Arch on USB

Hello everyone,
I'm going to install Arch later today when I get back from College. Is it possible after I've created my ideal system to put that to a bootable USB (LiveUSB)?
I want to create a basic "rescue disk" on USB with certain packages pre-installed.
Thanks

yes, completely, but u will need to install a bootloader on the usb mbr, and set it to bootable (gparted). i have been looking at this, but i only have a 128meg pen so it would require a lot of chopping!
i used unetbootin (aur) which can install and set the usb up fully to run any distro almost! very simple to use. i stuck slitaz on my pen cos it only takes up ~30meg!
bear in mind tho, most truly live distros load everything to ram. if u do what u r trying to do, it will be pretty slow as read/right to usb (~12mb/s) is massively slower than ide hard drive (~300mb/s)!
Last edited by ninjaprawn (2009-02-18 21:31:52)

Similar Messages

Can't boot Arch from USB on Acer Aspire One...

Hi All,
New to the forums, relatively new to Linux. I've tried several distros including #!, U/K/Xubuntu, Mint, Kuki, Puppy and Wolvix. However none of them, except maybe Mint, have played very nicely with my Acer Aspire One netbook. Even Kuki was a bit of a disaster, though I liked the Midori browser, first time I'd used it was under Kuki.
Intro aside, I want to try Arch. I am not scared of a bit of hands-on work via CLI, although am certainly no expert when it comes to CLI & Linux!
The problem is, I created a USB install for the latest 32bit version of Arch using Unetbootin (I tried both under Windows and Linux, creating USB live sticks with both). However when I try to boot from USB, all goes well until just after a message during the boot process appears. I forget off the top of my head what the error message says, though it appears after successfully waiting 30 seconds to discover a SCSI drive (or something along those lines).
The error has nothing to do with the drive, it's related to the step in the boot process that comes after that. Whatever the message is (I'm at work so cannot access logs or anything right now) it ends up asking me to resolve from a CLI prompt, which then leaves me with a prompt dialog, or to restart and try again.
Nothing seems to work so I am not sure what I am doing wrong or if it might be a bug with Unetbootin or a bug with the latest version of Arch? Or simply a good old fashioned ID10T error?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Thanks! I'll mark this as an ID10T error for now then. I'll give the USB install image a try tonight. On a side note, does Arch come with Skype pre-installed and if not, is it relatively simple to install a la the *.deb package install?

[SOLVED] Booting Arch off USB HDD fails - can't mount real root device

I've installed Arch on the internal HDD (sda) of my laptop, and I attempted to install a second copy of Arch on partition sdb3 of an external USB HDD. sdb3 is a primary partition that I had prepared beforehand with gparted and outfitted with the reiserfs filesystem. I skipped section 3.2 (manually prepare hard drives) of the Arch installer. There was no problem with section 3.3 (manually configure filesystems and mountpoints); I put all of / in sdb3. Installing packages and configuring the system also went without a hitch.
I wanted to boot this new install of Arch via the boot menu of GRUB that was installed in the MBR of sda with my primary install of Arch. On the new install, I first did go through section 7 (install bootloader), thinking I would want to install GRUB in the root sector of partition sdb3 (not in the MBR of sdb where the GRUB of MintKDE resides, a boot menu that I want to keep) but that failed, so I then picked "no bootloader to be installed". With that I exited the new install, since it appeared to have gone to completion.
I then copied the appropriate stanza in the /boot/grub/menu.lst of this new Arch install to the /boot/grub/menu.lst of my primary Arch install on the internal HDD of my laptop.
This stanza reads as follows:
# (3) Arch Linux on WDPP60 blue (sdb3)
title Arch Linux on WDPP60 blue (sdb3)
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/191cc027-43ce-443b-8846-f265d60555ec ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
However, I'm not able to boot the new Arch install when I pick this entry from the GRUB menu list. The new install starts booting, finds sda but not sdb and stops with the following errors, dropping me to a recovery shell:
Root device /dev/disk/by-uuid... doesn't exist. Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid...'
mounting /dev/disk/by-uuid... on /new_root failed: No such file ...
ERROR: Failed to mount the real root device.
Running "mount -t reiserfs /dev/sdb3 /new_root" at the ramfs prompt also fails.
I've tried a number of edits of the menu.lst stanza from the grub> command prompt, such as adding rootfstype=reiserfs, replacing root=/dev/disk/by-uuid..etc. with root=/dev/sdb3 (booting then fails with "/dev/sdb3 No such file"), using "initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img" etc., but booting always fails at the same stage with equivalent error messages.
I have no trouble booting half a dozen other Linux/BSD distros that reside on two different external USB HDD's by the same method, i.e. choosing an entry from the GRUB boot menu of my primary Arch install, after I placed the appropriate stanza in its /boot/grub/menu.lst.
How can I get this new Arch install to boot?
Last edited by RobF (2010-05-17 23:03:27)

