Live CD works fine fail when installed to USB stick

[JimsWorkshop]

Thanks for making GhostBSD. I want to move to BSD but slowly by starting with booting to a usb and then adding drivers and programs I like. I'm installing on a 32GB usb thumb drive. The CD boots up and works fine!!! I installed from the CD to the USB drive. Failed first time. I forgot to write down the fail, though I think it said look at install something file in temp directory but when I looked nothing was there. I didn't use a password the first time. Maybe that was the problem. Do you have to have a password to install? I didn't use one as I wanted it to be easy to test. If it worked I would add one. So I installed again and it says it completed successfully??? The second time I installed I did use a pass but it was only one letter. Booting looked good until I believe X was starting. I did get two errors. The two errors were VERR file not found. Fail to start Vbox service.(I assume VERR=Vbox). And Trim flag on fs but disk does not support ...either trim or fs. Went by too fast not sure. (I'm guessing it pertains to trimming for solid state type disk???)I got a small round icon (maybe like a watch icon) like X booting then it crashed. Not sure it got to the point of X booting but I think so.

Is there a file written on the usb that I can look at with the active GhostCD to tell what went wrong? What steps should I take to troubleshoot?

The odd thing is the CD boots and works fine. I really like the interface and the set up.
It looks really good.

I installed "Use Entire Disk" with "bsd boot loader".

Is there a way that I can put a boot manager on a usb then boot to GhostBSD. I looked at various boot managers but they all seem to want to install to my hard drive. I don't want that as I have Truecrypt in that space an I'm afraid I won't be able to use it if it's overwritten.

[ericbsd]

Are you familiar with command line interface?

I have never test an install of GhostBSD on USB stick.

You have to add pass word for root and user if not the installer will fail.

[JimsWorkshop]

Thank you for responding. I used CLI back in the day on PC's..DOS. I hated it. I can do it and understand the idea but don't know any of the commands. I know it's faster but I don't understand why anyone likes CLI. Unless you have the commands memorized you have to write them down or have a book with you so for me I don't save any time.

After all that yes I can use a CLI if necessary. Is there any way to use the LiveCD? Where would I find the files that say what went on when booting or is there one?

[JimsWorkshop]

I'm thinking about taking a different tact. The goal is to not touch any of my regular partitions. I want to use a CD or USB to boot a partition. I made a partition on a drive. I found this boot manager called Plop Boot Manager. I'm hoping I can boot BSD using it. It has a boot CD rom. So I don't use the BSD boot manager start up, correct??? Anyways I'll try it and see what happens. If it works I can make several partitions and maybe try a couple of BSD's. The whole goal is to move to BSD. I'm sick of Windows and over many years, many years...., I've tried many Linuxes and they vary so much that while better than windows it a nightmare keeping up with them. I just want to use my computer not dicker with it all the time. My hope is to get a BSD on a partition then work with it when I feel like it. Slowly compiling all my software and seeing what programs I like best. Then hopefully I can just maintain this one stable system that I like. Thanks again for the work you've done on Ghost BSD.

One last thing. It might be a good idea to call the major version number the same as BSD that it derives from. Then add your version numbers on the end. For example 10.0.4.0 if your version is 4.0 , just a thought.

[ericbsd]

That is weird that you try to move to BSD instead of GNU/Linux, But BSD is a true Unix not like GNU/Linux.

You might get some problem doing partition yourself, 4.0 have a bug in the installer.

If you can at leas boot, up in the black screen looking like DOS, which it is call tty I can help you to go further.

You are right I should use the same numbers then FreeBSD.

[JimsWorkshop]

The reason I want BSD instead of linux is it's a system. Linux distros are all so different and change so much so often that I see it as a waste of time to learn the same thing over and over. I want to learn one way and stick with it. I do understand the difference. I wish the Lawsuit against BSD never happened. If not BSD would be the dominate one and Linux would be no where. Not that I hate Linux it's just has no stability. It has super great stuff though. The main reason I've decided to bite the bullet is jails. I can set up one then a copy then have another system to screw around with and not worry about blowing up the whole thing. I really like this idea. My background I've done some FORTRAN programming and assembly but that was 30 years ago so I'm not stupid (well maybe a little or a lot stupid) just ignorant. There's so many steps that I don't know where to start.
Plan
1. I'm going to try PCBSD and GhostBSD I'm liking Ghost as it has less stuff.
2. I made two partitions on a drive with no windows on it.
3. I'm going to try to install PCBSD in one and Ghost in the other.4. I want to use some kind of boot manager to boot them. I want a CD. So when I boot with the CD it allows me to select what to boot. I tried Plop Boot Manager. It didn't work. So I found Ultimate Boot CD - 5.3.3 and it has several boot managers. One is Super GRUB2. It says,"...Super GRUB2 Disk does not write to the disk at all, and so cannot rewrite the MBR. Super GRUB2 Disk can only be used to boot a broken system, it cannot fix it directly...". Exactly what I want. I want to slowly work on this one partition and get everything set up then move to it completely when I understand it.

