(solved)Installation on an external usb-stick (not live)

caprea · posted: 2014-06-08 21:54

A friend gave me a laptop ,which crashes every internal hard-disk,don't know why.
So i made a live-usb stick with persistence.This worked perfect.

What i like to do now is to install a complete system on a 16 gb usb-stick (not live)
I tried it some times with the normal installation ,but it didn't work.

Is it possible to do a normal installation on a usb-stick?

Please remember when answering ,I'm knew to linux.

rokytnji · posted: 2014-06-08 21:58

Yes, I have installed to external SD card and USB stick in the past. Just point the installer to the flash drive you wish to install to and when asked install grub to mbr of flash drive. I did my installs in ext2 file system. I formatted the stick during the install process in the beginning when it is offered. Then said preserve /home so it would not be reformatted during install process.

So yeah, you can do it.

anticapitalista · posted: 2014-06-08 22:02

It is possible. I have done this several times.

You can install what is on your live persistence usb stick to another usb device as a 'normal' install. Just make sure when you run the installer that you choose the correct usb device and also you install grub into the MBR of the usb device.

caprea · posted: 2014-06-09 01:41

Until now I tried to install from a live-cd to a usb-stick.I tried it with mx14 and with antix.
With ext 2 ,ext3, and ext4,
but it doesn't work.
So i checked against each other what do i have on the usb-stick and what is on my running system.
I saw that the sys-folder is empty on the usb-stick.

In time I only have a 4gb stick and on the live-usb its nearly 5.
So i will do this tomorrow.
But maybe someone knows whats going wrong when the sys-folder is empty.

rokytnji · posted: 2014-06-09 02:07

Maybe my old tutorial may help, or not.

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/install-antix-82-final-on-asus-eee-900.html"
linktext was:"http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/ins ... e-900.html"
====================================

Pay special attention on how I edited /boot/grub/menu.lst after install in case your install turns out like mine did.

caprea · posted: 2014-06-09 20:54

Roky,thank you for answers.I tried exactly what you said in your tutorial.
But it didn't change anything.
I also tried an install from the persist-stick to another.Just the same.The installation allways spends about 15 minutes,and everything
looks ok,but the pc wont boot from the usb-stick.Theres no boot-screen,only"operating-system not found".The sys-folder on the stick stays empty.

Is there another way to get a system installed on external usb or maybe someone has an idea what is going wrong.

anticapitalista · posted: 2014-06-09 22:04

Did you install grub to the MBR of the usb device?

caprea · posted: 2014-06-09 22:08

Yes,sure I did.

Dave · posted: 2014-06-09 22:19

Maybe boot the live usb to the bootloader screen and type bdev=/dev/sdb1 where sdb1 would be the stick you installed on. That should make the bootloader run antix from the other stick Iirc. Then if it boots and runs it may be worth installing extlinux to the mbr of the installed usb instead of grub. Though I cannot see why grub would not work...

BitJam · posted: 2014-06-09 22:45

Dave wrote:Maybe boot the live usb to the bootloader screen and type bdev=/dev/sdb1 where sdb1 would be the stick you installed on.

I don't think this will work because the LiveUSB will look for /antiX/linuxfs on sdb1 but the linuxfs file should only exist on a LiveUSB/CD, not on an installed system.

rokytnji · posted: 2014-06-09 23:05

If a CD drive is on your friends gear or you have access to gear with a cd drive. Try installing that way instead.

Something fishy going on here if this uneducated biker could figure out a external flash install on a older 8.2 install before custom scripts were wrote later for later releases.

caprea · posted: 2014-06-09 23:12

@Bitjam,Yes,its searching for antix/linuxfs.
I tried this also before with a live-cd and the from=usb option.

Surely a silly question,but is it normal that the sys folder on the usb-installation is empty?

caprea · posted: 2014-06-09 23:24

@Roky,I've allready tried to install from a cd in many versions and on 2 pc's.

The live-stick that works I made with unetbootin.Maybe the bootloader or something else is different.

BitJam

caprea wrote:is it normal that the sys folder on the usb-installation is empty?

If a system is not running then it is normal for the /sys directory to be empty. When the system boots, a virtual filesystem called
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysfs"
linktext was:"sysfs"
====================================
gets mounted there. It is a way for the kernel to communicate to user programs information about the hardware it is running on.

You can mount sysfs anywhere. For example:

Code: Select all

mkdir mysys
sudo mount -t sysfs sysfs mysys
ls mysys/
umount mysys

Dave · posted: 2014-06-10 03:22

BitJam wrote:
Dave wrote:Maybe boot the live usb to the bootloader screen and type bdev=/dev/sdb1 where sdb1 would be the stick you installed on.
I don't think this will work because the LiveUSB will look for /antiX/linuxfs on sdb1 but the linuxfs file should only exist on a LiveUSB/CD, not on an installed system.

Ah yes, sorry about that.
I must have been recalling my multiboot live usb stuff.