Trying to create a customized LiveUSB on a 16GB key.

Bad2theBone · #1 12th October 2010, 10:03 PM

I will be out of town for a while and have a need to utilize apps from my system (running Fedora 13-x86_64) on an unknown M$ Windows PC. I bought a 16GB USB Flash Drive and want to utilize the full capacity or at least be able to access the unused portion available beyond the Live Image. I need to add some apps that don't come already installed on the Live Desktop CD. I have outlined below the steps that I have done so far:

1. Setup a Qemu-KVM VM running F 13 with livecd-tools and revisor installed and SELinux set to permissive. The Host SELinux is set to enforcing.

2. Created a kickstart cfg file with pretty much default on options set except for packages, I added the ones that I wanted included.

3. I first tried Revisor and found that nothing would happen beyond the step where I select my kickstart.cfg file, so I used the CLI livecd-creator

4. Created the LiveCD.iso file with the following command: setarch i686 livecd-creator -c /path-to-kickstart.cfg-file.

5. I then moved the iso file to a folder on the Host machine and ran liveusb-creator with the following CLI command: livecd-iso-to-disk --format --reset-mbr --home-size-mb 1024 /home/scott/.kickstart/F13LiveCD3.iso /dev/sdd

I had tried several partitioning schemes to include, 2 partitions as primary 1st set to about 2GB since image was about 1.1GB and the 2nd using the rest of the drive, 1 partition set as primary using the whole drive. In both cases I used either type 83 or later c all with mixed results. The final attempt was with no partitions set. The last attempt went through a media check and indicated that it was OK and to continue would destroy any data on it. I continued and the DOS partition was created and formatted, image files copied, then it went onto the creation of the /home overlay using LUKs encryption so it asked for my passphrase and then verifyed it along with asking for it again for mounting the fs loop. It then went on creating the overlay and seemed to finish.

Now due to some glitch in my BIOS I'm unable to boot the USB Flash Drive (get "boot error" which I had problems with the installation DVD with similar errors and found that others had the same problem with Gigabyte MoBos), but I was able to test it with qemu-kvm -hda /dev/sd?1 -m 1024 -vga std.

Now I have few questions because I'm totally not sure what is going on, even though so far it seems to be working.

1. When I do a df -vh on the host machine the USB shows up with total size of 16GB used about 2.1GB with about 13GB avail. But when I do the same in the virt. machine I get 4 devices that do not add up and nothing about /home.

Should I not be seeing /home listed as well as /?
How can I tell if I actually do have the full flash drive being utilized with the free space truly usable?

Gödel · #2 13th October 2010, 12:57 AM

You'd be better off installing directly to the usb drive with your required partitioning scheme rather than making it a livecd image.

Than you can install the required packages via yum after booting.

The only difficulty is making sure grub bootloader is installed correctly on the usb stick, if I recall correctly I had to manually edit grub.conf after installing since the /dev/sd? name is different during install compared to booting, but with uuids that may now be solved.

Bad2theBone · #3 13th October 2010, 02:03 AM

The only reason that I was going to go with a liveCD type of scenario is because the PC that I'll be running it on in FL is unknown and different hardware from mine here in GA.

Also would a 16GB key be enough space for an F13 install?

kurtdriver · #4 13th October 2010, 04:20 AM

That's plenty of space, what I would suggest is burning a livecd or install DVD, boot and install to the USB key. Set it up with the software you want and go to Florida. Your unknown hardware concerns are where the installDVD will shine, it has that stuff already on it. Either way make sure you install to the correct drive, I've had problems with the F13 DVD overwriting my hard drive, but successfully done it both with F13 liveCDs and the F14 DVD. I'd suggest taking your hard drive(s) out first.
Installing directly will get you all 16 Gbs, rather than limiting you to 2 Gbs of persistance.

Gödel · #5 13th October 2010, 11:30 AM

Doing a full install from the livecd (to the usb stick) will give you a system which boots on any machine the livecd will boot on. 16GB is plenty of space. The only difference you'll notice from a regular hard-disk install is that the install process and subsequent software installs will be slower, since writing to flash memory is slower than hard disks (any existing data has to be deleted before a write can take place). But actual day to day performance is fine. I wouldn't make the swap space on the usb stick bigger than 1GB, unless you really think you need to hibernate a machine with more ram than this (it will be painfully slow to hibernate +1GB to a usb stick swap space)

Bad2theBone · #6 13th October 2010, 02:12 PM

Thanks guys I'll give it try later today and let you know how it goes. And kurtdriver, I think I will take your suggestion on disconeccting my drives. As I've always used to say in all my years in computers, "You have Murphy's Law and you also have Scott's Law,,,,'Murphy was an optimist' " :-)

Bad2theBone · #7 15th October 2010, 10:00 PM

Okay, so I decided to create a respin of LiveCD so that everything would be updated and the packages that I wanted would be preinstalled. I was then going to install from my LiveCD on to the 16GB Flash. The respin image had grown to 1.0GB so I had to use a DVD to burn it. When I booted the DVD and got to the Desktop I noticed no Install to harddrive icon and /usr/bin/liveinst was not there. I then booted the original LiveCD image and found that /usr/bin/liveinst is actually a link to consolehelper which also does not exist on my respin, so how do I install it? I wanted to avoid installing from the original F13 install DVD or LiveCD and then have to go through update hell. On my respin it has the latest updates for bugs, security updates and just general updates, just going through the updating part of the respin took a long time, I don't even want to think of how long it'll take installing from original CD/DVD and updating the system on the Flash Drive, let alone all of the erasing and rewritting shortning life expectancy of the thing. Any suggestions?

kurtdriver · #8 15th October 2010, 11:29 PM

You might find success with unetbootin, which is in the repos.

mwesten · #9 16th October 2010, 12:20 AM

I saw something about a bug involving installations from a respin you should be aware of.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=628235

Perhaps you could just install everything as you want it onto a HD partition and then move that to the USB.

If your BIOS has problems booting USB, you could boot Plop (www.plop.at) from CD or Floppy and use that to boot the USB.

ryptyde · #10 17th October 2010, 12:49 AM

I have just recently created a custom spin of Fedora13 x86_64 and with the extras that were added
the finished iso was 1GB. I took my PNY 8GB usb flash device and installed the custom spin using
Fedora's LiveUSB Creator. Boots fine from my Emachine desktop and also a Sony desktop. Persistent
Overlay works and also the "install to hdd" icon is on the desktop and works.

I have also created Fedora 13 32bit custom spins from an Acer laptop and installed them to usb using
Fedora LiveUSB Creator and used the LiveUSB flash device to install F13 on 2 Acer Aspire One's as they
do not have optical drives. All of the live usb installs took less than 15 minutes from the time the install to
hdd icon was clicked until login to the new install.

I haven't tried using the LiveUSB yet to install to another usb flash device but will give it a try soon.

phil