Running Linux: Install Gparted Live or Fedora Live on USB Stick
This is part of my information about use of linux, especially on my Dell laptop:http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/laptop/
Instructions
I wrote this document after using these steps to get Gparted Live onto a USB stick successfully. Shortly afterwards I tried the same procedure with Fedora Live (XFCE version)
Creating Gparted-Live drive
Get the latest ISO file from Sourceforge. E.g. on 5 Apr 2017,
the latest file was available here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/0.28.1-1/
Looking for the latest version?
Download gparted-live-0.28.1-1-i686.iso (287.3 MB)
Simply click on the required Download link and go through the usual procedures
to save the downloaded file.
If necessary create a directory in which to install the iso file
mkdir .../gpartedThen move the saved iso file into that directory.
I then followed instructions under "GNU/Linux Method D: Manual - Overwrite",
here:
http://gparted.org/liveusb.php#linux-method-d
Insert the USB flash drive your Linux computer and wait a few seconds. Next,
from a terminal window run the command:
dmesg | tail -2
You should be able to work out from that where your new usb device is. E.g. on
my machine I got this:
[1248567.503788] sdc: sdc1 sdc2
[1248567.506501] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
So my device was mounted as device sdc: with two partitions: sdc1 and sdc2
Using gparted, which is already part of my Fedora system, I then ran, as root,
gparted /dev/sdc
I then used gparted to remove the two (empty) partitions that I had on that
drive, though I am not sure that is necessary.
After exiting gparted, give the next command, taking great care to specify the input file (after 'if=') and the output device (after 'of=') without any errors.
An error can destroy the contents of one of your drives.
Enter the following command using the gparted .iso file name and USB device path discovered in the previous steps, e.g. /dev/sdc in the example above:
dd if=gparted-live-0.28.1-1-i686.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M; sync
Take great care to get the command EXACTLY right.
If you have a newer iso file the name after 'if=' will be different. Likewise your usb device may be something other than /dev/sdc. E.g. if you have only one hard drive in your machine, that hard drive is likely to be /dev/sda, and then the usb device will be /dev/sdb. In my case (Desktop PC running Fedora 24, with two hard drives, sda and sdb) the usb stick was assigned name /dev/sdc, as above.
Make sure you wait for the "sync" command to complete before removing the usb stick. You can then test it by inserting it in a usb slot in a machine that has been shut down and set to boot from usb if available (that could be the machine you have just used to create the new gparted usb stick) and power up the machine.
It worked on my Dell Latitude E6410 though while booting from the drive I obtained a message
"failed to find cpu0 device node error"
But a short time later gparted started up, giving me the option to specify the
type and language of my keyboard (qwerty, uk), and options for graphical mode.
I chose the default.
When gparted started up in graphical mode, there was a button that allowed me to select the drive to be examined.
Look elsewhere for information on what you can do with gparted. I assume anyone reading this document already knows about gparted.
Creating Fedora-Live USB Stick
The procedure is exactly the same, except that I downloaded the Fedora iso file
Fedora-Xfce-Live-x86_64-25-1.3.iso
from here
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/25/Spins/x86_64/iso/
and altered the 'dd' command to use the fedora iso file.
dd if=Fedora-Xfce-Live-x86_64-25-1.3.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M; sync
For Fedora Live I used a newer 32GB USB 3 stick. It booted perfectly both on my ancient Dell E6410 laptop and on a newer desktop PC.
Maintained by
Aaron Sloman
A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk
First Created: 5 Apr 2017
Last Updated: 8 Apr 2017