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Creating a persistent file. Progress will not move until finished...

It's been at it for 3-4 hours. I selected to install Ubuntu on a near empty drive (With just the image file of the OS installer in it.

I'm not sure if I did something wrong, or if something went wrong on the other end, or both (or is this supposed to be normal?)

I'm a Windows refugee. System specs are 16GB RAM, i7-7700K (2.80GHz), GTX 1050 Ti.

Zanna
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Bonita
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    3-4 hours is way too much even in a slow computer. Please specify your computer's brand name and model. -- You could also try mkusb, which creates a casper-rw partition instead of such a file for persistence. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/persistent – sudodus Feb 28 '18 at 09:57
  • Just updated with specs. 16GB RAM/i7-7700K/GTX 1050 Ti. Model is Dell 15 7567 – Bonita Feb 28 '18 at 09:58
  • My experience (with a Dell Latitude E7240) is that it works well with Ubuntu. Something else is the problem, maybe the iso file (did you check it with md5sum?, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes), maybe the tool (Universal USB Installer). -- You will probably need the boot option nomodeset to get the nvidia graphics work in a [persistent] live drive. If you create an installed system in your USB drive, you can also install a proprietary nvidia driver (to improve the performance), but it will reduce the portability between computers. – sudodus Feb 28 '18 at 10:02
  • Or maybe you have an extremely slow USB pendrive. See this link, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick#Notes_about_speed – sudodus Feb 28 '18 at 10:07
  • Is it safe to force abort this installation before I can try troubleshooting this? (I won't blame you if something goes wrong, just need your opinion) – Bonita Feb 28 '18 at 10:14
  • I think the Universal USB Installer writes only to the USB pendrive, and it should be overwritten anyway, so I think it is safe to force abort this installation. -- Are you installing from Windows or from Linux? – sudodus Feb 28 '18 at 10:16
  • Windows 10. There's two drives, an SSD and a HDD. The OS (C:) for W10 is in the SSD while the HDD was empty (Save for the iso Ubuntu installer). I figured I'd install the OS in the HDD. – Bonita Feb 28 '18 at 10:21
  • Then you can download an image file (.img) with mkusb and clone it with Win32DiskImager to the drive where you want the installer. See the following links, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/persistent#Compressed_image_file_with_a_persistent_live_system and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Win32DiskImager/compressed-image_2_USB-or-SD. This works to USB drives, I don't know if Win32DiskImager will write to an internal drive (or SSD via USB). mkusb can do it, but it is a linux tool, does not work in Windows. Have you got a USB pendrive? – sudodus Feb 28 '18 at 10:24
  • I have a 4GB USB pen drive here. – Bonita Feb 28 '18 at 10:45
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    I think I know what went wrong. It was my fault. Universal USB asked me (optional) to define the persistent data size and I accidentally had the whole space drive (of the HDD) defined for it, rather than a small number like 2GB. Maybe that's why it was taking forever?

    edit: I retried the install. This time it wrapped up under 10 seconds! That must have been it.

     – Bonita Feb 28 '18 at 10:58
  • I think you are right, and that you solved your problem. Congratulations and thanks for sharing your solution :-) – sudodus Feb 28 '18 at 11:03

2 Answers2

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Universal USB Installer and a casper-rw file

The OP, @Bonita, was able to solve the problem after we had exchanged ideas via comments. I write this answer to explain the solution.

The Universal USB Installer creates a casper-rw file for persistence, and she had selected all remaining space for it, which made it huge, because it was in a hard disk drive. The method to create the casper-rw file is intended for rather small USB pendrives, and it will take a very long time for a huge file.

She solved the problem by creating a smaller casper-rw file, only a few Gigabyte.

Universal USB asked me (optional) to define the persistent data size and I accidentally had the whole space drive (of the HDD) defined for it, rather than a small number like 2GB. Maybe that's why it was taking forever? edit: I retried the install. This time it wrapped up under 10 seconds! That must have been it.

mkusb and a casper-rw partition

If you have a big USB drive, like in this case a hard disk drive, or an SSD, and you want to use all the remaining drive space for persistence, you can use a persistent live system with a casper-rw partition.

mkusb can create such a persistent live system, and setting up a big or huge partition is much faster than doing it for a file of the same size.

General discussion

See also this link, and the discussion in the whole thread (the question and also the other answers),

... try out new OS releases without committing to it? - USB alternatives

sudodus
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As an aside - in windows 10 the casper-rw file is created in your Users\"user name"\AppData\Local\Temp folder before being deleted at the end of the process. If (as I have just done) you have a larger USB drive (128GB) and you set the persistent file size too big you may find yourself running out of space on your OS drive (in my case a 258GB NVME). This will slow/stop the process and can cause a significant problems in win 10 and if you are forced to abort the process you will need to find the file and delete it to get your space back.

fadingfool
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  • Also on Windows 7. I found it (and various other files) in a subfolder of the TEMP directory with a name nst22C.tmp (I expect the name will always begin nst...). The persistent file creation does indeed appear to hang if it runs out of space on the drive with your TEMP directory - and the progress dialog changes from showing progress to a message like "24501+0 records out". – Jake Nov 18 '19 at 22:59