OK I follow - I just never came across anywhere that you could specify that.

The original request is to specify a "location" but you only get to pick that off a list, not enter any details. And after that - if the image ain't there, it just bombs - no choice to re-specify. Took me back to MS-DOS 2.2 days - Abort, Retry, Fail? :laugh:

Spending any more time experimenting just ruins the fun for me. Having the entire installation duplicated on the flash disk may be overkill, but what the hell... it works... :woohoo:

To clarify, I meant point to a subdirectory when it requests a location for the image, but this is without a separate image on the drive. If you do have an extra image on you root then, as in your case, you did not have to.

Well not in my case. I put the image in the root of the flash drive and the install picked it up without so much as a hiccup.

From memory you need to point to a sub-directory when it asks you for the location of the image, but, as it is so long ago, I can't remember the details and I don't have any spare hardware to try it on.

Yayyy

I modified The Rufus procedure by adding one step: after creating the USB drive using Rufus, I copied the .ISO image into the root of the USB as well, as suggested by other posters in this thread. Obviously this means you need a flash disk at least twice the size of the ISO image you are installing.

I did not mark the ISO image as "hidden".

The ClearOS installation, right after switching from text- to graphics-based install screen, asks for the source of your files. At this point you just press [Enter] to select the default, sda1, and all goes well for the next few screens - you choose a system name, you can customise the network interface IP settings, and then you select which hard drive(s) you want the system installed to.

But without that extra copy of the install image, this is where it gets interesting. Right after formatting the selected hard drives, on the Boot Loader selection screen, when you click [Next] the error message comes up

Missing ISO 9660 Image
The installer has tried to mount image #1, but cannnot find it
on the hard drive.
Please copy this image to the drive and click Retry. Click Exit
to abort the installation.
[Exit] [Retry]

...and the installation will not continue. But with it there, it fairly whizzes through - *SO* much faster than a CD install.

Many thanks to all contributors in this thread. For so long I have been going with the tedious long way round method simply because it involved less thinking. Now the install takes less than 5 minutes whereas it used to be over half an hour! And I have to point out that Rufus created that boot drive at a helluva clip too.

Sorry, i should have have been more clear: its my first try with ClearOS... I install it on any computer i want flawlessly; my basic need was to run a server on an atom 1,6GHz (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port%C3%A1til_Magalh%C3%A3es) for self education. So what i've done was to run Rufus to write to external pendrive and boot the notebook from it. Followed the steps on screen to install to internal pendrive and after 3-4 keys pressed i was installing on ClerOS's graphical interface without errors! Better than the other firewall/router/(...) text based concurrent installers on the market.
So yes, i run it how and where i need.
One thing i can do in the future if you want is to post a video or screenshots of it, right now i'm not using it as i'm awaiting some hardware parts to studdy DSL Bonding and will repeat it for the final project.

Joaquim Fonseca wrote:

Just to give someone searching for this situation a help, for windows users the easiest way to send to usb is running Rufus.

Yeh Joaquim the issue is not how to write to USB, we all managed to do that, it's how to get the install to *run* once you have it on USB. Have you tested a USB drive that you created with Rufus?

Just to give someone searching for this situation a help, for windows users the easiest way to send to usb is running Rufus.

Hi John,

I must admit i tried all the drive options a couple of times and then it seemed to just work. I can't recall if the instructions that iso2usb gave as to the boot drive was correct. I know there are some issues with usb and how they present a valid drive number. It wont hurt to try all the options sds, sdb,sdc etc. Make sure in the bios that you have the usb enabled as a boot device and make this the first optiion. On may bios if you hold the F8 key on boot it will give the boot options to select .

Can't think of anything else other than to rip the drive out and put it in another machine with valid DVD/CD

regards

Jon

Hi Jon,

Thanks for your reply.
I was unable to duplicate your solution and my box has USB2 so ... it can't be because it's too slow.


Greetings,

John

Hi,

I recently managed to re install from usb on an older machine using the ISO2USB program. I found this looking at how to install centos 6.5 from USB.

