HowTo: LiveUSB

HowTo: LiveUSB

What do we need?

First, we need to download the liveUSB from here: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/gnetic/gnetic-live_0.4.1.zip

We also need to have a memory stick with 200MB free and formatted with FAT16 or FAT32.

If we use Linux

The first thing you need is to know which file refers to the pendrive in the /dev folder. To find out, plug the USB drive and expect to be mounted, then open a terminal and write:

$: dmesg | tail

We should show something like:

[ 2110.167178] sd 2:0:0:0: [sde] 15636304 512-byte logical blocks: (8.00 GB/7.45 GiB)
[ 2110.167672] sd 2:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off
[ 2110.167676] sd 2:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[ 2110.167680] sd 2:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 2110.174835] sd 2:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 2110.174846] sde: sde1
[ 2110.178922] sd 2:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 2110.178930] sd 2:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 2110.796124] FAT: utf8 is not a recommended IO charset for FAT filesystems, filesystem will be case sensitive!
[ 2282.289292] FAT: utf8 is not a recommended IO charset for FAT filesystems, filesystem will be case sensitive!

In this case, our USB will be /dev/sde. Therefore, the first partition is /dev/sde1, the second /dev/sde2, etc..

If we want to know where is our USB mounted, we must run:

$: mount | grep sde

Then we will see a line like:

/dev/sde1 on /media/USB type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1)

This indicates that the pendrive is mounted on /media/USB.

Now, we follow the following steps:

  1. Extract the zip in the root of our USB.

  2. Open a terminal and go to utils/linux/ folder

    $: cd /media/USB/utils/linux
  3. Run makeboot.sh (IMPORTANT: We need to be root) and passing as parameter the partition where we have extracted the zip.

    #: ./makeboot.sh /dev/sde1

    Answer yes to all the questions and we finished

If we use Windows

  1. Extract the .zip in the root of our USB.

  2. Go to utils/win32

  3. Run makeboot.bat, we need to be administrator.

    Warning!: We will never run this .bat out of the USB drive, it could damage Windows.


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