After leaved alone for hour Ubuntu (booted from live USB in "try ubuntu" mode) started to constantly access USB, freeze mouse movement and became almost unresponsive. So I had to remove USB and do hard switch off.
After that it either refuse to detect display and allows to boot text mode only w/o HDD mounts or just shows black screen w/o any action.

To kill installation medium even w/o OS install - that's something...

So, "rock-solid" Linux's live USB is dead now and need to be recreated?
Or it can be repaired somehow to save time for re-create bootable image (I use that USB for many other needs so to empty it and re-build from scratch not very easy).
Can it be reverted to just original state (as I understand "live" boot uses almost whole image as read-only and has some file for persistent OS changes - what that file is and how to replace it or just delete?

EDIT: I see some "casper-rw" file in USB root folder. Will try to move it away...

---

SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

And w/o that file it just paniced...

---

SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

have you checked to see if your USB drive is just bad?

USB flash drives don't like constant use and will wear out very quickly.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

Depending on the motherboard and where USB ports come from has an impact on accessing any USB stick. At least it does on mine. I never want to plug the USB stick on the front panel ports that also have the mouse nano receiver or the mouse and keyboard become unusable. If I want to copy large files or boot a Live USB drive, I always plug it into the rear USB ports that come directly off the cpu and not an addon USB controller chip on the motherboard. Never an issue when I plug in the rear ports. That is an issue with the motherboard, not the OS. Happens with the Windows USB stick too.

It sounds like the kind of problem I described. I always just have the bootable OS on the stick, nothing else. 32GB stick 4-pack is less than $20. There is a way to use a Live USB in persistent mode but I never bothered to use it that way. I've had a Live USB booted for half a day when I got sidetracked on something else and forgot about it. Came back to the computer and the OS was still running and responsive.

The default nouveau video drivers can have issues in detecting displays and video cards and properly setting the display resolution. I like to change the boot grub file on the Live USB by adding nomodeset to the kernel command line just to cover all bases. Never an issue with booting the Live USB if I do that.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

have you checked to see if your USB drive is just bad?

USB flash drives don't like constant use and will wear out very quickly.

USB is OK

---

SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

Depending on the motherboard and where USB ports come from has an impact on accessing any USB stick. At least it does on mine. I never want to plug the USB stick on the front panel ports that also have the mouse nano receiver or the mouse and keyboard become unusable. If I want to copy large files or boot a Live USB drive, I always plug it into the rear USB ports that come directly off the cpu and not an addon USB controller chip on the motherboard. Never an issue when I plug in the rear ports. That is an issue with the motherboard, not the OS. Happens with the Windows USB stick too.

It sounds like the kind of problem I described.

Of course I use exactly same way of booting as before incident. And it worked before.

There is a way to use a Live USB in persistent mode but I never bothered to use it that way. I've had a Live USB booted for half a day when I got sidetracked on something else and forgot about it. Came back to the computer and the OS was still running and responsive.

My has persistent storage by default. Did nothing special to get it.

The default nouveau video drivers can have issues in detecting displays and video cards and properly setting the display resolution. I like to change the boot grub file on the Live USB by adding nomodeset to the kernel command line just to cover all bases. Never an issue with booting the Live USB if I do that.

Will try to change grub, thanks

---

SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

Normally a Live USB starts fresh every time you boot it. But you can set aside persistent storage when you create it. This web page describes how.
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14912/create-a-persistent-bootable-ubuntu-usb-flash-drive/

If I remember Stephen at one time ran BOINC and Seti from a persistent Live USB stick.

If you go to the /boot/grub directory on the stick, you will see grub.cfg. You can edit the file by searching the file for the term "quiet splash" and do a find and replace with "nomodeset"

Don't insert the quotes. Save the file. When you reboot the Live USB will now see the boot loading sequence instead of the logo splash screen. It is handy to scan for failed in red statements for further investigation. By using the nomodeset it will be easier to use graphics cards that have the default nouveau drivers try and set resolution outside the card capabilities and especially outside the display capabilities. This is what typically leads to a blank screen after the boot sequence loads the desktop.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Normally a Live USB starts fresh every time you boot it. But you can set aside persistent storage when you create it. This web page describes how.
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14912/create-a-persistent-bootable-ubuntu-usb-flash-drive/

If I remember Stephen at one time ran BOINC and Seti from a persistent Live USB stick.

If you go to the /boot/grub directory on the stick, you will see grub.cfg. You can edit the file by searching the file for the term "quiet splash" and do a find and replace with "nomodeset"

Don't insert the quotes. Save the file. When you reboot the Live USB will now see the boot loading sequence instead of the logo splash screen. It is handy to scan for failed in red statements for further investigation. By using the nomodeset it will be easier to use graphics cards that have the default nouveau drivers try and set resolution outside the card capabilities and especially outside the display capabilities. This is what typically leads to a blank screen after the boot sequence loads the desktop.

Hm... I created that stick more than year ago and can't recall details but Rufus sounds familiar and Live USB Creator doesn't. Still I have stick with persistent storage... Well, will attempt to diagnose issue then post details here.

---

SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

Well I spent spent several hours yesterday attempting to make a Live USB stick with persistent storage. That part was easy. The part I failed at miserably was to install the Nvidia drivers. They installed but were never used. I could not get the installation off the default nouveau drivers.

Then finally found some information that explained my failure. It is impossible to make a persistent storage Live USB with Nvidia drivers or probably any video driver other than nouveau because of the nature of the kernel mode video drivers. They need to load first and that is impossible since the persistent file needs to load first.

The only way to make a bootable USB drive is to do a full installation to the drive. Then you can replace the default video drivers with other drivers like Nvidia. That is the project for today. I had a computer I dragged out of the closet last summer for the Wow contest running BOINC and the Nvidia drivers for the contest running off a USB stick because I didn't have an proper disk drive to install to at the time. Eventually installed to a new SSD after the contest was over before I put the computer back into the closet. I've pulled that computer out of the closet and is on the kitchen table. First some yard work though.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I created another stick but it happened to be non-bootable one (some hardware issue with flash itself preventing to detect it properly @boot time)
So I tried damaged one again, used "check disk" option from boot menu this time.
It found errors in 2 files (and not attempted to fix!)
also I removed quite and splash from boot string.
And nothing in red before black screen.
At this time it seems to make full backup and re-create stick will be easiest way...

Ubuntu self-repair ability (especially keeping in mind that I use bootable medium with ALL istallation files on it!) very unimpressive.
Windows repair ability seems superseed Ubuntu's by large margin.
Seems I understand why SO low market share with SO much pain from WIndows itself. Though Win is painful in many aspects it has no real alternatives for anyone who want OS to work, not OS to play with...

---

SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

But no bad w/o good.
Thanks to Keith Myers 's link now I posess LiLi tool that allows to easely create bootable stick... and virtualize them !
It's cool to boot from USB but it's even more cool to boot from USB right inside Windows w/o any additional movements.

---

SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

I got my recovery USB stick full Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with Nvidia 410 drivers created this afternoon while watching football games. Now I have a non-UEFI bootable recovery stick that I can boot on any machine for maintenance even the machine with the RTX 2080 as primary video card. Have all the utilities to do backups and editing and recovery on the host machine that I boot the stick from.

Will do the partition backup on the RTX 2080 host machine and then attempt the kernel upgrade again now that I can boot the recovery stick if the kernel upgrade does not go well and can't for some reason simply boot the previous kernel from the regular Advanced menu from grub.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)