Yes, this was in fact the solution. I stumbled upon it in this thread:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=65844
When one wants to boot from a USB mass storage device, the initrd needs to include the modules for accessing USB devices, and in Arch this is accomplished by adding "usb" to the HOOKS array. I simply reinstalled Arch to the USB HDD and in the system configuration step now edited /etc/mkinitcpio.conf by adding the "usb" item. Adding "rootdelay=10" and/or "rootfstype=reiserfs" to the kernel line in the appropriate stanza in Arch's /boot/grub/menu.lst wasn't necessary in this case. I left the stanza exactly as I posted it above.
Thanks for your input.

Not able to install arch from USB stick.

Hi all
First off I'm trying to install arch into my 8540w hp laptop. I have failed and here I'm seeking for help.
I have downloaded the latest arch iso image and put it into a usb stick for the installation
Here is how i prepared the usb.
tried :
sudo dd bs=4M if=archlinux-2013.06.01-dual.iso of=/dev/sdb
to write the iso in to the usb.
I have no success to boot up my 8540w machine (machine stalled on the HP logo)
I went through the wiki and found there some bugs which related to some old firmware (doesn't make any sense)
My laptop relatively new about 2 year old machine bios firmware upgraded a year ago. ( I have no problem to boot with my old Ibm T60)
To rectify the bugs Wiki guided me to:
1. sudo isohybrid.pl -offset 1 archlinux-2013.06.01-dual.iso
2. sudo dd if=archlinux-2013.06.01-dual.iso of=/dev/sdX
I have successfully boot up but the hope soon died
I'm getting these error messages:
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
ERROR;Failed to mount 'dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201306"
here a snap shot of entire messages
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
Last edited by archlux (2013-06-12 21:52:10)

The filesystem needs to be labeled ARCH_201306. If you dd the iso to the USB, this stays in tact, but it would seem that if you use the method mentioned by the wiki above this filesystem label is not preserved...
Does this machine have UEFI? If so, then you can make a UEFI USB live media and have at it that way. There are instructions on the UEFI wiki page.
FWIW, new and updated firmware does not equate to bug free. I have a Thinkpad E430 that is less than a year old, and the original firmware was not without its bugs. If I have a certain USB stick in the USB 3.0 ports the machine won't get past POST. For a couple bios versions aes-ni was totally borked. There have been other minor issues as well.

Installing arch without usb or cd

Hey all,
I'm trying to install arch using only my hd, is this possible?
So far I made a small partition, put the install media on there using dd and tried to boot it using grub(v2).
I however, don't know anything about grub, and I didn't get it to boot, so how do I go about this?
Thanks a lot for your time!

In answer to the thread title (without regards to your post) Two techniques come to mind. Remove the drive, put it on another system, install Arch to the drive on that other system, and move the drive back. The other solution is to use a PXE environment (assuming your system can boot from a network), and set up a DHCP server and a TFTP server on another computer and boot as a thin client.
With regards to your post, how did you get grub and the iso image on to the drive without a usb or cd? Does grub come up at all? Or does the BIOS carp about not having a boot media? Is it a BIOS machine or EFI?

