How to enable persistent option in disk creator?

Question

I try to test natty alpha with usb. (my system is 10.04) But when I run disk creator I can not choose the option for persistent creation. Here on screenshots I saw that this is possible. Choosing the second option "Burn your CD or create a USB drive"

http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download
When I create live usb without persistent options I can not activate my nvidia drivers and 3D support for unity because after restart settings are lost. alt text

I have idea to use windows then run wubi installer and select usb for installation place but I don't have windows at all. :) — vrcmr, Dec 04 '10 at 00:09
Could you post a screenshot of the Make Startup Disk window? (Yours, not the one on http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download) — Isaiah, Dec 04 '10 at 00:18
What happens if you select /dev/sdb1 instead? I have a Sandisk USB drive and when I plug it in it mounts as a CD and a USB stick. — Isaiah, Dec 04 '10 at 00:52
I use san disk too. I already tried both items every time the same problem I can't choose persistent option. — vrcmr, Dec 04 '10 at 18:21

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 04 '10 at 00:16

From my understanding, the persistent partition is mounted after the root partition is mounted - so you are out of luck.

A workaround is to remaster the ISO and install nvidia-current package on it - you can download the package for remastering here. Once it offers to go into console, do so and run apt-get install nvidia-current. You can then create a new USB with the ISO it produces (usually located in your home directory). Note that you might need 4-5 GB of free space (the final ISO is ~700 megs, though)

Hmm remastersys doesn't offer me to go in to console. I see this is the only to get drivers installed. You were right disk creator create only live disks without possibility to add software to the disk. — vrcmr, Dec 05 '10 at 10:42

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

3

Maybe you are experiencing this bug? See if the workaround described in comment #4 works for you:

I came up with a workaround:

Copy your ISO image to /tmp or somewhere else not automatically destected by usb-creator.

Choose 'Other' and select that ISO

Select that image from the listing

Now it's not greyed out anymore and you can also go back to select your original image and it will be good.

Voilá!

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Dec 04 '10 at 18:39

Isaiah

60,830

This answer is working for me. – vrcmr Dec 04 '10 at 20:03
Doesn't seem to work on Ubuntu 12.04 anymore. ): – Andy Oct 27 '14 at 18:47

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 04 '10 at 08:25

I find the USB creator to be a bit buggy sometimes, but here's how it usually works for me:

Select /dev/sdb,
Click on 'Erase Disk > Yes' ('Datenträger Löschen > Ja'),
Wait a bit until that red exclamation mark next to '/dev/sdb1' disappears,
Select /dev/sdb1 - now you should be able to choose the amount of persistent space.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 28 '12 at 12:06

If you can't get the extra space option of usb-creator working you can always make a persistent partition. Unlike the maximum 4GB persistence allowed by using a casper-rw FAT32 file, persistence size is only limited by drive size.

Boot Live CD.

Plug in flash drive.

Start Partition Editor

Create 1 GB FAT32 partition, (on the left side of the bar). (size is optional) Create a 1.5 GB ext3 partition to the right of this, labeled it "casper-rw". (ext2 and ext4 also work).

Create a partition in the remaining space and label it "home-rw". (optional, creates a separate home partition)

Close Partition Editor.

Un-mount and re-mount flash drive.

Start "Create a live usb startup disk", (usb-creator). Select "Discard on shutdown".

Press "Make Startup Disk.

When usb-creator finishes, run "gksu nautilus"

Select disk / syslinux / text.cfg and add "persistent" as shown below:

append noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.gz quiet splash --

Shutdown, remove CD, reboot.

How to enable persistent option in disk creator?

4 Answers4