Installing debian 10 onto usb
This page from debian.org says 'Debian CD and DVD images can now be written directly to a USB stick, which is a very easy way to make a bootable USB stick'.
If this is true then I should be able to have debian on usb by simply using the following commands: Code:
# cp debian.iso /dev/sdX Does anyone know where I can find the appropriate .iso file please? (I will need the non-free version which I think exists) If it is THIS easy to have debian on usb (which I don't believe) then surely people should be making tutorials of this everywhere to promote Linux distros. Thank you everyone for reading. |
Debian has some unofficial non-free firmware live iso's to download from here.
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^ Yep.
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i think with ventoy you can go one better https://ventoy.net/en/index.html
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/releases I just drag and dropped a few iso's and have the choice to boot from any one. It doesn't work with all iso but quite some useful ones. Also it allows persistence via a 1 gig .img file. Again it doesn't work with all. Some tweaks also need to be done but for instance i got Mint Cinnamon 64 bit working with persistence using the img file with label casper-rw. Also slackware current install dvd iso boots fine |
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I downloaded the .iso file, used the cp command from the debian.org page (above) and it worked! On booting from the usb the debian-installer loaded and I went through the install process for Debian 10. My only problem is I can't get past the 'partition' section. I first choose to partition the whole disk (usb) and the installer creates 2 default partitions: 1. A large primary boot partition labelled 'f' and 2. A small logical swap partition labelled 'F'. This looks fine to me and I continue on to the next stage. But the installer says it failed to partition the usb. I tried deleting the swap partition - but that only resulted in the same partition being labelled 'free space'. Since I'm using a hybrid debian .iso file for a usb - I'm wondering if I'm supposed to partition the usb differently somehow. |
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In which case am I supposed to use the debian-installer to install onto a different target usb? |
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If your want a live iso, with persistance and not a true install, you will need a second partition on the usb for storage. I don't think that can be done from the running usb |
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Thank you very much everyone. |
Still having problems with this Debian 10 install.
I used the usb with debian-installer to install Debian 10 onto a seperate usb. Everything seemed to go smoothly until the last step - where to install grub? The debian-installer asks whether to install grub bootloader onto the master boot record of my hard disk. Since the OS is on a portable usb I set the grub bootloader to install onto my target usb instead. But now after successfully completing the install the target usb will not boot. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to re-install grub onto the target usb? Or do I need to do the install again - only this time installing grub bootloader onto the mbr of my hard disk? |
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The short version: If you are going to use it on uefi systems the usb will need a 200MB fat32 partition mounted at the usb /boot/efi. To reinstall grub boot the installer mount the usb roofs partition, mount the efi partition to the usb boot/efi, use mount --bind to mount /dev /proc /sys /run to the same directories of the usb, chroot <mount point of usb> for efi run Code:
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi-efi --removable Code:
grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sd? Run update-grub to get a grub menu I think debian will only install grub-efi or grub-i386pc you will have to use apt to install the missing grub-target. |
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This is a little bit complicated as I don't know anything about programming. I have BIOS. Should I install grub from a working debian OS onto the target usb? Or do I boot debian-installer to do that? Is it easier if I go through the whole install process again and install grub to the mbr of my harddisk? In which case, will the usb boot on any other device? |
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Code:
parted -l Code:
mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt Code:
lsblk -f edit the first debian menu entry and change uuids to match the uuid of /dev/sdb2 and kernel versions numbers of the kernels in the usb /boot. Boot the usb and run update-grub |
The usb should boot on other similar bios systems and uefi systems that have legacy/csm enabled.
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Code:
Model: Samsung Flash Drive (scsi) Code:
# mount /dev/sdg2 /mnt |
sdg1 is the partition it has an ext4 filessystem
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mount /dev/sdg1 /mnt An extended partition allows an msdos type disk to have more than 4 partitions |
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