Freezing Arch on USB wifi

Hi,
I've got SMC2862w-G (45Mb) USB wifi dongle working using ndiswrapper.
My normal web browsing is quite good but If I down load or FTP a file >100Mb Arch frezes and I have to disconnect mains to reset the pc. (No mouse, Alt+tab etc...)
Are there any buffres etc I can change to improve data transfer rates? or is this a fault?
System woks perfectly with 100Mb lan connection.
Thanks
Ben

bostoniman wrote:What is the INF file you are using? I have a Linksys WUSB54G USB adapter, and I am experiencing a similar problem. It appears to load fine during boot, but if I download either a large file, or have a high rate of transfer, the system freezes. Also, if i simply leave my system idle after boot, the system will lock up after about 15 minutes. This has started happening only after the upgrade to the initrd-based kernel. So, I was wondering which INF file you use to see if it was the same one, or similar one, to the one I use.
I downloaded Winxp drivers from SMC website. (The drivers included in the product CD did not work)
It seems to be I've got the same problem. I have this problem even on 2.6.13 Arch Kernel. No initrd
I saw another post about ndiswrapper hanging problem. It seems to be ndiswrapper people don't want to know you unless you are a UNIX guru.
I don't know what to do here.
Ben

Arch Linux USB drive installER...

Hey all, is there a method to get my 1 GB USB drive to act like an Arch Linux installer? I don't need to install Arch Linux on the USB, just getting it to act like a CD is good enough for me. This is because my computer does not have a CD drive.

Nevermind. I found these:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Usb … ch_Install
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … _USB_stick
Now I have to try them out. I'll report back on how it goes!

Making an Arch rescue USB

I'm interested in making a bootable arch USB. I have done this in the past, however, this time, I'd be interested in having GPU drivers for both Nvidia and AMD on it, and if possible, having the proprietary ones, and having the appropriate driver be used on boot based on hardware detection. Is this possible, if so, how? I was unable to find information on this on the wiki or previous forum articles, though I would be unsuprised if it is there.
Thanks for your help

That's going to be tougher with the proprietary drivers, but it's dead simple with the open source drivers.
With the proprietary drivers, you'll run into opengl conflicts.

Arch persistent USB / Installer dualboot

Looking to have a persistent install and a installer on the same pendrive for consolidation purposes. I'm guessing that two partitions would be necessary, and I'm thinking that dd'ing the image over wouldn't work like usual.
Any ideas would be helpful.

I trust that you have read these:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US … tion_Media
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … _a_USB_key
Sure, you could have two partitions on it, but I don't really see any need, honestly. I have a 16 GB stick, partitioned as:
– 5 GB FAT32 (for compatibility with "other" OS'es) with just some random cross-platform crap on it.
– 9.9 GB Btrfs with compression enabled (less writes = flash drive lasts longer, and less data to be read = better performance) with a persistent Arch Linux install on it.
Syslinux is installed on the USB stick's MBR using this method, which is very easy to update when a new ISO comes out - I just copy-paste it from any OS that reads FAT32 (as opposed to "dd"-ing, which isn't that difficult either, come to think of it, but meh...). However, the kernel and initramfs images are also located inside the "Boot" folder on the FAT32 partition. This is a Syslinux limitation. Maybe with GRUB you'll have more fun: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … _From_GRUB
Have fun.
Last edited by DSpider (2013-05-08 15:17:02)

