Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

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newW2
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Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by newW2 »

tuxcatfly,

Very nice job on this. Worked flawlessly, even from an XP Pro guest OS running in a VMWare Workstation hosted on Linux Mint. I know it should work from the VM, but it is another promotion-like point that you could add.

I also looked at the License and credits. Good luck with your current occupation, and your future job plans. I hope those plans include additional contributions to the Linux community.
babooom

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by babooom »

worked great, only one question/request.

is there anyway to save the changes to the OS or to keep the programs installed?

Thanks
rfpa

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by rfpa »

Great! Just a question: as anyone tried to install it on Acer Aspire One?

Thanks
Ivan

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by Ivan »

Hello im trying to install on Acer one, i did well with the backtrack 3 on text mode, i wasnt unable to load the grapich mode yet, im trying with this now, i hope that have success on this
[quote="rfpa"]Great! Just a question: as anyone tried to install it on Acer Aspire One?
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BakUp
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Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by BakUp »

Is Unetbootin supposed to be persistant ? I have tried using it many times and my installs are not persistant......so pretty much useless !
BigBadBob

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by BigBadBob »

Are you thinking of adding the persistence loop file system?

Ibex has this as part of the admin menus but it didn't seem to make it into Mint. I wonder why?
saurabh

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by saurabh »

I tried installing using the hard disk option and i get some ntldr error. Please help.
globetrotterdk

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by globetrotterdk »

I get the message that the USB drive is not a system disk. I have tried this on two different computers.
globetrotterdk

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by globetrotterdk »

OK, got it. For some reason the download mechanism doesn't seem to download the iso properly. Now I know why the FAQ states that the iso file should be downloaded separately.
calymea
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Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by calymea »

Hi, I have tried Unetbootin on Window$ and it did not detect my brand new SanDisk USB drive, saying no USB drives were found. My computer works flawlessly with USB's for anything else. I too, have tried it (Unetbootin) on two computers with the same result. The USB drive in question has been tested on both computers using Window$ and Linux and works fine, also I have an identical SanDisk drive, plus 3 other USB's which all work too. Thanks.
COlsen

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by COlsen »

Can this be created within Mint, or is it only possible to do in Windows?
oakhilltop
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Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by oakhilltop »

I used unetbootin to create a live usb image and it worked great. Its good if you want to avoid burning CD's to be thrown away later. Too bad many of my machines are too old to boot from the usb drive.

I am trying to find a way to run Mint, stealthily, on my work laptop. Unfortunately, the usb drive is not persistent. I've been doing a little searching, but have not found a way yet to install Mint onto my usb drive. I've tried virtualbox which works ok, but seems to have some problems. Firefox didn't work with media etc.

It would be really nice if unetbootin had an option to make the drive persistent.
dojero
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Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by dojero »

I finally managed to create a persistent USB installation using Unetbootin.

After you've made your Unetbootin USB drive, you'll need to do two things: first, you've got to create a casper-rw file on the USB. That's the file that will hold all the changes. It's what makes a persistent install persistent. After that, you'll need to amend the syslinux.cfg file on the USB to include the persistent designation. The syslinux.cfg file is the boot file; if when you boot, you haven't specified that you're booting a persistent system, then the system won't use the casper-rw file.

In order to alter the USB drive, you should not boot into it. Instead, boot into another system and mount the USB drive so that you can save to it.

To create the casper-rw file, you've got two choices. If you just want to download a file from the internet, there are casper-rw files of 128, 256, and 512 MB that you can download. For many people, these will be sufficient to hold changes that you make to your settings. The unetbootin location for these casper-rw files is here: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/diskimg/. Simply download one of the files, unzip it, and put the extracted casper-rw on the USB drive.

The other choice is to create your own casper-rw file. To do that, you'll have to decide how large you want the file to be. If your USB is formatted as a FAT32 drive, then the largest file you can have is 4 GB (4096 MB). Up to that number, you can make it any size you want. To create the casper-rw, you need to carve out space first..

CAUTION! CAUTION! CAUTION! The dd command is a dangerous command. With it, you will write zeros to space on a drive. If you write the command incorrectly, you could overwrite invaluable data and it would be lost. PLEASE NOTE: I have no responsibility for any loss of data using this command. Used correctly, this method will work. You must have enough unused space on the drive you're using to write this file to create this file. If you don't have 4 GB of free space, then you can't create a casper-rw that's 4 GB in size.

