Creating Bootable USB drive is a usability nightmare

[Brian Takita]

Binary package hint: gnome-mount

I was running 8.10 RC. Here are the steps I went through.

I was trying to create a USB bootable drive to install Ubuntu on my wife's eeepc.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EeePC

This seemingly simple operation lead to me wiping out my OS on my laptop.

Here are the steps as I remember.

1. I went to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick and followed the directions
2. I downloaded the iso from http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/
3. I ran:

sudo apt-get install syslinux mtools
wget http://www.startx.ro/sugar/isotostick.sh
chmod +x isotostick.sh
sudo ./isotostick.sh ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso /dev/sdX1

4. There was an issue with having spaces in the directory that contained the iso file which the script did not report. To fix this, I replaced spaces with underscores.
5. I reran isotostick.sh and to /dev/sda1.
6. The files were loaded on the usb drive. My wife attempted to boot the eeepc from the usb drive but the eeepc booted from its hard drive.
7. I attempted to make the usb drive bootable by running syslinux -s /dev/sda1
8. I got notification that sda1was not a fat 32 drive
9. I attempted to format sda1 to be a fat 32 drive
10. I received an error saying that the device was mounted and that I need to unmount it
11. I tried umount /dev/sda1 and received an error that the device was in use and to use lsof or another program to see what processes were using it
12. I couldn't find out what devices, so I searched online and found somebody tried umount /dev/sda1 -l
13. I tried the command and the computer froze
14. I did a hard restart and got a ubuntu livecd boot from my hard drive

Apparently I managed to blow away my entire install. There are major usability issues with the task of creating a bootable usb device. I should have spent more time looking into what sda1 meant, but I was already frustrated that a simple task was already very difficult. I dug myself deeper into a hole.

In retrospect, I think the entire process of creating a bootable usb drive needs to be much simpler. I don't want to think about what sdX is pointing to. I would rather just copy the files to /devices/usb_drive (this did not seem to work).

So now I'm downloading the CD for Ubuntu 8.10. Hopefully next time, it will work.

[Gabriel Bauman (gabrielbauman)]

Sorry to hear about your horrible experience. I've been there.

Good news though - this has been fixed in Intrepid. See the package usb-creator, which is installed by default and adds a "Create USB startup disk" option in System->Administration.

[Brian Takita (brian-takita)]

Awesome. Your explanation is simple and makes sense.
I was on Intrepid and I did not see this in the documentation.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

I would replace the entire Automatic Approaches section with your explanation.