Help Creating PCLinuxOS KDE 2010.1 from LiveUSB

[PadRat]

Thank you Old-Polack. Ok Melodie, here is what I did:
1. Downloaded Universal USB Installer
2. Downloaded GParted
3. Ran Universal USB Installer selecting GParted, USB drive and option to Format.
4. Install of GParted completed and I rebooted
5. During reboot, I selected "Boot Menu<F10>"
6. A menu appeared with 4 options: Left Bay, Hardrive, Boot from LAN and USB Memory Stick
7. I selected USB Memory Stick and it appeared to start booting but eventually said "Operating System not Found" and stopped.
8. After several minutes of inactivity, I hit Enter and it booted to Windows.

The GParted link you sent me said it would start GParted upon reboot and then I could set up partitions, but it never came up.
Would aappreciate any advice.

Thank you again,

PadRat

[melodie]

I wonder if your USB pendrive does not have 2 partitions instead of one ? One small with security software in it ? If it is so, it will bring in problems to make a boot out of it.

To see what, insert your pendrive in a machine with Windows running, go to the Computer part, and look how may drives do appear besides the hard drive and so on, when the pendrive is inserted.

Else : on live gparted web page there is a file meant to be put on USB (easier to install, for a beginner).

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php

/ I wonder if we should not sell USB pendrives ready to go ? 

[PadRat]

Melodie,

You might be right. I remember originally, before I ran format, it was 2 drives, F & H. After I ran Universal USB Installer, it says there is 1, the H drive (now named PENDRIVE).

I went to GParted's page but I did not see the file you mentioned that must be on the drive. I did follow the instructions to run makeboot.bat and it said the the drive is now bootable, but unfortunately, it still does not boot.

Maybe you should sell bootable drives, that would make it much easier! 

Thank you,

PadRat

[joechimp]

PadRat:

Another option that hasn't been mentioned is doing a normal installation on a USB stick, from the liveCD. It will be a bit tight, due to the limited space available, but can be quite usable if made to a single / partition, with a swap partition equal to your memory size. Like the liveUSB it would be bootable from any computer capable of USB booting, but would also be capable of supporting changes to the user environment, retaining application installations, and storing downloads, without additional measures to have the changes be persistent. The installation would be, in every sense except total size, the same as a hard drive installation, just more portable.

I wonder if you could expound on that premise a little bit more.

What are the pluses and minuses of each method. Is there an advantage to having a direct install to usb.
I would be interested to know more. I would be using an 8GB Flash Drive.
JohnBoys method works great. The best thing about it is what you lear about Linux in general when you do a manual installation.
Thanks 

[Was_Just19]

I wonder if you could expound on that premise a little bit more.

What are the pluses and minuses of each method. Is there an advantage to having a direct install to usb.
I would be interested to know more. I would be using an 8GB Flash Drive.
JohnBoys method works great. The best thing about it is what you lear about Linux in general when you do a manual installation.
Thanks 

There are a couple of things that should be noted ....

There was justified fear a few years ago about the wear on USB flash sticks with a full install, and to a lesser extent with a Live install.
The situation has much improved .....  how much is open to debate of course.

On a full install, all files are decompressed so should launch faster than the compressed files of a live install.

The overall size of a full install is much greater than the live because of that same decompression of files.

You can fit multiple Live OSs on a 4GB flash drive .....  not so easy to do that with Full instals.

If you have just a 1GB flash drive that will suffice for Live but not Full install.
On such a drive you can change variation from KDE to Gnome etc just by copying the OS files onto the drive. Once prepared it needs little or no further work.

So there are considerable differences between the results of the different methods.

'Horses for Courses' as is said around here ........  use the method that does what YOU need it to do.

Personally I have a fondness for the Live mode .....  have had for many years  .....  even used it on small internal HDDs originally, and later had one on a larger internal HDD for emergency booting -----  needed when I borked my main install! So much faster than using optical media that it is close to running from a full install. I still have a PATA HDD (about 2.5GBs) which has a live install on it.
I used it a lot for old donated PCs .....  most of them these days can be booted from USB so the HDD only gets used rarely --- I do not believe I have used it this year.

Anyway ......  Live mode on a USB drive is just another means to boot the OS.
No big deal, but it is great to have the facility. 

regards.

[joechimp]

Hey JohnBoy,

As usual you explained the situation perfectly. It makes more sense to me to use a liveusb with persistence at this point for my purposes. When I made my 2009 usb, it worked out great and I learned a lot. In fact I am using it right now.
Thanks again for your insight.
Joe

[Old-Polack]

PadRat:

Another option that hasn't been mentioned is doing a normal installation on a USB stick, from the liveCD. It will be a bit tight, due to the limited space available, but can be quite usable if made to a single / partition, with a swap partition equal to your memory size. Like the liveUSB it would be bootable from any computer capable of USB booting, but would also be capable of supporting changes to the user environment, retaining application installations, and storing downloads, without additional measures to have the changes be persistent. The installation would be, in every sense except total size, the same as a hard drive installation, just more portable.

I wonder if you could expound on that premise a little bit more.

