Linux Mint Forums

so I'm wanting to make a bootable hdd instead of a bootable usb device, I tried copying my usb device to an empty slave hdd and booting my pc from that slave hdd, and that failed, all I got was a black screen with "-" at the top left of the screen, does anyone know how I can accomplish this so that I wont need a disc or a usb device to do fresh installs?

You don't need any special installation just for booting the live Mint .iso

You can use Grub to boot .iso files from your USB drive or a hard drive.
Boot a Mint .iso From Your Hard Drive Using Grub2 - with no DVD or USB

You can use Rescatux/SuperGrub2 to boot .iso files from a USB drive or hard drive.
Boot multiple ISO's with Rescatux

You can install grml-rescueboot to your installed Mint, and use that to boot .iso files -
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 13#p889397

Keep trying...it works for all the 32-bit Live Session ISO I have tried...Ubuntu...Mint...LMDE...Debian. Nothing fancy, just blind-copy the ISO into a HDD identifier instead of a USB identifier... ...and tell the BIOS to boot from the drive sdX.

You will, of course, get the same boot that you would get from DVD or USB, which includes the usual Test Disk Integrity and Compatibility Mode options if the main menu boot doesn't agree with your hardware. As a general rule now, I add nomodeset nolapic to the main menu boot arguments, it doesn't hurt.

With 3GiB of RAM I get enough space to use the toram option. That leaves Mint running Live Session in RAM (weee that's fast) and the boot drive unmounted, so I can fiddle with the unused space.

austin.texas wrote:You don't need any special installation just for booting the live Mint .iso

You can use Grub to boot .iso files from your USB drive or a hard drive.
Boot a Mint .iso From Your Hard Drive Using Grub2 - with no DVD or USB

You can use Rescatux/SuperGrub2 to boot .iso files from a USB drive or hard drive.
Boot multiple ISO's with Rescatux

You can install grml-rescueboot to your installed Mint, and use that to boot .iso files -
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 13#p889397

I really don't want to mess with grub or anything like that unless I have to?, I just want a bootable hdd for reinstalls

Mute Ant wrote:Keep trying...it works for all the 32-bit Live Session ISO I have tried...Ubuntu...Mint...LMDE...Debian. Nothing fancy, just blind-copy the ISO into a HDD identifier instead of a USB identifier...

Code: Select all

sudo cp LinuxMintRosa32Mate.iso /dev/sdX

...and tell the BIOS to boot from the drive sdX.

You will, of course, get the same boot that you would get from DVD or USB, which includes the usual Test Disk Integrity and Compatibility Mode options if the main menu boot doesn't agree with your hardware. As a general rule now, I add nomodeset nolapic to the main menu boot arguments, it doesn't hurt.

With 3GiB of RAM I get enough space to use the toram option. That leaves Mint running Live Session in RAM (weee that's fast) and the boot drive unmounted, so I can fiddle with the unused space.

I keep trying that but it just boot's a blank screen with "-" at the top left of the screen, the iso is in /dev/sdb1, do I have it setup wrong? I just tried changing the filesystem to FAT32, now when booting the HDD bios says “This is not a bootable disk. Please insert a bootable floppy and press any key to try again.”

"do I have it setup wrong?" Sort of, yes. An unmodified Mint distribution file has to be written as though to an optical disk, starting at sector 0. That leaves the rest of the drive inaccessible when you boot it.

The code that makes an ISO9660 boot like a hard drive is called isohybrid and is part of the syslinux-utils package...

NAME isohybrid — Post-process an ISO 9660 image for booting as a hard disk.

DESCRIPTION The isohybrid utility modifies an ISO 9660 image...to be bootable as a CD-ROM or as a hard disk.

...and it includes the option...

--partok Allow booting from within a partition

I have never tried this, but it looks like there is a method to modify a Mint ISO to boot from a partition instead of using the whole drive.

ok, so I tried it this way, and it still fails to boot saying that the hdd is not bootable and to insert a floppy drive,what do I need to do?

