====== Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) Live USB ======

Creating a Live USB is not as easy as it should be. There is a [[http://www.ryancloke.com/ubuntu-804-hardy-heron-live-usb-how-to/|manual available]] which describes in detail how to create such a bootable USB.
Although I did every according to the manual, the Live USB didn't boot, it kept showing a semicolon and adding a semicolon for every key I pressed.

I did a similar thing some time ago with [[http://trinityhome.org|Trinity Rescue Kit]], which eventually resulted in a bootable 128MB TRK thumb drive. So, to make sure it wasn't my new 1GB thumb's fault, I downloaded the TRK tar.gz and iso. After a while messing with the tar.gz, I gave up and got my VMware up and running with the trk .iso attached. After adjusting the [[http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1873|vmware config]] to enable usb ports to be passed to the virtual machine, I had a TRK boot with acces to my usb drive. It took the trk2usb command some time, but after a while I had my bootable TRK 1GB thumb. I added a virtual hard disk to my virtual machine using the USB drive as a "physical drive (for advanced users)", to be able to boot from it.

If you ever want to build a bootmenu, use vmware or something similar, it allows you to test your work while keeping your text editor on the job. By the way, it also boots very fast. I edited the syslinux.cfg provided by TRK and after I while, I got the hang of it. Using the [[http://syslinux.zytor.com/menu.php|README on SYSLINUX menu systems]] ([[linux:syslinuxreadme|I created a mirror]]), I adjusted the menu to my own color settings and created a new background image.

{{:linux:ubuntu_live_usb_bootlogo.jpg?480|New Background}}

I combined both TRK syslinux.cfg and Ryan's syslinux.cfg (omitting a lot) into

	default vesamenu.c32
	prompt 0
	
	menu title     Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop Live USB
	menu background bootlogo.jpg
	menu color title 30;40      #F0000000 #00000000 none
	menu color tabmsg 30;40      #F0000000 #00000000 none
	
	MENU WIDTH 75
	MENU MARGIN 5
	MENU PASSWORDMARGIN 3
	MENU ROWS 5
	MENU TABMSGROW 12
	MENU CMDLINEROW 9
	MENU ENDROW 11
	MENU PASSWORDROW 3
	MENU TIMEOUTROW 13
	
	LABEL usblive
	menu label Start ^Ubuntu and save changes to USB (default)
	kernel vmlinuz
	append  file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash --
	timeout 100
	
	LABEL live
	menu label ^Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer
	kernel vmlinuz
	append  file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash --
	
	label trk3
	menu label ^Run Trinity Rescue Kit 3.2
	kernel kernel.trk
	append initrd=initrd.trk ramdisk_size=32768 root=/dev/ram0 vga=788 splash=verbose
	
	label trkssh
	kernel kernel.trk
	menu label TRK 3.2 with a ^SSH server enabled
	append initrd=initrd.trk ramdisk_size=32768 root=/dev/ram0 vga=788 splash=verbose sshd
	
	label t
	menu label ^Memory tester: Memtest86+ v1.65
	kernel memtest.x86

Result:
{{:linux:ubuntu_live_usb_screenshot_boot.png|Screenshot during boot.}}