Things I don't understand.
1. Do I need to install the boot manager??? boot loader???or whatever that has a check mark for it on the install? I can't remember what it was called.
2. What I don't understand is how the MBR will be effected by adding two operating systems. I know it at the front of the drive. I'm assuming it tells where to point to to start an operating system. I don't think it is needed(to point anywhere) if I have a boot manager though. I'm not sure about this. I don't know what actually starts the operating system. I guess it would be Syslinux (for linux) but I'm not sure what I need for Ghost or BSD. Sorry it's hard to explain what you don't know for sure. That's why this is so wordy. I know that when you use linux to install it wants to install a boot loader, I think grub usually, in the front part of your drive. I want to avoid this and use the boot manager CD to pick the operating system to boot. I'm assuming that will work if I have whatever substitutes for Syslinux with BSD on the partition.
3. I'm going to post this but don't answer. I realized I'm asking too many questions and as I wrote this I've thought of new ways to try to do what I'm doing. I'll fool around a few days and then maybe I'll have better questions. I don't want to erase what wrote so you'll see what I tried.

[ericbsd]

If don't install the BSD boot manager it should boot into GhostBSD, you don't need it to install GhostBSD. GhostBSD 4.0 was kind of mess when released, I work on development of GhostBSD alone, which make it hard to pin point all problem. GhostBSD will work fine beside FreeBSD or PCBSD and you can also install setup Grub to boot GHostBSD.

[JimsWorkshop]

Well I haven't written back because I had a massive destruction of my drives. Seems that where the partition manager says it's going to write GhostBSD is not necessarily where it's going to write. I noticed it was writing to the wrong drive and stopped it but lost about 500GB of data. I had a lot backed up but didn't have some that I thought I did., What a nightmare. Luckily I had backed up windows XP partition with Hiren boot disk or I would be screwed.

It looks as if the partition manager has a different line up of which drive is first. For example I tell my bios that I want to boot drive #5 first. It does so and when I look at the drives they line up with drive #5 being drive#1(or C: in Windows) with the Live GhostBSD BUT the partition manager doesn't pay attention to the bios or what the LiveCD says. It takes the drives in PHYSICAL order, or so I've reasoned. So drive #5 is #5 no matter what the partition manager tells you. In my case I know for absolutely 100% positive I picked the right drive. Before I wrote I checked with Truecrypt, windows and looked at the partition manager and they all said I picked the right drive. It just wrote to the wrong one.

I've found that Windows XP does the exact same thing. Wanna guess how? Another 500GB gone. I think I had backups. Games, movies, etc. Now I know never ever ever ever install anything without unpowering ALL drives except what you want to write too. Cost me weeks to get this stuff back and a lot is irrevocably gone. Mostly books, movies and stuff but I lost a lot of new passes and post.

My problem with BSD, Linux, etc. is it's not only not user friendly it's just impossible to predict what they will do and there seems to be no way to easily find out. I like to encrypt my computer. I use Truecrypt and to encrypt the system I click, Encrypt system, and it encrypts it LIVE while I surf the web. I tried to use Mint Linux to encrypt the system and it's really a mess. I didn't even try BSD because it's so difficult. All Linuxes and BSD's seem to be set up to be put on a disk by themselves. Add another partition or encryption and there doesn't seem to be any straightforward way to do so. PCBSD is no better it crashes completely.

It seems to me that some basic work on installation needs to be done. If you're going to switch operating systems then you ought to be able to put the new OS on a partition and then use the bios to boot that partition. I wanted to put several different ones on a different drive. Boot that drive and THEN use grub to pick which one to boot. This seems like it should be relatively straight forward but it's not. Especially if you want them encrypted. I can't imagine anyone wanting to use their computer with all their bank passwords and stuff on it not encrypting the system. When you try to encrypt it's not at all clear what exactly you're doing. Very little visual guidance as to what's going on. It would be stupendous if it would encrypt in place like Truecrypt.

It's tough to give up Windows. They've done so much work on it. It may be ### but they've poured perfume on it for a long time and when ever I run into something I need to do. A little rename program or some small mp3 editor there's always some free portable program I can find in a jiffie that works without compiling the thing and figuring out a myriad of stuff to get it to work. I'll just have to keep plugging away. I've got several drives separately with BSD and Linux. Working with Truecrypt is a must.

Keep in mind that I'm not a complete idiot. I took assembly language and FORTRAN in college. I'm NOT a programmer but I can follow instructions but if there is none or the steps become so scatted that you can't assemble the information you need without becoming a kernal expert it's not worth doing.

This is not the first time I've tried moving to Linux or BSD. Always fail. Drivers, this, that or just too much complexity to overcome to where I give up. It's disappointing. I like the way BSD is structured. I like the security. I think if I could ever get it set up I could just leave it alone.

[MatthewLentz]

Not sure to understand what you mean, but it might be a configuration in your bios.


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kevin hart