If you are unsure about creating your own casper-rw by using the dd command, please don't do it. Instead, see above and download one of the casper-rw files that's at the unetbootin web site. That's much, much safer.

ASSUMING you have the space, the command to write the drive is:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=casper-rw bs=1M count=1024
Taking a look at the code, you'll see that you are placing zeros into casper-rw. The 1024 is the size of the casper-rw you want to write. For 4 GB, that would be 4096. 1024 is 1 GB.

Depending on the size of the casper-rw you choose to write, this can take some time.

After it's done, you need to set the filesystem for the casper-rw. That command is:

Code: Select all

mkfs.ext3 -F casper-rw
Once that's done, you can copy the casper-rw you've created to the USB drive.

Then, open the syslinux.cfg file on the USB drive with an editor and you'll see the various boot sections. In the first one (default), you'll see a line that begins with the word append. At the end of the append line, just before the double dash (--), add the word persistent. There should be a space before and after the word persistent: persistent --

Save the syslinux.cfg file and then you can boot with your USB drive. It will take longer to boot, but it will save changes you make persistently.
fleamailman

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by fleamailman »

just in case you have ditched windows but still want to have a bootable ISO usb key some time from Mint, synaptic has a great program call usb-creator with an option for persistant, I made my key that way as it was so simply to do
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KittyCat
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Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by KittyCat »

I tried this with Mint 7, but version 7 is not listed as one of the Linux Mint versions this will work with. Will that cause problems? Has anyone managed to create a bootable liveUSB with Mint 7? I don't need it to be persistent, just bootable to I can check if it recognizes my wifi adapter and if it does I want to install from it.

Thanks! :)

EDIT:
Tested it just a moment ago, and it works. I picked Mint-7 in the version list, then pointed UNetbootin to the 7 ISO on my desktop, and let it do its thing, then plugged it in and rebooted. Presto! I'm in Mint! :)
Learning Mint, in Julia, on a desktop with 3.0GHz Pentium 4, GeForce 7800GS, 2GB RAM, and Belkin F5D8053. :)
The world ends with you. If you want to enjoy life, expand your world. You gotta push your horizons out as far as they’ll go. -- TWEWY
Fluke

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by Fluke »

I used this http://www.pendrivelinux.com/install-li ... n-windows/ to install Mint 8. Everything is fantastic but it would be nice to know how to change the login to require a password rather than auto-login.
Fluke

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by Fluke »

Ouch no responses.
greatbigdragon

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

Post by greatbigdragon »

Fluke: Here's what I did when I used pendrivelinux to install Mint 8 on my netbook. It installed a user "oem" that would automatically log me in to that user so I had to create an identical user and then go to Administration/Login Screen in the Mint Menu. After unlocking that, you just check the radio box to "Show the screen for choosing who will log in." That's all I had to do! Of course, you don't necessarily have to create a new user account, you just have to enable the login screen.
usbtux

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin

Post by usbtux »

I'm running from a linux USB at the moment using Julia (Mint Linux). I'm using a Kingston 2Gig Data Traveller – that boots from a livecd image that keeps all bookmarks, web history, installed programs etc automatically, to save and restore changes on subsequent boots; in a 1 Gig file.

Computer default os is XPpro – Linux is not installed.
Using the latest iso (linuxmint-10-gnome-cd-i386.iso) or newer
CD/DVD drive is dead on this computer.

Had good results with UNetbootin but could not get persistence http://www.pendrivelinux.com/what-is-persistent-linux/ to work easily.

Fully working system using MultiBootISOs-2.1.4.5.exe http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-multi ... iboot-usb/ this has persistence setup as default, then used PDL-Casper-RW-Creator.exe http://www.pendrivelinux.com/casper-rw- ... m-windows/ to create the persistence file on the USB.


Pendrive linux's multiboot utility may lag a little behind releases of ISO's naturally, so that you may have to wait for the next release of the utility to convert your iso to usb boot. THIS IS AN UNDERSTATMENT. I presume that the util database is updated by hand and is not that clever, so that it doesn't automatically change its config for the newer ISOs – you just cant change the name of the ISO.
geazzy

Re: Create Mint LiveUSB from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin

Post by geazzy »

great tips :D
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