[olug] boot from USB stick probs

[Eric P]

Ok, finally got this solved.

The problem was apparently with usb-creator-gtk (Canonical's/Ubuntu's
Startup Disk Creator); it just wasn't writing the image correctly for
whatever reason.

I ended up going old school and using 'dd' to write the image to USB, and
that did the trick.

E.g.,
$ sudo dd if=ubuntu-13.10.iso of=/dev/sdb

FYI. I did check for BIOS updates. There was just one version that was 2
years newer than mine, but it was tagged beta *and* it was a year old.

Anyway, thanks for everyone's ideas!

Sincerely,
Eric P.


On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Tony Gies <tony.gies at gruppe86.net> wrote:

> Eric, the last time I ran into this it turned out that PenDriveLinux or
> UNETBOOTIN or one of those had put some type of UEFI boot sector on it and
> the machine I was trying to boot it on couldn't make heads or tails of that
> so it skipped booting from that drive. I had to put a regular PC MBR on it
> to get the target machine to see it. I can provide specific instructions on
> this if you need. I really think this is your problem, from the sound of
> it.
> On Nov 6, 2013 10:34 PM, "Eric P" <eric.maillist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Kelly, I already verified the image boots on a laptop.
> >
> > Sam, I tried *every* boot option this time, and none of them worked.
>  Worse
> > yet I have a DVD w/the same image installed, and it won't boot either.
> >  When I select the CDROM boot selection, I do see the DVD drive light up,
> > and it says something like BOOT CD/DVD twice.  But then it just silently
> > fails and boots the Linux I have installed on the hard drive.
> >
> > The computer is from 2010 (I built from parts), and I seem to remember
> > having this problem back in 2010 too.  Booting a CD image works, so I'm
> > pretty sure that's what I did back then.  Unfortunately, the distro
> images
> > I want to try (Ubuntu or Linux Mint) all are DVD exclusively now.
> >
> > It's baffling.  For what it's worth I have my DVD drive as the main
> devices
> > and the CD drive as the slave.  The DVD device is pretty old (probably
> from
> > '05), so I may try popping in another, slightly never DVD drive.
> >
> > *ugh*
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Kelly Williams <
> kellywilliams81 at gmail.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > check to see if the image is still good. if you are using with this
> with
> > > unetbootin, first wipe the flash drive first. then put your image back
> on
> > > the flash drive. if that don't work download a program called plop and
> > burn
> > > it to a CD.
> > > On Nov 6, 2013 7:42 PM, "Eric P" <eric.maillist at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi OLUGers,
> > > >
> > > > Long time no post from me.
> > > >
> > > > I'm trying to boot the latest Ubuntu (13.10) install image from a USB
> > > stick
> > > > on my desktop, and it just won't go.  I have verified this USB stick
> > > boots
> > > > on my work laptop, so I know the image is good.
> > > >
> > > > On my desktop I'm able to get a BIOS menu to pick the device to boot
> > to.
> > > >
> > > > Here are all the options I'm given.
> > > > Floppy, LS120, Hard Disk, CDROM, ZIP, USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM,
> > > USB-HDD,
> > > > Legacy LAN
> > > >
> > > > I've tried everyone of the USB-* options, but it never boots up.
> > > >
> > > > Any ideas?
> > > >
> > > > Thanks for reading.
> > > > Eric P.
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