[SOLVED (mysteriously)] Arch on USB not recognized during boot

Hi there,
I hope, someone can help me with my problem, I have been searching and trying different things for quite some time now, without success.
I treated myself a new Notebook, Acer Aspire S7 and wanted to run Arch on it. However I am new to Linux and want to try it out on an USB-Stick, to keep the factory install of Win8 intact. (Also, this notebook does not have such a great HDD capacity) Additionally I want to have full disk encryption.
So I followed the Beginner's Guide with modifications described here and here
When it came to install the bootloader I chose Grub for EFI.
I then removed the USB-Stick with the live-Arch, which I used for installation and rebooted and it worked!
However: As soon as I completely shut down and boot again, the USB-Stick with my installation is no longer recognized. If i boot the live-Arch again, reinstall Grub and then reboot, it again works.
Here is something, I found strange. This is the output of efibootmgr:
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 2001,0003,0002,2002,2003
Boot0000* USB HDD: KingstonDataTraveler 2.0
Boot0001* Intel HDD0
Boot0002* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0003* arch_grub
Boot2001* EFI USB Device
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM
Boot2003* EFI Network
BootCurrent is 0000, but that number does not appear in the Boot-Order list. Could that be something?
Well, I hope someone has an idea. I will happily share any information about my setup with you, just ask.
Thanks,
Max
Last edited by MaxT (2014-04-07 08:35:20)

Sorry for digging that threat up again. I just wanted to share with you the solution to the problem I was having. Perhaps it will save someone else some frustration.
The Acer Aspire S7 has a dongle that goes in the display port and provides an ethernet and an VGA port. It was that dongle that prevented the USB stick with the Arch installation from being recognized. Done attached -> USB stick was ignored, dongle detached -> it worked.
I have no idea, why that is the case, but maybe this info is helpful for someone.
Cheers,
Max

[SOLVED]arch on usb stick, boot error

Hi,
i would like to create a i686 rescue usb arch install.
after googling a lot ive tried to install arch on my usb stick and get it booting, what ive done:
My x2 is running arch64, so i started with:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch64_Install_bundled_32bit_system
Changed HOOKS in mkinitcpio.conf to(for usb support at boot):
HOOKS="base udev autodetect usb ide scsi sata filesystems"
And regenerated the mkinit file:
mkinitcpio -p kernel26
Thx to MrElendig, #archlinux
Grub install: according to the "flash linux" install guide i used:
grub-install --recheck --root-directory=/mnt/usbkey /dev/sda1
But now the system stops with:
kinit: Cannot open root device sda1 (8,1)
kinit: init not found
any ideas?
greets
metalfan
Last edited by metalfan (2008-03-25 15:12:16)

using the HOOK autodetect wasnt a great idea since i used another system for testing the stick, removed it and added usb instead.
Thats it, some minor modifications are needed. Will add the steps to the wiki somewhere below "usb booting".
greets
metalfan

Install Arch on USB flash drive (partitioning and UEFI)?

I am trying to install Arch on a USB flash drive. However I have few questions... in particular about pratitioning and UEFI.
What partition table should I use? dos or gpt? and from this... what partitioning tool should I use? (cfdisk, parted, gdisk... etc)?
Also... I am going to be using this USB flash drive with a new computer that has a UEFI BIOS. Should I do anything different because of this? (Have a different boot flag?)

I think you need to read up on UEFI. Depending on what partitioner you use the boot flag can mean something entirely different.
MBR(dos) or GPT is a personal preference, so asking that is like asking someone else what your favorite soap should be. There is one exception though. I have heard of some systems that have firmware bugs that won't allow GPT/bios and some that won't allow MBR/UEFI. There are also some machines that won't do a damn thing if they aren't MBR partitioned, but those all tend to not be UEFI.
As far as the tool to use, if you want to use GPT then use gdisk and friends, of you want to use MBR(dos) use fdisk and friends. Or you can learn how to use parted, which can apparently handle both. But, for example gdisk offers a number of different tools that can all achieve the same thing. Again, it is like asking someone else if you should prefer boxers or briefs...

