3

Just a bit of backstory, I am at a work-search office today on one of their computers and it has no permissions whatsoever, making their computers nigh impossible to use for me, particularly because I use a highly customed keyboard layout only available in Linux.

I have my thumb-drive today however, and thought I would make a bootable-usb that I can work from instead. The thing is, is that without any permissions, I can not run any of the USB thumb drive installers, and so I am trying to figure out how to do this manually. I already have the thumb drive formatted to Fat, so is it just a matter of copying the ISO contents to the drive? Thanks.

Anon
  • 11,863
  • 22
  • 66
  • 122
  • 2
    Are you sure that booting from your thumb drive is in accordance with the Terms of Use of "a work-search office"? – waltinator Nov 14 '19 at 21:55
  • 2
    If the computer boots UEFI you should just need to copy the ISO contents to the FAT32 formatted USB drive. – C.S.Cameron Nov 15 '19 at 08:28
  • @C.S.Cameron https://askubuntu.com/questions/1189020/how-can-i-get-a-live-only-drive-with-ubuntu-19-10-and-newer-versions kinda disagrees with that idea. – K7AAY Nov 15 '19 at 18:36
  • 1
    @K7AAY : I understand that sudodus is talking "cloned" drives, such as "Startup Disk Creator" and "mkusb Live only" make as ISO9660. Limited to 19.10 and later. See his comments on this page: https://askubuntu.com/questions/395879/how-to-create-uefi-only-bootable-usb-live-media – C.S.Cameron Nov 16 '19 at 03:48
  • @K7AAY, I think C.S.Cameron is right: If the computer boots in UEFI mode, you should just need to copy the ISO contents to the FAT32 formatted USB drive (and you do *not* need administrator priveleges to do it). – sudodus Nov 17 '19 at 17:47
  • See also the following link [help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/iso2usb](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/iso2usb) and scroll down to 'Do it yourself'. – sudodus Nov 17 '19 at 17:58

1 Answers1

3

To Confirm Ability to Create Live/Persistent USB in Windows 10 Without Administrator permissions

  • Format flash drive to as new state, (FAT32)

  • Open the 19.10 ISO in Windows 10 File Explorer and copy the contents to the flashdrive.

Persistence

There are several methods to make the flash drive persistent. Using a casper-rw partition is not limited to 4GB.

Alt 1

  • Boot the drive using UEFI

  • At the grub menu press "e" to edit the menu

  • Add a space and "toram" after ..quiet splash,,,

  • Open GParted, select the USB drive, unmount and Resize/Move to make room for a persistent partition

  • In the available space create an ext4 partition and label it casper-rw

  • Mount grub.cfg. In Terminal run

    sudo mkdir -p /mnt/sd1

    sudo mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt/sd1

Where x is the OS partition

  • As root edit boot/grub/grub.cfg by adding a space and the word persistent after the first ...quiet splash --- and save.

Alt 2

  • Open Boot/grub/grub.cfg in Windows 10 latest build

  • After quiet splash ---, type a space and "persistent"

  • Boot the drive using UEFI

  • At the grub menu press "e" to edit the menu

  • Change "persistent" to "toram"

  • Open GParted, select the USB drive, unmount and Resize/Move to make room for a persistent partition

  • In the available space create an ext4 partition and label it casper-rw

The drive should now be ready for work

  • You can create a new user and install programs as you wish.
C.S.Cameron
  • 18,890
  • 10
  • 64
  • 105
  • Edit `grub.cfg` in the live system as described at [help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/iso2usb/diy#Edit_grub.cfg](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/iso2usb/diy#Edit_grub.cfg) in Linux. But it would be good if you test and verify a method that works directly in Windows (without getting problems because of the different code between each line (newline in linux, carriage-return + newline in Windows) in text files. – sudodus Nov 17 '19 at 18:04
  • 1
    @sudodus. Had a little mental blockage last night. Above method is now working OK, Thanks. I was able to edit grub.cfg in Win10. – C.S.Cameron Nov 18 '19 at 02:05
  • 1
    @sudodus, I think it may still need a little testing. Looks fine in Notepad with Build 18363, but compacted in Build 17134. Perhaps editing while open in toram might be best. – C.S.Cameron Nov 18 '19 at 03:18
  • 1
    I agree, that editing while running live with toram might be best. And I think it is a good idea to make people aware of possible problems when editing in Windows because of different coding of line breaks (newline in linux, carriage-return + newline in Windows). – sudodus Nov 18 '19 at 07:32
  • @sudodus It works for sure and it is not that much more work. – C.S.Cameron Nov 18 '19 at 11:45