(X)Ubuntu 8.04 on a Flash Disk adventure: Day 2

Remember my Flash Disk adventure with Ubuntu 8.04? Well I GOT IT FIGURED FINALLY!!!

Here’s what happened in little more details:

I kicked the Ubuntu CD in and used the “install ubuntu” feature… since I dont want to try it because I’ve already tried\liked it… Then when it asks me where to install it, I set things up to install it on /sdb (which is my flash drive)… I went with the flow with that annoying next next yes yes blah blah things and filled my name, username, password and laptop’s name… Just by the end of the installation (right before you click “Finish”) I clicked on advanced and figured things to install the bootloader on /sdb (flash drive)…

So when the system reboots after installation, I got into the BIOS setup and switch my booting procedure to boot from USB as first priority. And it did… so GRUB was loaded and showed me all the Operating Systems on my laptop (Windows XP and Ubuntu)…

Here’s the problem I faced which I thought its a major one:
Whenever I choose Ubuntu 8.04 from GRUB it gives me the (error 17: “Cannot mount selected partition”) error… I messed around with menu.lst in /boot/grub folder in the flash drive and changed the first option’s hard drive from (hd1,0) to (hd0,0) because my BIOS reads my Flash Drive on top of my HDD…

It boots correctly and nicely… I AM HAPPY… The log-in window appeared and I filled my details… But it hangs on that damn window…

My friend eLeeT helped me out figuring a little hack to work things through and it worked (Pressing CTRL+ALT+F8 or something like that then killing X, deleting some file then restarting x again)… And it WORKED!!!

But I didn’t want to do that over and over again… So I installed Xubuntu instead of Ubuntu (XFCE instead of GNOME)… I choose it because its mught lighter and developed for crappy computers (Yes… My laptop is crappy)… And I’m running the OS from USB so it’ll go much slower than HDD… So I thought of giving it another try…

AND IT WORKED PERFECTLY!!! NO NEED TO CTRL+ALT+WHATEVER!!!!! but yea the error 17 thingy appears and I had to fix it by editing the first options’ stuff and all… You could permanently fix it by modifying menu.lst in /boot/grub

You can always ask me for help and I’ll try as much as possible to help you out =D. I’ll write a tutorial on it soon…


8 thoughts on “(X)Ubuntu 8.04 on a Flash Disk adventure: Day 2

  1. you cant help!
    you have no skills in ubuntu xP
    and dude, wish i asked you to try Ubuntu on my laptop before you installed xubuntu on it ..
    wanted to see if it was the laptop or something with your settings for X o.o

  2. lambaat wayed (too late)…

    buy a 4GB flash and do it yourself… I could give ya my (X)Ubuntu CDs =P

  3. mali 5ilg buying 4gb flash just for testing something out .. format yours for me? xP
    and this has made me want to see if i can install old school Slackware onto my 1gb flash o.O

  4. I have the same problem with the X server, hangs after initial bootup. Would you happen to know which file you deleted to make it work?

    Thanks 🙂

  5. i totally dont recommend following what i did because it was just a remedy… not a full and ever lasting solution…

    though it was by going to terminal (by pressing ctrl+alt+F8), then writing “startx” … it told me that there’s a file annoying the whole process and should be deleted… somethin’ like l0ck i think somewhere… so i deleted that and it worked (but waaay too slow)… hope that helps

  6. Perhaps you are right with the speed, I’ll give it a try and see how it goes – Thanks for the help 🙂

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