Ubuntu Live USB
From charlesreid1
Contents
Flashing USB Stick
Here's the deal.
First you download the ubuntu desktop edition installer. This is about 996 MB, just short of the 1 GB limit, so you can repurpose all those old thumbdrives that are too small for other distros.
The file you downloaded is an image file. Now you'll flash your USB drive with that image. It will create a boot partition, and a Linux partition, and then you'll be able to boot from the USB drive. (Presuming your operating system knows how to do so.)
Step 0: Insert USB Stick
Yup. Just stick it in there.
Step 1: Find the USB Stick
On some operating systems the USB drive will pop up as an icon on the desktop or in the folder viewer. Otherwise use parted:
$ parted -l Model: ATA Hitachi HTS54502 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 250GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI System Partition boot 2 210MB 150GB 150GB hfs+ Cronus 3 150GB 151GB 650MB hfs+ Recovery HD 5 151GB 151GB 1049kB bios_grub 6 151GB 246GB 95.1GB ext4 4 246GB 250GB 4063MB linux-swap(v1) Model: PNY USB 2.0 FD (scsi) Disk /dev/sdc: 2064MB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 16.4kB 2064MB 2064MB primary fat16 lba
Okay, so our 2 GB flash drive is at /dev/sdc
.
On the Mac, use Disk Utility from the command line:
$ diskutil list /dev/disk0 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk0 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS MAC 99.5 GB disk0s2 3: Apple_HFS Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3 4: Apple_HFS noospace 149.6 GB disk0s4 /dev/disk2 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: FDisk_partition_scheme *15.5 GB disk2 1: Windows_FAT_32 NO NAME 15.5 GB disk2s1
the 16 GB flash drive is at /dev/disk2
.
Step 2: Format the USB Stick
Now we format the drive (BE CAREFUL WITH dd):
$ dd bs=1M if=ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdc
or, on the Mac,
$ dd bs=1m if=ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/disk2
Note that this is slightly different notation from doing this same operation on the Mac, because on the Mac it uses BSD dd, while on Linux it's GNU dd. Mac dd takes 1m
and Linux dd takes 1M
as arguments.
Step 3: Use the USB stick
Once you're finished formatting the USB stick, test it out to make sure you can boot from it. If you're running on a Mac you'll need to prepare the boot sector to boot from a USB drive to a non-Mac operating system - see this page for directions: Kali/Dual Boot OS X.
On most Windows/Linux computers this should be as straightforward as inserting the USB device before booting. Push F8/F9/F10/F11/F12 for boot menu if USB drive is being bypassed and computer only boots from hard drive.
Fix Up with Tweak Tool
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
See Also
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