Well, you are doing it the hard way, instead of using the Rescatux/SuperGrub2 CD...
but you can improve on your unnecessarily complicated plan by installing Mint to the hard drive in the normal manner, and then install the Mint installation program (ubiquity) It will appear in your menu as "Install Release"

Your plan (if successful) will allow you to install one version of Mint, whereas the Rescatux/SuperGrub2 CD - apart from being easier - will allow you to install just about any distro you care to try.

austin.texas wrote:Well, you are doing it the hard way, instead of using the Rescatux/SuperGrub2 CD...
but you can improve on your unnecessarily complicated plan by installing Mint to the hard drive in the normal manner, and then install the Mint installation program (ubiquity)

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install ubiquity

It will appear in your menu as "Install Release"

Your plan (if successful) will allow you to install one version of Mint, whereas the Rescatux/SuperGrub2 CD - apart from being easier - will allow you to install just about any distro you care to try.

I don't think you understand what I am wanting to do as I have stated in my first post, what I am wanting to do is to be able to install/reinstall linux mint from my slave HDD as if it were a flash drive or CD, if I were to use a software I have to install on a flash drive or CD then that would not be the solution to answer my thread, one example to explain my need of a "bootable HDD" is that I have pc's that have old bios that cant boot from USB and their CD drives are busted so I would have to make a bootable linux HDD and place that HDD as a slave in the old pc so I can boot a deployed linux mint iso and then install mint on the master HDD of the old pc, plus my flash drive is realy old and wont last much longer, and I have done over 20 fresh installs since I made an account here at the forum's.

Leon8200 wrote: what I am wanting to do is to be able to install/reinstall linux mint from my slave HDD as if it were a flash drive or CD,

And so far I have given you 4 ways to install without a USB drive or DVD.

Leon8200 wrote:if I were to use a software I have to install on a flash drive or CD then that would not be the solution to answer my thread, one example to explain my need of a "bootable HDD" is that I have pc's that have old bios that cant boot from USB and their CD drives are busted so I would have to make a bootable linux HDD and place that HDD as a slave in the old pc so I can boot a deployed linux mint iso and then install mint on the master HDD of the old pc,

No, you don't have to "make a bootable linux HDD and ... etc". You can if you want to, but, as I said, that is doing it the hard way.
Download the Rescatux/SuperGrub2 CD and burn the CD.
Put the .iso file in the /boot-isos folder.
Boot the Rescatux CD which boots the .iso file.
Done. Really pretty simple.

austin.texas wrote:

Leon8200 wrote: what I am wanting to do is to be able to install/reinstall linux mint from my slave HDD as if it were a flash drive or CD,

And so far I have given you 4 ways to install without a USB drive or DVD.

Leon8200 wrote:if I were to use a software I have to install on a flash drive or CD then that would not be the solution to answer my thread, one example to explain my need of a "bootable HDD" is that I have pc's that have old bios that cant boot from USB and their CD drives are busted so I would have to make a bootable linux HDD and place that HDD as a slave in the old pc so I can boot a deployed linux mint iso and then install mint on the master HDD of the old pc,

No, you don't have to "make a bootable linux HDD and ... etc". You can if you want to, but, as I said, that is doing it the hard way.
Download the Rescatux/SuperGrub2 CD and burn the CD.
Put the .iso file in the /boot-isos folder.
Boot the Rescatux CD which boots the .iso file.
Done. Really pretty simple.

"burn the cd" are you talking about burning an iso to a CD? I don't have a CD

Leon8200 wrote:"burn the cd" are you talking about burning an iso to a CD? I don't have a CD

I guess that eliminates one of the 4 ways to do it - but then you could create a Rescatux USB instead of a CD.
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wizard-ste ... o-a-media/

I didn't mention that you can install ubiquity (the Mint installation program) to your current installed Mint. That would take less than a minute, and you would have the ability to install your current version of Mint to any other drive or partition.

what I need is a bootable HDD,
I reinstall mint every 2-3 day's because every time I use the update manager after rebooting my pc my cpu,ram, and swap is MAXED, so I cant do anything, I need to to a fresh reinstall again, my flash drive is going to break soon, I have installed mint 20 times in the past 50 day's more or less, I am fed up, "sudo apt-get this crap", "sudo apt-get that crap", "for hour's", only to have to do it again in 2 or 3 day's, I'm sick of linux,

Leon8200 wrote:what I need is a bootable HDD,

You have said that several times, and several times I have replied, "No, you don't. There are easier ways."

