UNetBootIn screwing up - don't know why

[tomcloyd]

I have the 9.10 netbook ISO, and need, of course, to load it to a flash drive so I can load it to my HP Netbook. I'm using UNetBootIn to get it onto a 4 gig flashdrive. It's partitioned so that there's a /dev/sdc1 (ext3) = ~1GB, and /dev/sdc2 (ext2) = all the rest.

Three times I've run UNetBootIn, and been very careful to select /dev/sdc1 as the target for the writeoff. Each time it's created a new folder on my main OS's media folder, and put the files THERE. Not only do I now not have a functioning live flashdrive, I have this junk on /media which I don't know how to remove.

I'm lost here. Can anyone clue me in?

===

UPDATE: This might be a clue. I just tried to install USB-Creator, and was told by the OS that it couldn't be done 'cause it couldn't get an "exclusive lock" on something or other. This makes sense because I running the 9.10 upgrade in the background (and running and running....). It must have something locked, just as any other install process would.

So, might this "lock" be messing somehow with UNetBootIn (which has always before worked just fine), so it cannot move the 9.10 ISO to my flash drive? It's beyond me to answer this, but I can imagine a scenario where the answer would be 'yes'.

[josefko]

Re: UNetBootIn screwing up - don't know why

I used unetbootin for Kubuntu 9.04 without problem and the only difference between me and you I see that my USB disk with only one partition was formatted as FAT16 or FAT32 because I remember, that when preparing live USB manually it was the rule.
Written before update of the topic.

[arochester]

Re: UNetBootIn screwing up - don't know why

My experiance of Unetbootin is that it puts things on, but it does not always clear things off.

If you use it for A it works, then use it for B it might work, then use it for C it does not work. Bits of A and B get left on and added to C until it is impossibe to use.

I think the USB stick needs to be especially cleaned before use - whether that means deletion, reformatting or repartitioning.

[tomcloyd]

Re: UNetBootIn screwing up - don't know why

OK, this is really really distressing me. I've tried this about 8 times. Last time I deleted every partition on my flashdrive (FD), using GParted, and formated a single ext2 partition. I fired up UNetBootIn, set up my netbook ISO as the input, and /dev/sdc1 (FD) as output, and it once again began putting the IOS onto /sdb5/media/, after creatiing a dir (is that what it's doing) there with the same name I had given my FD.

/sdb5 is the UBS HD where my Kubuntu 9.0.4 lives - the OS I run all the time.

I've used UNetBootin successfully before - while running Kubuntu off my USB HD. But now it is NOT doing what it's told, and I now have on /sdb5/media a BUNCH of dirs (again, is that what they are? if so why cannot I delete them?) with partial loads of my netbook ISO (partial 'cause I bombed it off when I saw that it was going to the wrong place).

This is nuts. Worse, it's unusable.

Anyone know how I can upgrade my netbook from 9.04 to the special netbook version of 9.10? I don't see how that option can be done without a FD IOS to work from. Arrrrgh!

[kitterma]

Re: UNetBootIn screwing up - don't know why

Do a regular upgrade to Kubuntu 9.10 and then after the upgrade is complete install the kubuntu-netbook package. When you restart KDE after that, it should be in the netbook shell and not the regular desktop.