What are the pluses and minuses of each method. Is there an advantage to having a direct install to usb.
I would be interested to know more. I would be using an 8GB Flash Drive.
JohnBoys method works great. The best thing about it is what you lear about Linux in general when you do a manual installation.
Thanks 

You can install a normal system on a USB stick, just by choosing the stick as the hard drive to be used when doing the installation from the liveCD. Grub will be installed to the MBR of the stick, and it will be a self contained installation. The stick will be bootable from any computer capable of booting a USB device. It will find different hardware on each machine, notify that it has found new hardware and ask if it should be configured. Answering yes, should take care of most systems. If the video cards are drastically different one may have to set the video drivers in the ncurses version of PCC, or choose to use the vesa module while on that machine. If one has different wifi or ethernet hardware connected to different machines, that too would need to be reset. Usually this happens automatically, but may require manual setting with certain hardware. This is no different than if one moved a hard drive from one machine to another. It's just simpler to move a USB stick.  

If, as is the case with PadRat, one does not have an installed version of Linux from which to create a liveUSB stick, a full install to one stick will now give the means to create the liveUSB stick on a second USB stick, with ease, and without having to install Linux to the internal hard drive. Having both will allow a choice as to which will be the best to use for different situations.

[joechimp]

Excellent explanation old-polack. I appreciate your expertise as well as JohnBoy's.
You both make it so easy for all of us to succeed.

It seems that both methods have their use. You make some good points about versatility.
I think I will try the full install on another usb and try them both. After alll you can never have enough
PCLINUXOS!!!!!

Thanks for your help.

[PadRat]

JohnBoy,

Any ideas how I can solve my problems? No matter what I try, my computer does not want to boot from my USB (SanDisk Cruzer). I have formated it clean and then loaded GParted with Universal USB Installer, but when I reboot (as the GParted instructions indicate will boot to your USB) I get an "Operating System Not Found" indication.

I was hoping to run GParted so I could set up an ext3 partition.

I would appreciate any advice you would have.

Thank you,

PadRat

 

[Old-Polack]

Excellent explanation old-polack. I appreciate your expertise as well as JohnBoy's.
You both make it so easy for all of us to succeed.

It seems that both methods have their use. You make some good points about versatility.
I think I will try the full install on another usb and try them both. After alll you can never have enough
PCLINUXOS!!!!!

Thanks for your help.

Taking note of JohnBoy's concerns about the longevity of the stick media, I would set the noatime parameter in the /etc/fstab / partition line, to reduce the number of unnecessary writes to the partition, thus increasing the life span of the stick. Assuming the first partition to be the swap partition and the second partition the / partition, the line would be;

/dev/sdx2     /      ext4    defaults,noatime     1 1

with x being how the stick is seen by the system. If one were to label the partition kde2010, the line could then be;

LABEL=kde2010     /     ext4    defaults,noatime    1 1

and it wouldn't matter which /dev/sdxn the system saw the partition as. I label all my partitions, and that is, in fact, the exact line from my /etc/fstab for my KDE installation on /dev/sdc15. I use the label in the /boot/grub/menu.lst stanza also, to boot the partition.

title PCLOS-KDE-2010
kernel (hd0,14)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=PCLOS-KDE-2010 root=LABEL=kde2010 acpi=on resume=LABEL=swap1000 vga=791
initrd (hd0,14)/boot/initrd.img

As you can see, I've also labeled the swap/resume partition as well.

[melodie]

I have formated it clean and then loaded GParted with Universal USB Installer, but when I reboot (as the GParted instructions indicate will boot to your USB) I get an "Operating System Not Found" indication.

Hi PatRat,

Just to be sure : have you checked in the BIOS of your machine if it is set to boot from USB ?

[PadRat]

Well, I think I have. Let's see if this is what you mean. Upon boot up, I have 2 settings: Boot Steeing <F2> and Boot Menu <F10>. I select F10 and it then takes me to 4 options: Boot to Left Bay, Hardrive, Boot from LAN and USB Storage Stick.

I select USB Storage Stick and then it tells me "Operating System Not Found".

PadRat

[PadRat]

Excuse me I meant "Boot Settings" <F10>. Also, Under Boot Settings it has Master: the Hardrive and Slave: the DVD drive.

[PadRat]

Ok, I'll get this correct yet....Boot Settings <F2>....Boot Menu <F10> 

[Was_Just19]

JohnBoy,

Any ideas how I can solve my problems? No matter what I try, my computer does not want to boot from my USB (SanDisk Cruzer). I have formated it clean and then loaded GParted with Universal USB Installer, but when I reboot (as the GParted instructions indicate will boot to your USB) I get an "Operating System Not Found" indication.

I was hoping to run GParted so I could set up an ext3 partition.

I would appreciate any advice you would have.

Thank you,

PadRat

 

I am doubly at a disadvantage here as I neither use Windows nor am I familiar with Universal USB Installer.
Do you have the option of booting a LiveCD of PCLOS?
If so please do so, plug in the USB stick, then open a Konsole and type in the following command

fdisk -l   <press enter>

and copy and paste the output you get.

That should give us an idea of what way your USB stick is partitioned.

regards.