How-To install on USB Pendrive - old (pre-4)

By Christian Lorandi, Friday, November 26 2010. Permalink

A little guide to make a bootable USB or SD card, this is the standard way to use PixieLive (and many other GNU/Linux Live systems)

make a backup of all the data on your pendrive
copy PixieLive and boot directories on your pendrive
make sure to have a backup of all you pendrive data!!!
- On windows open the command prompt as ADMINISTRATOR (it's in Accessories) thenX:(where X is your pendrive letter)cd boot bootinst.bat
  and follow the instruction
- On Linux open the terminal (i.e. xterm, konsole), then mount your pendrive, thencd /PATHTOYOURPENDRIVE/boot sudo ./bootinst.sh (if you have a sudo equipped distribution)
  ORsu (you will be asked for root [admin] password)./bootinst.sh (as root)
  and follow the instruction
unmount your drive
reboot
set your BIOS to boot from USB devices

for some unknown reason the windows way doesn't work on my drive, it will be corrupted and i have to format it, that's the reason because i said make sure to have a backup of all you pendrive data!!! if you can, do it from linux, it's safer

20 reactions

1 From World Awry - 18/05/2011, 22:15

Hi,

Made a Live USB, but it doesn't boot on Sony Vaio X. :(
It loads vmlinuz, then initrd.gz...ready, and that's all. It shows two ASCII smileys, a heart, a triangle, and then stalls... What's wrong here? Maybe it's because PL doesn't have a PATA driver in it? Vaio X has a PATA SSD.
2 From Christian Lorandi - 19/05/2011, 08:30

@World Awry:

it cannot be a SSD problem if you boot from USB,

have you tried the "mem=1900MB" cheatcode? (you should press TAB on the boot screen, and add it to the command line) (the number is your RAMSIZE-100)

it's a typical problem on sony laptops
3 From World Awry - 19/05/2011, 09:45

Hi,

No, I didn't try it.

When I touch any key during the boot, it stalls, and nothing happens then.
4 From Christian Lorandi - 19/05/2011, 10:58

@World Awry:

it's not during the boot, but before, when you are on the blue screen with the PixieLive logo and you can choose the boot options
5 From World Awry - 19/05/2011, 11:06

That's what I'm talking about. During the blue screen.
6 From Christian Lorandi - 19/05/2011, 11:18

@World Awry:

that's strange, it could be a syslinux bug...

you could try to add the cheatcode directly in boot/bootmenu.cfg, at the end of the first APPEND line (line 32)
7 From World Awry - 19/05/2011, 11:24

Chris,

Thanks, I'll try this evening.
8 From World Awry - 19/05/2011, 14:43

Just tried, didn't work. Bad luck for me... :(
9 From Christian Lorandi - 19/05/2011, 14:51

@World Awry:

have you tested the md5sum of the file you downloaded? it could be corrupted...
10 From World Awry - 19/05/2011, 16:29

Yep.
One more thing. 1st time I've downloaded 2.0RC1, 2nd - 2.0. Same issue.
11 From Harold - 18/07/2011, 18:29

This installed beautifully from USB onto my ASUS eee91T. So now I have a Gentoo system. One thing I noticed is that there was no log on required.

Now I would like to install some more software with portage emerge but the system won't let me do that unless I have superuser status. So my question is - how do I create a root password for this system?
12 From Christian Lorandi - 19/07/2011, 08:50

@Harold:

root password is "toor" without quotations
13 From James - 23/10/2011, 19:47

Hi,
Could you add drivers for an "easycap" device, would love to be able to record video input on my netbook - I have it working in gentoo - so should be portable?!

Thanks!
14 From Christian Lorandi - 25/10/2011, 09:10

@James:

really don't know, it should be compiled ad-hoc, but you can try...
15 From thermatk - 16/02/2012, 10:36

Can you show how to make PixieLive use a newer Linux kernel? i have Eee Pc t91mt and I am in need of touchscreen drivers... probably the newer it will be the better it would be.
Also, what about making a new PixieLive with Emgd 1.10 and X.Org 1.9?)
16 From thermatk - 16/02/2012, 10:37

oh sorry, not the write place))))
I wanted to ask it under release but now I can't delete it
17 From Christian Lorandi - 17/02/2012, 12:15

@thermatk:

you cannot use a new kernel with the old pixielive

i already compiled a PixieLive3 (alpha) with emgd-1.10, kernel-3.2.5 and new xorg, but i have not time to tune it and make packages correctly, if you want i can upload this alpha release

Christian
18 From thermatk - 17/02/2012, 16:54

@Christian Lorandi
I think it wouldn't be bad if you upload it, I could test it and find bugs may be...) Also I don't have much free time but I'm fed up with windows 7 and I want a normal touchfriendly interface...
19 From Cisco - 28/06/2013, 05:21

Can you guys please provide a better way of doing this, or at least a comprehensive guide that tells you what to do in case of errors.

For example, when I try to run those commands ./bootinst.sh in Mint 15 I get permission denied. I found out it is because it was on a USD created in Windows.

So I copied files to linux, formatted in linux, and it still does not work.

Can't you just make it easy like every other distro and let it be loaded by any USD loader app?
20 From Christian Lorandi - 02/07/2013, 10:51
@Cisco:

sorry but I have no idea about what an "USD Loader" is...

just a few points:
- are you running ./bootinst.sh as administrator (using "sudo ./bootinst.sh" or running it as root)?
- have you tried mounting the pendrive manually before running ./bootinst.sh? (e.g. "mount /dev/sdb1 /misc", may be Mint is mounting it without executive permissions as default, for safety reasons)
Christian