Hawaiʻi's Technology Community

LInux Live USB

I've been experimenting with Linux on bootable USB drives over the past couple of weeks with some pretty disappointing results.

I've tried several times with Fedora 12, following their directions precisely. But I wind up with a USB that boots, but asks me for a password for Liveuser. The build process doesn't allow you to set up a password. A quick google search reveals I'm not alone in this, but none of the proposed solutions work (no password, "fedora", just wait a minute and it will boot automatically, ...). I've tried rebuilding the USB drive multiple times, both with and without persistent storage space reserved, and booting on a variety of machines, all with the same results.

Funny thing is, I was able to bypass the password by booting in single user mode, then change the password for Liveuser. I feared that might not persist across boots, but it does -- but only if I'm booting in single user mode. If I boot into the graphical mode, it doesn't recognize that password.

So, I bought a pre-built USB drive with Fedora 12. That worked great, until I handed it to a friend to try on his Windows PC. He inserted the USB drive while Windows was still active (i.e., he didn't power down, insert the USB drive and then power up). The drive has never booted again. I suspect something on that machine (a virus?) corrupted my USB drive. If I try rebuilding it myself, I expect I'd be right back to the mystery password problem.

I tried downloading the Live USB ISO for Ubuntu, but I keep getting errors when I try to install it onto the USB drive. It keeps saying something about the ISO being corrupt, even though I've verified it and downloaded it multiple times.

I'll be trying Knoppix next, but I wonder if any of you out there have had better luck than me and have a distribution you like for use on USB drives.

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Permalink Reply by Paul on June 8, 2010 at 1:26pm

Ubuntu includes a Startup Disk Creator under System | Administration. Point it at your .iso file, then at your USB stick and let it go to town. I've done it myself with instant success, and also walked my 72-year old father through it over the phone (I then had him boot from it, allow remote connections, and proceeded to reinstall his system by remote). I love it, never had an issue.

Permalink Reply by Dwight Victor on June 8, 2010 at 3:09pm

try this: http://susestudio.com/

Permalink Reply by John Hardin on June 8, 2010 at 3:10pm

Thanks, Paul. After reading your reply I tried this and it did work. But it creates an installation USB. There was an option for creating some persistent storage on the USB in the Startup Disk Creator GUI, but it was grayed. I had 3.7 G free on the drive but was not allowed to reserve even a couple hundred meg for persistent storage. I'd like to create a USB drive I could boot up and use as a working environment. I'd need to be able to save my work on it as well. Ideally I'd be able to create a password protected login with an encrypted home directory, but just some permanent store would work for now.

Fedora (when it works) allows you to create persistent storage on the USB for keeping your home directory files. Knoppix (from what I've read) uses UnionFS to merge stuff in a writable partition with directories on the read-only part, which theoretically allows you to keep more than just your home directory. I don't know what Ubuntu does in this regard. Since it didn't allow me to create any writable store, I wasn't able to play with it.

Permalink Reply by John Hardin on June 8, 2010 at 3:25pm

Dwight Victor said:

try this: http://susestudio.com/

Wow! This is exactly what I'm trying to do! I'm working on an appliance and want to use a removable drive to try building it from scratch to make sure I have all the components I need. Not too sure about uploading my files to Suse, though. I'm doing proprietary software that runs on a Linux base (like Tivo or the Android phone). Putting my software on a Suse server doesn't seem like the right thing to do. If it will let me install my proprietary stuff to the USB after building it, though...

Permalink Reply by Paul on June 8, 2010 at 3:40pm

Maybe try formatting the USB stick from within the Startup Disk Creator... I've always been given the option to use the remaining space for any files generated while running from USB. Maybe formatting will activate that for you?

John Hardin said:

Thanks, Paul. After reading your reply I tried this and it did work. But it creates an installation USB. There was an option for creating some persistent storage on the USB in the Startup Disk Creator GUI, but it was grayed. I had 3.7 G free on the drive but was not allowed to reserve even a couple hundred meg for persistent storage. I'd like to create a USB drive I could boot up and use as a working environment. I'd need to be able to save my work on it as well. Ideally I'd be able to create a password protected login with an encrypted home directory, but just some permanent store would work for now.

Fedora (when it works) allows you to create persistent storage on the USB for keeping your home directory files. Knoppix (from what I've read) uses UnionFS to merge stuff in a writable partition with directories on the read-only part, which theoretically allows you to keep more than just your home directory. I don't know what Ubuntu does in this regard. Since it didn't allow me to create any writable store, I wasn't able to play with it.

Permalink Reply by John Hardin on June 8, 2010 at 4:01pm

John Hardin said:

Dwight Victor said:
try this: http://susestudio.com/

Hmm... I tried registering with Suse Studio, but right now it's by invitation only.
Wow! This is exactly what I'm trying to do! I'm working on an appliance and want to use a removable drive to try building it from scratch to make sure I have all the components I need. Not too sure about uploading my files to Suse, though. I'm doing proprietary software that runs on a Linux base (like Tivo or the Android phone). Putting my software on a Suse server doesn't seem like the right thing to do. If it will let me install my proprietary stuff to the USB after building it, though...

Permalink Reply by Attila Seress on June 8, 2010 at 10:53pm

I've had great luck with DSL (damnsmalllinux.org) on a live thumb drive only it doesn't work on some Dell machines. Otherwise it's great.

If you want to do more than just have a glorified utility disk (and a compiler!) then I would suggest Ubuntu. You can create a usb bootable drive right from gnome (it's one of the menu options).

The bios on some machines also don't support usb boot so a customized live CD may be another option for you. I know DSL supports this - not sure about Ubuntu.

Permalink Reply by John Hardin on June 8, 2010 at 11:40pm

Attila Seress said:

I've had great luck with DSL (damnsmalllinux.org) on a live thumb drive only it doesn't work on some Dell machines. Otherwise it's great.
If you want to do more than just have a glorified utility disk (and a compiler!) then I would suggest Ubuntu. You can create a usb bootable drive right from gnome (it's one of the menu options).
The bios on some machines also don't support usb boot so a customized live CD may be another option for you. I know DSL supports this - not sure about Ubuntu.

I like Ubuntu, but haven't been having much luck with the Ubuntu live USB. I used the Startup Disk Creator from the Gnome System/Admin menu, but it only boots on one of my 4 machines. I created the USB from the i386-Desktop ISO. It boots on a Lenovo Athelon 64 system, but not on my Dell Inspiron, IBM Thinkpad T41, nor a Shuttle with Atom CPU. All 4 systems have successfully booted from other live USBs before. Also, 3 of these systems are already running the same version of Ubuntu (10.4) from the hard disk.

Haven't tried DSL yet. Isn't that the one that requires you to log in as root?

Permalink Reply by Jason Axelson on June 19, 2010 at 6:06pm

I'd recommend Puppy Linux over DSL. It's my preferred usb drive linux.

http://puppylinux.org/

LInux Live USB

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