trouble bootin then finishes the installing the SliTaz operating system, al- transaction with a mes- though Puppy Linux, Elive, and a KDE 4 sage and presents the Live version based on openSUSE worked buttons Reboot now and fine. If the automated installation does Finish. That’s all there is not work, you can always try download- to it. As your final trick, ing the image manually from the web you can check to see page and following the steps for the whether the image really manual install. n does boot properly from your stick. INFO Fast and Manual [1] Pendrivelinux: http:// www. pendrivelinux. com Figure 1: Configuring Unetbootin is fairly intuitive thanks to Downloading the files [2] Unetbootin: http:// unetbootin. sf. net/ the easy user interface. can take some time. To AUGUST 2009 ISSUE 105 45.