Installing OS using USB Stick

I recently wanted to update an old Asus Eee 900 computer, removing the old Xandros OS and replacing it with the shinier Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition.

As I do not have an external dvd-drive available, I thought I would try using USB sticks as an installation medium.

I quickly found my way to the official download, which has a simple how-to guide available as a part of the site. Alas, the simple guide turned out to be non-functioning on my Ubuntu system. When I came to the part where I press "Make Startup Disk", I was greeted with the message of "Installation of bootloader failed" or something similar to that.

One of the things I tried out was to format the USB stick, going from NTFS to Ext4 - none of which had any effect as to the error message given. I eventually turned to google for some guidance and ended up at this site. I gave the top-most script there a go, typing in the commands as used in the script, to have a look at what was going on.

The following is the script I used.


# Download your preferred DESKTOP install image (NOT alternate CD).  I used
#   kubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso

# install unetbootin - a USB stick image creator
sudo apt-get install unetbootin

# insert stick and find out what the device name is
sudo fdisk -l

# Zero out USB stick MBR (DESTRUCTIVE):
# This step may not be required
# NOTE!  Change "sdx1" below to your USB stick designation
# BE CAREFUL! Make sure you have the right device name
sudo umount /dev/sdx1         # change sdx1
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx1 bs=512 count=1  # change sdx1

# Format the USB stick - use the right device name!
# This step may not be required
sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdx1  # change sdx1
sync

# Reinsert and mount the USB stick

# run unetbootin
unetbootin

# Select the Diskimage|ISO option and click the
#    "..." button to select the iso file
# Select your USB drive
# Click OK to start




This turned out to be working great, and the Asus Eee 900 is now sporting a shinier Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition.