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1.) What is the official/recommended way to make ubuntu usbs from image files?, for old releases and newer releases respectively?

My dded dongles don't even initialize when booting!, and I'm fairly confident with dd and ddrescue, less with cp, and have been making backup of drives and stuff so far successfully.

2.) Do the ubuntu usbs have to be usb-creator-gtked in order to boot? If yes, since what release untiol what release? Interested in older releases esspeccially.

3 Answers3

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Make Ubuntu USB's from Image Files.

If you are working in Windows, you can use Etcher, Rufus, YUMI, Win32DiskImager, UNetbootin, Universal and Ventoy. Etcher and Win32DiskImager will flash an image to an ISO9660 USB. Ventoy will boot the ISO file directly, and the others will extract the image to a file system.

If you are working in Ubuntu, you can use Etcher, Gnome-Disks, mkusb, UNetbootin, dd and Startup Disk Creator. all of these will flash an image to an ISO9660 USB. mkusb will give you the most control, allowing a persistent partition and a data partition if you want.

Most Ubuntu ISO files can be booted directly using the GRUB2 bootloader. This can be done using Ventoy or the mkusb GRUB Template Image, see BIOS/UEFI Template Image for Booting ISO Files

If you want to create your own Live/Persistent USB from scratch in Linux see: Simple Hand Made Persistent USB that Boots either BIOS or UEFI

C.S.Cameron
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  • Startup disk creator is buggy functionality, afai experienced not a singke successful write – rantoniusw Nov 06 '20 at 20:11
  • But I can't boot the older ubuntus releases but I need a driver on it. 10.x is supposed to work on i686, e5300 pentium 4 doesnt work, core duo i think a 5300 2.6ghz, no boot on core2quad 9300 x86_64 no boot but in vbox with vt-d it works emulated, but totally useless there, i3 no boot, I still have laptops and pc left, but I cant get the older 10.x 11.x to boot! But a 15.04 amd64 boots on it, what is the underlying reason, doesnt it support nvidia 256mand sis900 and ati/radeon gpus? Theere is so little.suporrted hardware info, have no idea on what kind of processor and graphics 10.x.11.x runs – rantoniusw Nov 06 '20 at 20:34
  • I'm positive that I've found the solution for older releases install. None of the above. – rantoniusw Nov 07 '20 at 15:16
  • @rantoniusw, Please be aware that we can only support *current* versions of Ubuntu here: 16.04.x, 18.04.x, 20.04.x with long time support (LTS) and 20.10 with support for only 9 months. The older versions 10.x,11.x and 15.04 are many years past end of life, and you cannot expect the current tools to manage them (in particular: 10.x and 11.x do not provide hybrid iso files, so they do not work when cloned to USB drives). -- But old hardware usually have DVD (or CD) drives, and should boot when you burn the iso to a DVD disk (or if the iso file is smaller than 700 GB to a CD disk). – sudodus Nov 08 '20 at 10:17
  • How old is old? Ubuntu 10.04 thru 14.04 ISO's contained WUBI,. 10.10 & 11.04 also contained a USB Creator windows executable. these might help when installing some older versions. – C.S.Cameron Nov 09 '20 at 03:19
  • @rantoniusw: I just used used UNetbootin 681, (the latest version), to install ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso to a USB and it works. The computer is BIOS boot, remember they did not have UEFI much back then and Ubuntu 32bit cannot be easily installed in UEFI mode. – C.S.Cameron Nov 09 '20 at 09:53
  • The "black art" of You-not-bootin? I wonder what the programm did to the usb and perhaps the ubuntu iso, so that it boots the image!? – rantoniusw Nov 09 '20 at 11:37
  • Thanks for your try and message, my whole point in in the first place was to avoid the "black art of boot exes" I haven't had the time yet to browse the iso thoroughly, just glanced over it. I thought wubi and the other .exe , never used it,was rather sepperately alongside downloadable or even integrated into the os, but NOT whithin the iso file visible as a file. Anyways, the LORD willing if I come back after my short trip, I'll try to boot it again, but with grub. I don't know which version I must use , 10.04, 11.x,12.x, it's a test and go with the driver that was built for it long ago. – rantoniusw Nov 09 '20 at 11:46
  • @rantoniusw: Did you look at https://askubuntu.com/questions/1227221/simple-hand-made-persistent-usb-that-boots-either-bios-or-uefi ? There is no Black Magic there, just extracting the ISO file and adding a bootloader, with UEFI you don't even need to add a bootloader, or see https://askubuntu.com/questions/1269462/bios-uefi-template-image-for-booting-iso-files that one just uses a bootloader to boot an ISO file. – C.S.Cameron Nov 09 '20 at 12:03
  • Your links I will check out, thanks. I'm back from city hop to "witch doctors", and I was able to boot from iso in grub down to ubuntu 13.1, but not any further below ( like 12.x.11.x,10,x) They don't boot on my core 2 duo quad. I don't understand it, because to boot from those isos, I don't need Unetbootin just grub, but the Iso when browsed has initrd.lz and it tries to boot but immediately restarts the pc. So it finds the iso properly, but It can't boot. What is the deal, if ubuntu boots, but 12,11,10 have the same config in grub but they dont boot. What's the deal here? – rantoniusw Nov 17 '20 at 07:32
  • To boot 10.04 32 bit using GRUB2 I just changed initrd to initrd.lz in grub.cfg, 13.04 64bit started using vmlinuz.efi. which threw a lot of people off. – C.S.Cameron Nov 17 '20 at 09:34
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I personally prefer ddrescue via the gddrescue deb in the repository. It provides a decent output of progress. It is possible to bodge dd (via tools like pv) into giving some progress output. But ddrescue output is just better, in my humble opinion. Here:

$ sudo ddrescue -d -D --force ./ubuntu-22.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso /dev/sdc

enter image description here

popey
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As someone already said there is not an "ufficial" way to install ubuntu onto a usb flash drive and dd should work the 100% of the times. If dd did not work for you I suggest to look for some other causes for that, bios and/or hardware failure (failed flash usb or damaged usb interface in the pc).

ciampix
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