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22Jul/090

Make a USB Boot CD for Ubuntu 9.04

The following tutorial explains how to create a USB Boot CD that can be used to boot a Ubuntu 9.04 USB flash drive on computers with a BIOS that does not natively support booting from USB. The boot CD contains a grub bootloader that loads the initrd and vmlinuz kernel from the CD and then proceeds to locate the filesystem on the USB drive. Because the USB driver modules are preloaded from the initrd on the CD, the compressed filesystem can then be detected and loaded from the USB device.

USB Boot CD for Ubuntu 9.04 creation essentials

  • PC with a BIOS that does not support booting from USB
  • Working CD Drive and USB Port
  • Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD
  • USB flash drive with Ubuntu 9.04 preinstalled
  1. Insert the Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD and restart your computer, booting from the CD
  2. Open a Terminal and Type mkdir -p ubcd/boot/grub
  3. Type cp /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage2_eltorito ubcd/boot/grub
  4. Type gedit ubcd/boot/grub/menu.lst
    Add the following information to your menu.lst file and click save:

    title Run Ubuntu 9.04 from USB DISK
    root (cd)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent
    initrd /boot/initrd.gz
    boot

  5. Type cp /cdrom/casper/initrd.gz ~/ubcd/boot
  6. Type cp /cdrom/casper/vmlinuz ~/ubcd/boot
  7. Type sudo gedit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
    Add the following lines to the modules file and click save:

     usbcore
     usb-storage
     uhci_hcd
     ohci_hcd
     ehci_hcd
     sd_mod
     scsi_mod
  8. Type sudo gedit /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf
    Add the following line to the bottom of the file and click save:

    WAIT=8

  9. Type sudo mkinitramfs -o ubcd/boot/initrd.gz 2.6.2*
  10. Replacing 2.6.2* with your actual kernel version.

    Type uname -r to find your kernel version. I.E. initrd.gz 2.6.28-11-generic

  11. Type mkisofs -R -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o usbcd.iso ubcd
  12. Burn the usbcd.iso to a CD