Make a USB Boot CD for Xubuntu 9.04

Create a USB Boot CD that can be used to boot Xubuntu 9.04 from USB flash drive on computers using a system BIOS that does not natively support booting from USB. The boot CD works by loading the initrd and vmlinuz kernel from the CD. Once the necessary USB drivers have been loaded, the boot CD proceeds to locate and load the filesystem from the USB flash drive. Because the USB driver modules are preloaded from the CD, the compressed filesystem can then be detected and loaded from the USB device even if your system BIOS does not support booting from USB.

USB Boot CD for Xubuntu 9.04 build essentials:

  • Test PC with a BIOS that doesn’t support booting from USB
  • PC that can boot from USB or the Live CD
  • Working CD Burner
  • USB flash drive with Xubuntu 9.04 preinstalled

Creating a CD to Boot Kubuntu from USB

Note: We prefer to perform the following steps by booting from a prebuilt Xbuntu 9.04 Live USB on a machine that does support booting from USB. This allows us to free up the CD Burner and use it to burn the final ISO.

  1. Insert your Xubuntu 9.04 Live USB or Live CD and restart your computer, booting from the device
  2. Open a Terminal and Type mkdir -p ubcdx/boot/grub
  3. Type cp /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage2_eltorito ubcdx/boot/grub
  4. Type mousepad ubcdx/boot/grub/menu.lst
    Copy the following information to the menu.lst file and save the file:

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

  5. Type cp /cdrom/casper/vmlinuz ~/ubcdx/boot
  6. Type sudo mousepad /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
    Add the following lines to the end of your modules file and save the file:

    usbcore
    usb-storage
    uhci_hcd
    ohci_hcd
    ehci_hcd
    sd_mod
    scsi_mod

  7. Type sudo mousepad /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf
    Add the following line to the bottom of the file and save the file:

    WAIT=8

  8. Type sudo mkinitramfs -o ubcdx/boot/initrd.gz
  9. Type mkisofs -R -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o usbcdx.iso ubcdx
  10. Burn the usbcdx.iso to a CD

Make a USB Boot CD for Xubuntu 9.04 published under Use a Boot CD to Boot from USB 

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