UBCD on a USB Flash Disk (USB Key)

[acidash]

any updates on the editing of advance menu? or releasing the sourcecode for it?

Thanks for the great tool!

[reblu]

I have no problems in releasing the source code. I am not maintaining it anymore, so if someone wants to keep working on it, here is where I uploaded the source code:
http://www.reblusoft.com/ubusb/ubusb_source.zip

I have only managed to compile it in a Linux box. I have modified also the menu system by Murali Krishnan Ganapathy. You will find my modifications marked with REBLU in the source code of the menu subfolder.

[VCSkier]

first of all, thanks to all of you that have put work into ubcd, and reblu and nwdsk for ubcd2usb. i'm having a problem though. first i tried on a system w/ a pentium d processor, w/ windows xp media center edition, and makebootfat.exe failed every time i tried.

so i tried a second system. it had an athlon xp processor w/ windows xp sp2. makebootfat.exe worked this time, but the process was then halted and said that ubcd.css was missing... i was using a freshly downloaded and extracted iso of ubcd, and then i tried again w/ the iso burned to a cd, but with the same problem. what could i be doing wrong?

thanks, and i appologize if its something dumb that i am missing.

[adrian15]

I have not worked into the SGD + UBCD thing any more. But I've seen that you do use the diskemu command a lot.

I've discovered a grub that has this command.
http://www.znpc.net/avlgo/prjavlgo.rar

I do have to extract a patch from it and apply to my own patched grub.

But it is not my priority at the short-term. If it works I will tell you the results.

adrian15

[frido]

Hi,

I've been trying to build ubcd on a 1G usb disk using the process described below. The key boots fine and i can enter the menu, however most of the dos applications seems to be either hanging (Caldera DR-DOS) or crashing with "Panic: MCB chain corrupted" (Freedos Kernel version 1.1.35w (build 2035w-UNSTABLE, Jan 06 2006). Has anyone seen this before, or is there somebody who can pinpoint the problem ?

[...]
1.- In order to improve the compatibility of the drive with the most number of BIOS, we will format the drive in USB-ZIP compatibility mode, we will make it bootable and we will load syslinux in it (WARNING: THIS WILL REMOVE ALL THE CONTENTS OF THE USB DRIVE)
1.1 Unzip the Makebootfat package to a folder. Unzip Syslinux to another folder and Copy ldlinux.sys, mbr.bin and ldlinux.bss from the Syslinux folder into the makebootfat folder
1.2 Open a DOS window, go to that folder and type
makebootfat -o usb -Z -Y -b ldlinux.bss -m mbr.bin -c ldlinux.sys

2.- Copy all the contents of the \images subfolder of the UBCD into the root of the USB drive

3.- Copy the rest of folders to the USB drive directly, except the boot folder. So your USB drive will have all the subfolders of the UBCD, except for the folders "boot" and "images". Your USB drive root folder will contain all the images.

4.- Remove grub.iso and offline.iso from the root of the USB drive.

5.- Copy the contents of my menu package in the root folder of the USB drive

6.- copy the new images of bcdl, grub and offline to the root of the USB drive.

7.- Rename the freedos image from FDUBCD.IMG to freedos.img and copy it as well to the root of the USB drive.

8.- Copy chain.c32 to the root of the USB drive from the com32/modules subfolder of the syslinux package

I hope somebody finds this useful.
[Edit: Link to Syslinux updated to 3.09]

[enda]

I have no problems in releasing the source code. I am not maintaining it anymore, so if someone wants to keep working on it, here is where I uploaded the source code:
http://www.reblusoft.com/ubusb/ubusb_source.zip

I have only managed to compile it in a Linux box. I have modified also the menu system by Murali Krishnan Ganapathy. You will find my modifications marked with REBLU in the source code of the menu subfolder.

Hello,

can somebody explain me what's the way to use it?
Not a big problem to edit source code and add menu, but I don't know what's the way to compile.

thx for all you've done


EDIT:
sorry, it was not so hard finnaly...
any if somebody else has the same question:
just need to copy extracted source in syslinux/menu dir, then make ..

