by viking777 on Sun Feb 10, 2013 12:30 pm
I've been wrestling with a similar problem only today. I tried three different tools, the mint one, the ubuntu one and unetbootin. The results were:
mint tool - three tries none bootable
ubuntu tool - two tries one bootable one not
unetbootin - two tries both bootable.
Persistence is another matter altogether. The mint tool doesn't even offer the option. The ubuntu tool offers the option but it doesn't work, unetbootin offers the tool and it doesn't work unless you fiddle with it.
To get it going you have to manually edit particular files. To do this you view the usbkey from another distro (ie don't boot from it). If your usbkey is booting from syslinux then open it in a file manager and make sure that all the boot entries in syslinux.cfg have the word 'persistent' included eg:
label unetbootindefault
menu label Default
kernel /ubnkern
append initrd=/ubninit file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash -- persistent
If it is booting from grub as mine was (you know because it says 'grub' at the top of the boot screen) you have to search around the usbkey file system for the grub.cfg file (in my case it was in /boot/grub where you would usually expect to find it). You then have to edit this file to look like this:
menuentry "Try Ubuntu without installing" {
set gfxpayload=keep
linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi.signed file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent --
initrd /casper/initrd.lz
That was what worked for me. I don't think it matters which side of the -- characters the word persistent goes, the first example was there by default and the second example was my own work.
PS. If anyone can tell me how to incorporate color tags within code tags on this forum I would really like to know, because I can't do it.
Fujitsu Lifebook AH532 Laptop. Intel i5 processor, 6Gb ram, Intel HD3000 graphics, Intel Audio/wifi. Realtek RTL8111/8168B Ethernet.Ubuntu12.10 (Unity), Mint14 (Cinnamon), Manjaro (Xfce).