At first go it did not find the image file but I think this just was the slowness of the USB. Normal install followed.

J

Hi all,

I have found alternative solutions.
I tested an external DVD player and a Zalman Storage Case with disk emulator (connected to USB) successfully.

Thanks for your support and good luck to anyone who encounters related issues.
Hopefully an official USB friendly installer will come out soon for people who do not have these options.

Greetings,

John

Unfortunately, especially with older PC's, USB booting is not as good as it should be. for example I sometimes use a distro called Porteus which is designed for USB booting. One of my PC's works with it and the other one does not but they both work from the live CD. My server (built in 2009 with a M/B which was not cutting edge at the time) also won't boot from USB. Years ago I temporarily hooked up CD drive to do the installation. I've had to do my recent recovery stuff with a CD as well, or by removing the disk and putting it in another machine.

You may be doomed to failure on this one! It may be easier to pull the disk and install ClearOS with the disk in another PC then transfer the disk back again!

Thanks Nick,

But I already attempted this with LinuxLive USB, but this results in the problems mentioned in my previous posts.

Insert your driver disk into /dev/sda and press "OK" to continue.

after pressing "OK" ...

Driver disk is invalid for this release of ClearOS Community.

The problems I have are not about how to make a USB bootable,because I used several tools for that successfully.
The problems I have start after the USB has been booted.

Please assist,

John

Just use the LinuxLive USB method. It is quick and easy and can be done from a PC. You do not need to copy the ISO to it afterwards (I checked last night).

Alternatively, you could download a copy of UBCD, boot yout PC from it and then format the USB stick using Partition Magic.

If you want to use fdisk you'll need to check the commands to create a partition then format it to ext2, 3 or 4. Try somehting like this

Hi all,

I have no problem making a bootable USB, but the problem with COS is that when installing from USB there needs to be some sort of redirection to it self ... :blink:

The most logical option to chose is hard drive option, but after that none of the options work.
When installing from CD/DVD the installation files are automatically found on the CD/DVD, but when booting from USB they are not.

Tony's way is an advanced way of doing it in Dave's way and I don't even get that so ...

-~-

I understand now that the USB should not be mounted when using Dave's / Tony's way, but I encounter the following problem with Dave's procedure:

# fdisk -l
...
Disk /dev/sdb: 15.5 GB, 15504900096 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 14786 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x20ac7dda

# cfdisk /dev/sdb
FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 0: Partition begins after end-of-disk
Press any key to exit cfdisk

And I encounter the following problem with Tony's procedure:

# fdisk /dev/sdb

WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to
switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to
sectors (command 'u').

Command (m for help): m
Command action
a toggle a bootable flag
b edit bsd disklabel
c toggle the dos compatibility flag
d delete a partition
l list known partition types
m print this menu
n add a new partition
o create a new empty DOS partition table
p print the partition table
q quit without saving changes
s create a new empty Sun disklabel
t change a partition's system id
u change display/entry units
v verify the partition table
w write table to disk and exit
x extra functionality (experts only)

Command (m for help):

Now I still don't have a clue what to do ... and I take Dave's warning seriously, so I refuse to experiment with it on a live box.

Please assist,

John

EDIT:
Is there a way to boot up from USB with Virtualbox ... ?!?

I just used Dave Loper's method - thanks Dave - worked first go (with minor
changes as I went thru it as noted below)...

1. Used the equivalent fdisk commands instead of sfdisk... fdisk is
installed by default. Using "m for help" is all that is necessary to see
what the fdisk commands are once you have started with "fdisk /dev/sdx"
where x is your usb drive letter as per Dave's instructions.

