Newton-Willbanks Engineering, Inc.

How to Creat a Bootable Ubuntu Flash Drive

Here are the steps to follow to create a bootable ubuntu 9.10 (this version is also called Karmic Koala) flash drive (minimum 2GB). Their version numbering system is pretty weird: version 9.10 means it was finalized in the 10th month of 09!! And the Karmic Koala just designates version K, but they started at the end of the alphabet instead of the first.

(1) Download the CD image (.iso file) from www.ubuntu.com:

(2) (Optional, but recommended) Verify that you got a good download by running md5sum found at http://www.nullriver.com/products/winmd5sum on the downloaded file and comparing to the hashes found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes. For complete instructions on this process, go to: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM .

(3) Create a bootable flash drive following the instructions found at http://www.pendrivelinux.com/create-a-ubuntu-9-10-live-usb-in-windows

(4) Restart your PC and set the BIOS boot order to the flash drive(this may be a subset under the hardrive or CD), save the BIOS changes and reboot. Somewhere along this step you will have the opportunity to specify the size of the ‘casper-rw’ file you want to set up on the flash drive. I set mine to 2GB, I think, but you can resize it later by following the directions at http://www.pendrivelinux.com/how-to-resize-casper-rw-images (from windows) or http://www.pendrivelinux.com/how-to-create-a-larger-casper-rw-loop-file from linux.