Arch Linux USB installation does not boot Correctly [SOLVED]

Hello,
I created a bootable USB stick with Universal USB Installer on a Windows System.
When I try to boot it, it shows me a Gummiboot Boot Loader Switch, where I can switch between two EFI shells and ArchLinux installation media.
When choosing the installation media, the screen flashes and after that, it shows the following lines:
:: running early hook [udev]
:: running hook [udev]
:: Triggering uevents ...
:: running hook [memdisk]
:: running hook [archiso]
:: running hook [archiso_loop_mnt]
:: running hook [archiso_pxe_common]
:: running hook [archiso_pxe_nbd]
:: running hook [archiso_pxe_http]
:: running hook [archiso-pxe_nfs]
:: Mounting '/dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201403' to '/run/archiso/bootmnt'
Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201403 ...
[ 5.060855] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
[ 5.060960] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Asuming drive cache: write trough
[ 5.062636] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
[ 5.062688] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Asuming drive cache: write through
[ 5.064566] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
[ 5.064614] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Asuming drive cache: write through
ERROR: 'dev/desc/by-label/ARCH_201403' device did not show up after 30 seconds ...
Falling back to interactive promt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you are finished
sh: can't accsess tty; job control turned off
[rootfs /]#
In UEFI menu I unabled secure boot and fast boot.
Can anybody tell me what I can do to boot the istallation media correctly?
Thanks for your suggestions
Last edited by outschi (2014-03-20 00:31:18)

Welcome to arch. I suspect this is the problem:
outschi wrote:I created a bootable USB stick with Universal USB Installer on a Windows System.
The error message you get is the same as those encountered by people who try to use unetbootin (eg here). I know Unetbootin does not work to create bootable arch media - perhaps the windows tool also doesn't.
Did you see and follow the tip here? It seems that tool will create working usbs, but you have to fix the label.
Last edited by Trilby (2014-03-19 16:52:22)

Installing Arch with USB

My laptop currently does not have a disk drive and I want to install Arch Linux as a dual-boot with Ubuntu 12.04. Do I just copy the Arch iso to a thumbdrive and get my computer to boot from the thumbdrive? When I do this a get a "Boot error."

Please read through the Beginner's Guide: it includes detailed instructions on how to do this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … _USB_stick

Custom Arch Boot-USB with preloaded package list

Hello guys!
The other day I was just thinking that it would be amazing to not having to reinstall each system (I have many PCs) from scratch and was wondering if I could make a bootable USB with a preloaded script to download and install the most common packages I always install. I guess I could do that by adding a script to the USB which would be in the root's "home" during USB-boot. But I'm just asking to see if there's a better way (if it would work at all)

This is a copy + paste from the Wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … d_packages
Backing up and retrieving a list of installed packages
It is good practice to keep periodic backups of all pacman-installed packages. In the event of a system crash which is unrecoverable by other means, pacman can then easily reinstall the very same packages onto a new installation.
■ First, backup the current list of non-local packages:
$ pacman -Qqen > pkglist.txt
■ Store the pkglist.txt on a USB key or other convenient medium or gist.github.com or Evernote, Dropbox, etc.
■ Copy the pkglist.txt file to the new installation, and navigate to the directory containing it.
■ Issue the following command to install from the backup list:
# pacman -S $(< pkglist.txt)
*** I have a note to use this so it doesn't reinstall packages that I already have.
# pacman -S --needed $(< pkglist.txt)
In the case you have a list which was not generated like mentioned above, there may be foreign packages in it (i.e. packages not belonging to any repos you have configured, or packages from the AUR).
In such a case, you may still want to install all available packages from that list:
# pacman -S --needed $(comm -12 <(pacman -Slq|sort) <(sort badpkdlist) )
Explanation:
■ pacman -Slq lists all available softwares, but the list is sorted by repository first, hence the sort command.
■ Sorted files are required in order to make the comm command work.
■ The -12 parameter display lines common to both entries.
■ The --needed switch is used to skip already installed packages.
You could edit the pkglist.txt to keep a list of packages that you know you what to have installed on each computer
Last edited by M177ER (2014-02-19 19:21:02)

Arch on USB

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for