2. I wanted a community full install, not the professional. So instead of
using the "wget" instructions, I simply used the standard download web page
for the 64-bit 6.5 iso and did a cp to the same location on the usb drive
that the Dave's "wgets" would have gone to. I didn't require a net-install
image, so only one iso file for me. Ignored the "ln" instruction line after
the "wget" lines as the download had already provided a nice name for the
iso

3. As I was using the community edition what Dave had as
"clearos-professional-6.4.0-x86_64.iso", I substituted
"clearos-community-6.5.0-x86_64.iso" which was the name of the file I had
downloaded.

and that was it... just a few tedious minutes cutting and pasting, changing
drive letter and iso file-name, and the download time of course... thanks
Dave... my new ClearOS box is up and running.

The instructions for using fdisk are easy.. Dave, don't understand why you
didn't use the default program.
ClearOS doesn't provide sfdisk on any ClearOS repos' I could find either. In
fact, I found some posts on the net warning that sfdisk might cause problems
on Redhat and Redhat derived distributions in certain circumstances. Not
sure what the actual risk is, but why take the risk when the default
installed program does the job adequately?

Also, I would have preferred /dev/sdx in those instructions, as it is less
likely there is a real /dev/sdx present. I re-read each command three times
before pressing enter as my usb drive was /dev/sdc. I didn't want to clobber
/dev/sdb which is one half of a Raid 1 :-(

Hmmm... one last thing - when you are doing the ClearOS install think VERY
CAREFULLY when you get to the "Install boot loader" screen. The default
didn't look right for my system concerning where it was to be installed, so
I changed it - in this install the disk drive was /dev/sda and the usb drive
/dev/sdb. If I hadn't changed it, it would have written to the USB drive...

The easiest method I found was using LinuxLive USB. I did not even need to copy the iso onto the usb stick. That *may* only be necessary for the recovery option but I need to test more to confirm. Running LiveLinux I think I used both options to hide and not hide the installation files and both worked, but if in doubt, do not hide the files. When I booted from the USB stick it was device sda1. I'd be surprised if it were sdbX.

With Dave's method, the device is not necessarily /dev/sdc. I did it slightly differently as I used Parted Magic from the UBCD (installed to a USB stick) to format the stick I was going to use to ext2 rather than ext4. I had difficulty mounting it using the command Dave gave and had to use the fuller form "mount -t ext2 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb/".

Actually, re-reading your post, the "mount | grep /dev/sdc" was supposed to fail. Dave said to check the device was not mounted. If it is mounted, I don't think you can format it. If the command returned anything you'd need to unmount the drive before proceeding.

Hi all,

At 1st I thought that with so many posts about this subject that one of them should work, but so far I had no success ...
After several different successful attempts to boot into the ClearOS installer from USB, I am still unable to start it, because it cannot find the files it needs.
When I select the installation method and select the hard drive, I am presented with a list of /dev/sdb#.
No matter which one I select, I get the following error message:

An error occurred finding the installation image on your hard drive. Please check your images and try again.

Pressing "OK" results in:

Device /dev/sdb# does not appear to contain an installation image.

Pressing F2 for additional devices results in the following list:

sda
sdb
sr0

No matter what disk I select the result is the same:
sda:

Insert your driver disk into /dev/s... and press "OK" to continue.
Driver disk is invalid for this release of ClearOS Community.

sdb:

results with a list of earlier mentioned /dev/sdb#

sr0:

Failed to mount driver disk.

Anyway ... all the information above is quiet useless, so I attempted to follow Dave Loper's instructions, but this went even worse, because I was not even able to mount the usb device with "mount | grep /dev/sdc" ...
I cannot accept that this is the end and I also cannot accept that this has to be done by someone who spend the last 20 years as a developer (not me).

Please help, because installing from usb is my only alternative.

John

Success! Perhaps my system was too far gone with some of my earlier tests as I'd nuked my /boot drive. I have not thoroughly tested but it worked using angel's post pointing to livelinuxusb. I loaded the CD image using livelinuxusb and I also copied the iso onto the stick (not tested if this was necessary). I booted from the usb stick. When it first asked where the image was I selected Hard Disk and sda1. It then went to look for the image file was and left an empty box (which is effectively the root). I said OK and the rescue install proceeded.