Leon8200 wrote:I reinstall mint every 2-3 day's because every time I use the update manager after rebooting my pc my cpu,ram, and swap is MAXED, so I cant do anything, I need to to a fresh reinstall again, my flash drive is going to break soon, I have installed mint 20 times in the past 50 day's more or less, I am fed up, "sudo apt-get this crap", "sudo apt-get that crap", "for hour's", only to have to do it again in 2 or 3 day's, I'm sick of linux,

That is not a pleasant scenario. It is really unusual and unacceptable.
What do you think the cause of the problem is?
Is it a very old machine?
Which version of Mint and which Desktop are you using? Mint 17.2 Cinnamon?

A better work-around would be to use fsarchiver to back up your root partition before updating. Then if things go bad, restore the backup. At least, that way you would not have to reconfigure and re-install programs.
That still is a work-around, and the cause of the problem still needs to be figured out. No one should have to go through all that.

austin.texas wrote:What do you think the cause of the problem is?

Which level of updates get applied?

thanx for the support guy's, I had to reinstall again just now, mint locked up, my CPU,RAM, and SWAP was maxed and my dock fan was blowing gale force, and my mouse would not move, "and I was only runing midori", EDIT: oh and when this all happens my HDD is very active, the light that blinks indicating HDD read/write cycle's stays lit,
I just did a fresh install so right now I only have updated firefox to 43, before this reinstall I had installed all available updates, Im guessing one of them is bad and that's why I keep having to reinstall mint?,

and my pc is a 2006 IBM lenovo think centre

P4 HT@2.8GHZ
512 MB RAM
100 MB SWAP
128 MB intel (R) 82945g express family chipset

right now I only have firefox 43 running with 1 tab open, my task manager shows

CPU 15%
RAM 53%
SWAP 78%

The place to start is more ram.
You can get 2GB IBM Lenovo DDR2-667 DIMM memory for that for about $26 on ebay.

austin.texas wrote:The place to start is more ram.
You can get 2GB IBM Lenovo DDR2-667 DIMM memory for that for about $26 on ebay.

I don't think I need more RAM, I just did fresh install and right now I can simply disable the SWAP and run firefox with a couple addon's and a couple tab's and it's smooth,
I'm running mint 13 xfce on a jfs file system, the issue seems to happen after installing updates

mint 13 xfce requires 384 MB of RAM or more,
mint 17.2 xfce requires 512 MB of RAM or more ,

could it be that after installing all the updates for 13, 13 becomes as demanding as 17.2 since it's a "LTS"?,
I don't think that would explain the CPU being maxed or the HDD activity being so high

Leon8200 wrote:before this reinstall I had installed all available updates, Im guessing one of them is bad and that's why I keep having to reinstall mint?,

You did not answer my question about the update levels, but if "all available" means also level 4 & 5, than you have the (most likely) answer. Stick with the default settings in the update manager to prevent the need to reinstall all 2 to 3 days.

Cosmo. wrote:

Leon8200 wrote:before this reinstall I had installed all available updates, Im guessing one of them is bad and that's why I keep having to reinstall mint?,

You did not answer my question about the update levels, but if "all available" means also level 4 & 5, than you have the (most likely) answer. Stick with the default settings in the update manager to prevent the need to reinstall all 2 to 3 days.

I have available updates from level 1-3, I dont see 4 or 5, and when I launch the update manager it says it cant retrieve certain updates, and it says "690 recommended updates available (399MB)" so far I only updated firefox,thunderbird, and pidgin.