Ubuntu – Write ISO on DVD in Ubuntu 16.04 Live USB (non-persistent)

To make yourself a complete normal Ubuntu installation on an USB or an external HDD you can follow the procedure I describe here.

You want to start by doing some preparatory installations, you need gksudo which is in the package gksu, schroot and debootstrap. Those packages are not installed by default, so type in a terminal (ctrl+alt+t):

sudo apt-get install gksu debootstrap schroot

Now you can start preparing your USB/HDD for installation by:

gksudo gparted

First you want to go to the devices menu and select create partition table, when asked for the type choose msdos. Now you should see an entry for unallocated space. Click on this and choose new and make it ext4 leaving only 1GB as free memory, then again click on the unallocated space entry and make it 1GB for Linux Swap. After this you apply your settings to the USB/HDD. Then right-click on the ext4 entry and choose manage flags and there you tick the check-mark on boot and leave.

Now you need to prepare your chroot environment to work in by doing the following commands one by one:

sudo mkdir /mnt/stick
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/stick/
sudo debootstrap --arch=amd64 xenial /mnt/stick http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/stick/dev
sudo mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/stick/dev/pts
sudo mount -t sysfs /sys /mnt/stick/sys
sudo mount -t proc /proc /mnt/stick/proc
sudo cp /proc/mounts /mnt/stick/etc/mtab
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/stick/etc/resolv.conf
sudo chroot /mnt/stick/

Your prompt should now look like this:

root@HOSTNAME:/#

Now you can begin your real installation process, start by setting the locale setting and the keyboard-configuration and installing the kernel.

locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
dpkg-reconfigure locale
dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
localedef -i en_US -c -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8

apt-get install linux-image-generic

While this installation GRUB asks you for which device to be installed for. you will see a selection like this:

[ ]/dev/sda [NotThisOne, this is your HDD]
[ ]/dev/sdb (31474 MB; ???)
[ ]/dev/sdb1 (30398 MB; /)

Choose /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb by moving to the respective field using the arrow keys and pressing space then finally hit return. Now after this installation is completed you can install your editor of choice, I do here as example nano and vim:

apt-get install nano vim

Now you can edit your /etc/fstab file, for this first get a list of the UUIDS in your system by:

blkid

This should give you an output like this:

/dev/sda1: UUID="8f8f130f-e127-43b6-b797-8bfa3f1e1631" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="06bd4abe-01"
/dev/sda5: UUID="8469c58b-b2bb-4551-b47d-c1a7d21e9ebd" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="06bd4abe-05"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="b08ab271-5619-479c-aa21-8aea7f4e6f3b" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="5872a1f8-01"
/dev/sdb2: UUID="c3309cee-731e-4030-93b9-f1d88c12c806" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="5872a1f8-02"

For easier editing you can copy the output from terminal by selecting it with your mouse and pressing ctrl+shift+c, then open your editor of choice by typing (I choose nano here for example):

nano /etc/fstab

You can paste the lines after you cleared out the files' contents by pressing ctrl+shift+c. Now delete the lines marked with /dev/sda which is most likely your HDD and change the other two lines around so they finally look like this:

UUID=18055918-6045-42e9-9492-66e3fd29c199 swap swap defaults 0 0
UUID=69b5fb9c-774d-4d35-82f2-6a17faa446a1 / ext4 defaults 0 1

Then press ctrl+x to end your editing, choose y to save and hit enter

As next you need to fill your /etc/apt/sources.list, you can do so with copy and pasting the following block to your terminal and hit enter once.

cat > /etc/apt/sources.list << "EOF"
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial partner
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security multiverse
EOF

As for the final configuration packages must be installed which require starting services via Upstart, these must be disabled in the chroot temporarily:

dpkg-divert --local --rename --add /sbin/initctl
ln -s /bin/true /sbin/initctl

Now run an update and you can install either ubuntu-server or ubuntu-desktop or even both as long you do server before desktop.

apt-get update
# Comment this out if ubuntu-desktop is not wanted
apt-get install ubuntu-desktop 
# remove comment if ubuntu-server is wanted
# apt-get install ubuntu-server

and finally add your user and put him into the proper groups:

adduser --home /home/<username> <username>

usermod -aG adm,cdrom,sudo,dip,plugdev,lpadmin,sambashare <username>

Where you can leave out sambashare if it gives you errors. Check if the group settings are correct by:

less /etc/group

You should see for each group listed in the above usermod command and entry like this (example sudo):

sudo:x:27:<username>

If not add the groups one by one with the above usermod command. Now it is time to maybe install drivers and useful tools, I list here only a few for your case necessary ones.

apt-get ecryptfs-utils testdisk schroot

To make GRUB only recognize your stick as OS and not adding the System you have build the stick on do:

echo 'GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER="true"' >> /etc/default/grub
update-grub

Finalize the install by:

rm /sbin/initctl
dpkg-divert --local --rename --remove /sbin/initctl

Now you can reboot onto your USB and have a fully installed Ubuntu system to work with. If you run into the trouble of not being able to start the terminal which seems to be related to a bug in gnome-terminal you can check in TTY (ctrl+alt+f1 and login with your username and password) the content of /var/log/syslog if it contains lines like this:

May 7 22:30:00 NEXUS-TWO org.gnome.Terminal[1432]: Non UTF-8 locale (ISO-8859-1) is not supported!

To fix this it seem to be enough to execute sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales within TTY and choosing explicitly UTF-8. or set the language and so on within the GUIs settings. Afterwards reboot.