Dave's method did not work, but when it was looking for the image file it was looking a couple of directories down for a .img file. Perhaps if I'd pointed it to the iso file, it may have worked but I can't put in any more time testing. The livelinuxusb method is very simple and worked.

Lex, I did not get round to trying yours but thanks for the post. Once I get the new server working I may get some time to play around with the old one and see what I can make work.

Now I'm waiting for my new hardware to arrive.

Lex Vroemen van Amstel wrote:

Hi I use http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ select other and i always copy the ISO to the USB drive afterwards.
During installation when there asked for the CD point to the usb drive. Succes

Does that just boot into the installer or does it give you the rescue option as well?

Hi I use http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ select other and i always copy the ISO to the USB drive afterwards.
During installation when there asked for the CD point to the usb drive. Succes

....... and no, that did not work either. I could only do a ClearOS installation and not a rescue - and that was after a little manual intervention where I had to select the installation image. Nothing like the automated set up we get from the CD and no rescue option.

Please can we have a fully functioning USB image?

Simon wrote:

I've just installed 6.3 from a USB with this method...

Use software to create USB drive : http://www.linuxliveusb.com/
Step 1: Select USB drive to use.
Step 2: Choose ISO file that you downloaded (
Step 3: Live Mode
Step 4: Untick "Enable launching LinuxLive" & tick "Format the key in FAT32" (REMEMBER: THIS WILL ERASE THE SELECTED DRIVES DATA!!)
Step 5: Create
--
Once the USB key has been created then copy the ISO file onto the USB drive.
--
Boot from USB key on your device.
--
When asked if to use CD or Hard Drive, select Hard Drive and then select the USB device (For me it was sda1)
--
Install as you would normally.

I've tried this but it did not work in rescue mode.

I'll give Dave's method a go, initially renaming the the netinstall iso to 6.5.0. If that does not work I'll try renaming the 6.5.0 iso to 6.4.0 but I really wish ClearOS would provide this.

@Arnan,
I've just tried your method and there is no syslinux.exe in extracted win32 folder. The file exists in /bios/win32. There is a similar syslinux64.exe in /bios/win64. Your command fails with both files with the message:

Failed to move ldlinux.sys to destination directory: /boot/syslinux

Failed to move ldlinux.c32 to destination directory: /boot/syslinux

Note this is running on a Win7 x64 system and running from a command prompt in Windoze.

Arnan de Gans wrote:

Or you simply flash the regular ISO on a usb stick or drive and use that... Read the guide I created in the first post of this topic.
There is no need for a USB specific ISO.

Thanks for that. I was not sure if your method would give the rescue options which I recently needed (and may need again soon when I move everything across onto a new server), so I was hoping for an official version which would work just like the CD.

Perhaps I'll try a dry run of your version.

@Dave Loper.
Does the netinstall iso have to be the same version as the CD iso? If so I am stuck with doing 6.4 and upgrading rather than installing 6.5 directly.

@Chris Bedford,
I have a feeling the clearos-community-x86_64.iso is a mistake and is the same as the clearos-community-6.4.0-x86_64.iso but I'm not about to download them to check.

Thant's fantastic, Dave...

But...

...it leaves me with more questions than I had originally.

(a) How does a normal user know about the mirrors having more / different files? ("Mirror" => "looks the same", in my naive mind)

(b) How does a normal user know which file on that mirror is the right one? Or even

(c) which file is what on that mirror - there is a "clearos-community-6.4.0-x86_64.iso" as well as an identical-looking one (same size and date/time stamp) that is just called "clearos-community-x86_64.iso". Nothing anywhere to indicate that either of these is a USB install... :unsure:

By "normal" user I mean, of course, someone who like me is quite comfortable installing servers but isn't a hacker or developer. I've set up so many Clark / Clear machines in the last seven or eight years I really couldn't count them, had to fiddle a couple of settings here and there to get slightly out-of-the-ordinary configurations to work, have ploughed through acres of documentation... but never seen anything about USB installations. I did a couple of installs in Virtual Box VMs and was very gratified to see how fast and easy it was to run the installation from a virtual CD by mounting the CD ISO, and was then *so* disappointed when I had to go back to the s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w way of burning a CD and then waiting for the install to grind - grind - grind away on the disk. Sigh.

