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Make a USB Boot CD for Ubuntu 9.04

The following tutorial explains how to create a USB Boot CD that can be used to boot a Ubuntu 9.04 USB flash drive on computers with a BIOS that does not natively support booting from USB. The boot CD contains a grub bootloader that loads the initrd and vmlinuz kernel from the CD and then proceeds to locate the filesystem on the USB drive. Because the USB driver modules are preloaded from the initrd on the CD, the compressed filesystem can then be detected and loaded from the USB device.

USB Boot CD for Ubuntu 9.04 creation essentials

• PC with a BIOS that does not support booting from USB
• Working CD Drive and USB Port
• Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD
• USB flash drive with Ubuntu 9.04 preinstalled

1. Insert the Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD and restart your computer, booting from the CD
2. Open a Terminal and Type mkdir -p ubcd/boot/grub
3. Type cp /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage2_eltorito ubcd/boot/grub
4. Type gedit ubcd/boot/grub/menu.lst
   Add the following information to your menu.lst file and click save:

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

5. Type cp /cdrom/casper/initrd.gz ~/ubcd/boot
6. Type cp /cdrom/casper/vmlinuz ~/ubcd/boot
7. Type sudo gedit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
   Add the following lines to the modules file and click save:

    usbcore
    usb-storage
    uhci_hcd
    ohci_hcd
    ehci_hcd
    sd_mod
    scsi_mod

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

   WAIT=8

9. Type sudo mkinitramfs -o ubcd/boot/initrd.gz 2.6.2*

Replacing 2.6.2* with your actual kernel version.

Type uname -r to find your kernel version. I.E. initrd.gz 2.6.28-11-generic

10. Type mkisofs -R -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o usbcd.iso ubcd
11. Burn the usbcd.iso to a CD