Install Ubuntu from USB

Posted by very nice on 1:05 AM with No comments
I’ve been banging my head against the wall for the past year, looking for a solution on how to get Ubuntu to install from a USB flash drive.

The underlying idea is to avoid CDs, thereby giving an option to machines lacking CDROM drives, or with defective drives. I’ve run into more than one laptop that needed an optical drive replacement that might have benefitted from the install CD on a USB stick.

It would also benefit multiple installations, and maybe open an option for customized installation setups.

That’s what it looks like on paper anyway. In reality, I’m in pretty deep. I managed to get the drive to boot, and managed to get the installer to run, but the installation sequence (and by that, I mean the alternate CD text-based installer) tries to detect the installation CD in a CD drive, and I don’t see a way around that.

If anyone can humor me with an idea here, I’m willing to listen. I’ve been using the syslinux method to boot the flash drive a la PenDriveLinux.com’s Knoppix tutorial, but that’s not necessarily the right way.