I've been working with Linux for about 8 years (most distros Suse, Redhat, Fedora, Ubuntu, DSL, Ubuntu). Since changing jobs a year ago to a firm which locks down and encrypts their windows XP hard drives, I've been experementing with Booting Linux from pen drives.

It makes it easy for me to do my own thing using my employers "locked down and encrypted windows XP laptop", plus I can boot my "own" computer on most other desktop and laptop PCs.

So here's what I've successfully done so far:
Created a bootable Linux Mint 11 stick. - loved the Mint interface
Created a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 stick. - not a fan of the new interface
Created a bootable Ubuntu 10.04 stick. - this was a bit easier to use
Created a bootable Ubuntu 10.10 stick. - this was getting better

The stick I find best for this is a Kingston R500 16gb. I can buy this for about £18 ($25) including post, package and tax. It's great - fast read write on USB2, physically robust and sufficient space for everything.

So ... Mint 12 came out and I decided to install it on a brand new stick. Here came the troubles.

1. I created a boot stick on an old 4gb stick - and encountered the interesting "vesamenu.c32" issue documented (and solved) on this page (tab, "live", enter worked for me). So ... it booted and I went through the installation process for about an hour - taking care to specify the right device (the new stick) as the boot device and to set a mount point on the new stick. My only possible failing was to make it Ext3 not Ext 4.

2. I shut down and booted from the new stick
Black Screen
"Unable to load Operating System" message.

Please - any suggestions/prior experience/help would be brilliant.

I want to create a linux-mint based standard pen-drive build that I can give away/sell (not for profit) and generally share with the community.

Kind Regards
Andrew.

Hi andrew ginty,

Ok so you created a Linux Mint 12 bootable USB using UNetbootin. Booted the system using USB and got to the boot prompt. There you got vesamenu.c32 error. You resolved that error. Could you let us know how did you do that. Did you do it by editing syslinux.cfg first line value from default vesamenu.c32 to defaul live? Or, you did something else?

Are you sure you did not encounter any other error message during instal. Did you select the correct device for your bootloader?

Thanks for your speedy reply T3rm1nvtor.
In answer to your first question, (following instructions from this forum) I typed "live" <enter> at the "BOOT" prompt, and it took me to the linux splash screen.

As for other errors encountered, I can't remember any, however being old enough to remember watching the moon landings live, I can't discount having had a serious of senior moments while installing. So this time I have a pen and paper beside me and am going to write down exactly what I did.

Having slept on the problem I got up this morning and decided to start again from scratch, so I rebooted from the live stick, connected to the network (wired this time) and clicked on the "install linux mint" option. This time I got a screen full of error message (which I couldn't save or print) but it didn't look good. Tried a couple of times, then decided I had introduced far too many variable points of failure into the process, so I'm going back to first principles.

I went out to my tech shed and found a blank DVD (filed under "obsolete but may be useful sometime") and I'm going to burn the DVD and start again without messing with a pen-drive boot.

I'd rather use Mint than Ubuntu, because on the few "noobies" I've tried it out on, the non-technical ones preferred the Mint interface. I've built some scripts which install an additional set of useful applications (skype, spotify, gawk, vim, amsn, twitter, audacity) along with the fstab and various scripts which give access to the servers, scanners, printers, games consoles, music and photo libraries that we have plugged in over the years.

I'm writing up exactly what I did this time and will post the results later (fingers crossed it'll work).

Solved. I burned a DVD and installed from that.
I'll post a how-to for a usable pen-drive solution shortly.

Great that you got it sorted!! Please mark the thread as solved.

Please do not forget to put HowTo :-)

Enjoy linux!!!

Final question T3RM1NVT0R - and thanks much for taking the time.

I have a "how to" to create a performant and usable flash-drive based linux - ideal for "road warrior" types like me who lug laptops round the world and who really don't want to have to bring a personal machine as well. It works for Ubuntu, Mint and (I suspect) many other distros. I've been using it for about a year now.

The how-to includes a script and some additional resources.
My question - as a relative noobie here is where would be best place to post the "how to"

1) I could put it on an external blog and link it here (not nice)
2) I could put it on my own website and link it here (not very nice either)
3) I could post it in one of the forums here (better, but WHICH FORUM?)
4) Somewhere else - (any thoughts?)

Kind Regards,
Andrew (been using unix since 1979, linux since 2001).

You're welcome

You can put a blog entry here at LQ. Or there is a section called LQ Tutorials here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...GUI_Multimedia

At the bottom you will find an option "Submit a Linux Answer to this section" and I think that would do.

Sorry I posted the wrong link at first. I have edited the link please check again