Or you simply flash the regular ISO on a usb stick or drive and use that... Read the guide I created in the first post of this topic.
There is no need for a USB specific ISO.

Thanks for the reply. What is the possibility of Clear producing and hosting the iso? I'd be happy to add it to my ClearOS torrents. These days I would guess a lot of servers don't have CD/DVD drives so the USB installation route would be the easiest.

You can always get the netinstall iso for Community from any of the mirrors...like this one:

http://mirror.1000mbps.com/clearos/community/6.4.0/iso/x86_64/

@Dave Loper
I've had a look at the guide and it refers to the professional edition. The equivalent netinstall.iso does not exist for the community version. Can we use the professional one?

Also, as you are providing so many different images now, can you consider providing USB images? I've been doing a bit of disaster recovery recently and my server does not have a CD/DVD drive so I had to hook one up temporarily and it is slow compared to USB.

No, I don't lack the experience - I lack the perseverance ;-)

I'm basically lazy. I've been doing the hacking and command-line stuff for more years than I care to remember and I'm kinda getting bored with that, so I look for "out of box" solutions and that's why I've been using Clark Connect / ClearOS since version 2 or 3. I love that everyting is manageable from one screen, and that so many complex aspects of server configuration have been reduced to a few basic and simple parameters (tried configuring an MS Exchange machine recently? Sheeezzz....)

Chris, ClearOS (Centos) can be installed quite easily of an USB drive using my or (I think) Dave's guide.
Sure there are a few other steps to make the drive actually bootable that could be automated. But other than that it's pretty straight forward.

You also posted on my site asking for this exact problem, you didn't mention you used a 2 year old version of ClearOS. That's the problem. Plain and simple.
There are a number of guides and methods out there, but apparently you lack the experience to make it work. Which makes me wonder why you'd bother with a Advanced Server OS at all ( No offence ).

Thanks Dave

I found this shortly after posting my query - tried it, fell at the first hurdle. I think I have to have a later version of Clear installed, I was using 5.something which apparently does not have all the right packages.

Anyway kudos to you for this very technical hack - seems to point to a bit of a flaw in the basic installation program, since every other OS (many *IX distros, Windows, Mac OS) can all be installed straight off USB as if it was an optical disk.

It also is a lot of work for very little reward - if I was installing 50 new machines it might be worthwhile, but for single installations it is *much* less trouble (and faster!) just to burn a CD (and if I was about to install 50 machines I'd probably install one and clone the disks with something like Clonezilla!).

Here's a guide I put together.

Thanks to Anan for working out that clever hack to build a bootable installation flash disk, and well done Angel for finding a ready-made flash disk creator that does it in a few less steps... but both of these produce the same (lack of) results for me.

The problem is that after booting from the flash drive and initiating the installation process, ClearOS prompts for the source of its files: options are (a) local CD/DVD, (b) [local] hard drive, (c) NFS directory or (d) URL. I can't get any further with any of them because (a) can't find a disk in the CD-ROM drive, and is not interested in trying unless you put one in there, (b) offers volumes or partitions on sdb and sdc - looks like these are the spinning metal drives in my box - and not sda, which I imagine would be the boot flash disk. And (c) and (d) are not options, well obviously.

So what now... burn a CD, like we used to do in the last century?

Hi everyone, B)

Just use this Lili usb creator.... just install it and it will do all the work... :laugh:

great stuff... here's the link... http://www.linuxliveusb.com/

good luck :lol:

oke thanks for the links iwant try it

If you are stuck, here are some alternative methods:
here
Follow the link in this post
A linux method

i chance it is now good ?
where can i find it the syslinux.exe file ??