How to install full ubuntu on a USB drive

Question

Okay. I have booted from the same USB drive with the toram option. I have unmounted the partition on the USB drive through the terminal, basically following this answer:

Can Ubuntu be installed to the pendrive it was booted from?

I am now in the installation stage, but I can't figure out the partitions I have to choose in order to install it on only the USB drive, as I'm running windows 10 as my main operating system on my laptop. Please help

EDIT 1:

Like so?

Best to have two flash drives. As if install does not work, you have to start all over. You are showing you have an UEFI system. Grub by default will install its boot files to the ESP on sda. That works only if you want to boot flash drive from same system. If you want to boot from any other system, you need to partition in advance and include an ESP - efi system partition on flash drive. FAT32, probably 100MB large enough, although larger if larger drive normally suggested. Use rest as / (root) as ext4. Full install cannot be to NTFS. — oldfred, Dec 26 '18 at 23:32
@oldfred: OP's previous post mentioned that only one flash drive is available. — C.S.Cameron, Dec 27 '18 at 03:48
It may be safest to first unplug your internal drive before using this method. — C.S.Cameron, Jan 04 '19 at 04:55
You're right. My boot device is the internal ssd for some reason — cephlot, Jan 04 '19 at 05:39

Eric Mintz · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-26T23:45:35.470

0

Set the USB partition to type ext4, and set the mount point to "/" . You could optionally delete the existing partition first, then create two partitions on the jumpdrive: a 1G swap partition, and the root ( "/" ) partition that uses the rest of the space. The swap space is nice to have but not really essential.

edited Dec 26 '18 at 23:45

answered Dec 26 '18 at 23:19

Eric Mintz

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18.04 or later uses a swap file, so no swap partition required. – oldfred Dec 26 '18 at 23:28
Yes the type for the swap partition is linux-swap. Set ext4 for the root partition. (edition my answer - somehow I had ntfs on the brain - but it should be ext4) – Eric Mintz Dec 26 '18 at 23:44
Should I do a swap partitions as well since I use 18.04.1 or just the root? – cephlot Dec 26 '18 at 23:50
@oldfred is right: just root. – Eric Mintz Dec 26 '18 at 23:51
Okay, I'll try it – cephlot Dec 26 '18 at 23:51
And we are live! – cephlot Dec 27 '18 at 00:08
Awesome! Glad it worked! – Eric Mintz Dec 27 '18 at 00:09
I may have messed something up though. When I booted the live usb it said SanDisk after the partition in the boot menu. But now it is the same as my windows boot loader. Is that bad? – cephlot Dec 27 '18 at 00:18
I think it's ok. Do both Windows and Linux book ok? – Eric Mintz Dec 27 '18 at 00:30
Yeah they both boot oksy – cephlot Dec 27 '18 at 09:03
I tried doing it all again and it says the same thing, hopefully it won't have a negative impact. Thank you both for the help – cephlot Dec 27 '18 at 09:36
It's just the titles in the menu that ended up the same. The system should be fine. But if it's really bugging you, you can modify the menu titles but it's a little bit of work: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1287602 – Eric Mintz Dec 27 '18 at 12:04

How to install full ubuntu on a USB drive

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