Ubuntu on USB

I have been trying for quite some time now to get Ubuntu working on a 2Gb USB stick however I have been unfortunately unsuccessful.. I got a chance today to test my USB on a computer other than my own and this time it showed "operating system not found" so I figured that even though it loaded up to the boot options menu on my computer that the issue was probably related to the MBR. On http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/02/12/usb-ubuntu-tutorial-for-linux-users/ it tells me that I should download and install Lilo I have done that and I have run the command: sudo lilo -M /dev/sdc and it tells me that it has updated the partition table. I hope that it work tomorrow (I get a chance to test it out on another computer tomorrow too).

To try and remedy the problem that I was having with the invalid compressed format error I have extracted initrd.img from initrd.gz and placed it on the root of the drive and then changed the references in the syslinux.cfg file to initrd.img instead of initrd.gz. (I'm not sure if that going to play out so well because the syslinux boot loader might still handle the file as though it is compressed.)

Extracting the initrd.gz file wasn't as easy as it should be though. The actual initrd.gz file on the root of the usb disk when extracted throws an "invalid compressed data" error. So I have had to extract the file from the gz archive on the live disk. That decompresses fine and it opens fine too when I click on it.

I haven't actually tested it yet because I haven't rebooted the computer yet but as soon as I do I will post some information on how it went.

My vision I suppose if I can get this to work would be to install grub and dual boot "live" Back Track 2 and "persistent" Ubuntu. That would be very cool but I have to go one step at a time at get one part working at a time and at the moment my portable Linux project time is being taken up mostly with getting Ubuntu to boot off a USB.