Thomas Skariah's Blog

Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on USB stick (pen drive) - persistent

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Skariah) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:27:00 +0000

My USB drive now runs the latest Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (Release candidate).

I had to make 2 changes to the initrd.gz, to make it persistent.

I followed the instructions mentioned in: Making a casper persistent Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
additionally, I had to make a change in the scripts/casper

406:  mount ${cowdevice} -t ${cow_fstype} -o rw,noatime,mode=755 /cow || panic "Can not mount $cowdevice on /cow"

406:  mount ${cowdevice} -t ${cow_fstype} -o rw,noatime /cow || panic "Can not mount $cowdevice on /cow"

with mode=755, I got an "Invalid argument" error in the casper.log

How to make Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) persistent on USB stick (pen drive)

Follow the instructions here to partition and format the USB stick.
Download and launch Ub8convert.exe, a Ubuntu8 folder is created
Download the Ubuntu 8.04 ISO and place it in the Ubuntu8 folder
From the Ubuntu8 folder, click fixu.bat and follow the onscreen instructions
Once the fixu.bat script has finished, follow the instructions here to edit the initrd.gz file and make the 2 changes mentioned above.
copy the new intird.gz file to the USB-Ubuntu folder under the Ubuntu8 folder.
navigate to the new USB-Ubuntu folder inside the Ubuntu8 folder
remove the file named isolinux.cfg. Edit the syslinux.cfg as shown below.
Copy all of the files from "within" the USB-Ubuntu folder to the "root" of your flash drive (not to a subfolder)
Now navigate to the root of your USB flash drive and click makeboot.exe and follow the onscreen instructions
Once the script has finished, restart your PC and set your BIOS or Boot Menu to boot from the USB device

syslinux.cfg

MENU TITLE Ubuntu 8.04 on USB BOOT MENU
DEFAULT vesamenu.c32
PROMPT 1
LABEL live
menu label ^Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer
kernel /casper/vmlinuz
append  file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.gz quiet splash --
LABEL usb
menu label ^Persistent Ubuntu
kernel /casper/vmlinuz
append  file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash --
LABEL live-install
menu label ^Install Ubuntu
kernel /casper/vmlinuz
append  file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper only-ubiquity initrd=/casper/initrd.gz quiet splash --
LABEL check
menu label ^Check filesystem for defects
kernel /casper/vmlinuz
append  boot=casper integrity-check initrd=/casper/initrd.gz quiet splash --
LABEL memtest
menu label Test ^memory
kernel /install/mt86plus
append -
LABEL hd
menu label ^Boot from first hard disk
localboot 0x80
append -
MENU BACKGROUND backg.png
timeout 150
menu color title        1;31;49    #eeff1010 #cc553333 std
menu color sel            7;37;40    #ffffffff #99660000 all
menu color border        30;44      #ffffffff #00000000 std
menu color pwdheader    31;47      #eeff1010 #20ffffff std

UPDATE: The problem with the initrd.gz would be fixed in (8.04.01) of Ubuntu. Here is the related bug.

My new PC

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Skariah) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:52:00 +0000

After a long long break, I finally got some time for some new experiments (ok, it is not so new anymore). But this is something I always wanted to have.

This is my new PC with Ubuntu 7.10, on a USB memory stick. Thanks to the numerous detailed tutorial on the net, the installation was very easy. I did have problems setting up my WLAN, which was fixed by disabling the switch in the BIOS.

Another problem I have is with the internal SD/MMC reader. Ubuntu seems to recognize the MMC, but not the SD card. I am still searching for a solution.

But all the other devices on my notebook work. And I can now carry a whole system, will all my applications, data, and my settings; literally in my pocket. But of-course, there some disadvantages to.

I will still need access to a computer or notebook to use my "Pocket Computer (PC)". Additionally, the notebook should also support "Boot from USB".
It is a bit slow, as compared to running it from hard-disk.
The life of the flash memory is very limited. For an average usage it might last for approx. 10 years. But when one runs an OS on USB, this will be lot less.

But thats the small price you pay for the convenience.

YPOPS for Ubuntu.

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Skariah) — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 18:00:00 +0000

I finally decided to replace Windows 2000 with Ubuntu on my good old Pentium III 600 MHz system. The installation was relatively easy. It comes with almost all applications that one would need. But there are some applications that I had been using with Windows for a long time and had developed a strong liking, but which is not available with Ubuntu. One such application is YPOPS!. YPOPS! was a great relief after Yahoo decided to discontinue free POP3 access to the web mail account.

After searching for some time, I realised there were others who are faced with the same problem as me. And there were people who have already provided some form of porting to the other platforms including Linux.

caualprogrammers and onemyndseye have provided ypops.compile script, that would download the sources and install the necessary packages (cvs, curl, libcurl3-dev) and would finally compile the source into binary. caualprogrammers has also provided the init and install scripts in his blog for (SuSE) Linux.

I decided I would build a package, at-least for the Ubuntu (and other debian based OS) users. You could download it from here: ypops_0.8.8-1_i386.deb. I have additionally changed the code a little, so that the lock files are created in the log directory instead of the default directory, which is necessary if it should start automatically at start-up.

UPDATE (12.09.2007):
I have built a new package of YPOPS! 0.9.5 for Debian-i386 platform. But since there are new changes committed after this release, I assume it is not very stable.

UPDATE (04.10.2007):
YPOPs! 0.9.5.1 port for Ubuntu is now available. Please check the instructions for installation. Features added:

GUI config tool
Automatic update notification

UPDATE (03.06.2008)
The server hosting the repository is currently down. I apologize for the inconvenience. I will post, as soon as I get it running again.

UPDATE (19.06.2008)
The repository is up again. Please note that the URL has changed.

UPDATE (21.06.2008)
Added support for amd64 (64 bit) platform. Follow the same instruction as for i386, the OS would automatically select the right package.