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Pointy
Asked: 2012-12-26 17:10:05 +0800 CST

Making a 12.10 bootable USB drive - usb-creator-gtk fails with a seg fault

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I'm trying to make a bootable installation USB drive. I've tried usb-creator-gtk, and it starts working only to fail with a segmentation fault, leaving a non-bootable drive. I've tried "unetbootin", and it makes a bootable drive that cannot even begin an installation successfully. (I can't tell what it's problem is, but the result is utterly unworkable; the installation process just hangs.)

This seems like something that should be pretty simple, and pretty easy. What am I doing wrong?

My 12.10 installation from which I'm trying to run usb-creator-gtk is up-to-date, and other than this it works fine. The USB stick is fine (and I've tried this with several different USB sticks with the same result).

installation

5 Answers

  1. I have successfully created a new USB boot drive using the following command: 

    $ sudo usb-creator-gtk --allow-system-internal

    WATCH OUT! This may list additional drives in the target list. Be super careful not to overwrite your system partition.

    According to this Ubuntu bug report, this is a very common issue. The comment that lead me to a solution is here.

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  2. Install unetbootin from Ubuntu Software Centre. It will help you create any Linux bootable USB stick

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  3. It seems to be a new bug in 13.10 which will fail to create a USB disk from a file located in a folder with accent (for exemple in french "Téléchargement" which is the download directory).

    So copy that file in another place and retry to create the USB disk.

    The source here.

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  4. I had the same problem, usb-creator-gtk was segfaulting, but I found another answer that said to use dd:

    sudo dd if=/path/to.iso of=/dev/sdd

    This worked the first time! This can be dangerous if you are unsure which device is your USB stick, use gparted or other tool to be 100% confident.

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  5. This is a slightly lame option, but it's the one I reverted to just now (didn't find this post in time).

    Switch to good ol' reliable Windows! Yay. If you have machine running Windows somewhere, you can download the "Unversal USB installer" as per the official Ubuntu install guide:

    http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

    It's just a matter of downloading the installer executable (currently from here, see link in docs above if it's changed), running it, choosing a source ISO and target drive, and then waiting...

    Screenshot of windows USB installation

    Does it seem wrong to resort to using Windows to install Ubuntu? Who cares! It works!

    P.S. - it does take absolutely ages though. And, as per the screenshot, the progress bar is no help. You'll need patience!

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