Very efficient, thx

[jokair]

what a nice job !

thanks all for working so hard

I followed this HOWTO first ( english version )
I managed to boot the gentoo install cd and the gentoo live cd from my 1Go usb key
then, I thinked about this wonderfull UBCD. I use to guive my copies to friends so i thinked it was a good idea to have also those tools on my usb key.
fortunatelly, you use the same tool to boot, so, it was not so hard, just "decrypt" the ubcd2usb.cmd and do equivalent linux commands

Almost all tools are working

perhaps later i'll explain it better, but it was quite simple after reading this (allways) excellent gentoo doc.

next step : add my gentoos to the menu and build my own gentoo live system

many thanks to all who worked on this

[eye_rate_]

so i tried a second system. it had an athlon xp processor w/ windows xp sp2. makebootfat.exe worked this time, but the process was then halted and said that ubcd.css was missing... i was using a freshly downloaded and extracted iso of ubcd, and then i tried again w/ the iso burned to a cd, but with the same problem. what could i be doing wrong?

i had the same problem. maybe at some point "ubcd.css" was located on the ultimate boot disk, but its not on mine, or yours. What I did was edit the ubcd2usb.cmd file to not check for ubcd.css. So i deleted this line:

if not exist %1\ubcd.css %0 : _error Missing '%2\ubcd.css' (where is UBCD)

then it ran. Completely clueless as to why ubcd.css is checked for when it doesnt come with ubcd. Anyone?

[stevodude]

Hi Reblu,

I have tried your Tuto, but I'm stopped by this line :

makebootfat -o usb -Z -Y -b ldlinux.bss -m mbr.bin -c ldlinux.sys

What is "usb" ? Is the volume name of the key or a folder ?

I see another line by U with :

makebootfat -o usb -Z -Y -b ldlinux.bss -m mbr.bin -c ldlinux.sys image

What is "image" ? is-it a folder ? If it's a folder, I have "Error Opening Image".

Have you build UBCD 3.3 on an USB Key which work ? If yes, can you sent to me your application, because it's Free ? Can you sent to me a "PM" for my "Web space".

I need your help.

Thanks !!!

if you hadn't already worked it out ( took me a while, as I had nuked my usb stick and was just reinstalling it now) for even simpler tems...

1.2 Open a DOS window, go to that folder and type
makebootfat -o usb -Z -Y -b ldlinux.bss -m mbr.bin -c ldlinux.sys "image folder"

where "image folder" is a subfolder you create in makebootfat folder before running that command...

ie:
1.1.1 make a sub folder in makebootfat, called ubcdroot

1.2 Open a DOS window, go to that folder and type
makebootfat -o usb -Z -Y -b ldlinux.bss -m mbr.bin -c ldlinux.sys ubcdroot

this will create the ldlinux.sys file in there and then move it to your usb stick (I think)...

[helldriver]

Hi All,

i have tried the script to make my usb stick working with UBCD. Its working very nice. I thank you guys for your work.

Only one question is it posible an iso image from Acronis True Image Server 9.1 to intigrate? What i have to do? I allready tried some things like repack the iso image to igz image with gunzip. I bring them in the custom.msg and in
the syslinux.cfg but that thing says could not find the kernel image acronis..

can somebody help me please????

hell

[coresnake]

Hello everyone, thanks loads for your work on this.
After downloading the batch to do the magic for the usb, first of all the .cmd didnt work on w98 so I renamed it to .bat and it loaded fine, however when I got to the makebootfat part it said it only worked on windows2000/xp etc.
Is there any workaround to do this on windows 98? I've tried looking for a w98 version of makebootfat but I cannot find one.
My winxp computer is the one that i need to fix, so I only have access to a w98 computer with no burner...

Please help me!!

[byte_doctor]

First off, kudos to reblu and everyone at UBCD. This has got to be the most useful repair tool since, well, UBCD on CD...

I started trying to get this working a while back and found the instructions in this thread. "Looks complicated" I thought, so I kept looking and found the instructions at PenDriveLinux. "Great!" I thought, "easy to follow". It even booted the first time. But where was the UBCD stuff? All I could do was run INSERT.

OK, I thought I'd try the instructions here, and it worked! Except, no INSERT... Sigh.

So I combined the two sets of instructions, and now have a USB UBCD that runs the UBCD images and INSERT. I never got the windiag, g4u or rip to work, but those weren't big deals to me.

Here are the steps I followed (in Windows). Hopefully they will help someone:

1. Format the USB stick as Fat16 using the HP USB tool
2. Download the “full version with INSERT of UBCD“, open and extract the ISO to a directory named UBCD.
3. Copy everything except the \boot, \isolinux, and \images directories from the UBCD directory to the USB stick.
4. Download and extract syslinux (I used syslinux 3.31) to a syslinux directory on the pc
5. From a command prompt, CD to the syslinux\win32 directory and type syslinux.exe F: (replace F: with the drive letter of your USB stick - I think it needs to be upper-case)
6. Copy the following files from the UBCD\isolinux directory to the root of the stick:

• logo.16
  memdisk
  miniroot.gz
  vmlinuz

7. Download and extract the following to folders on the PC:

• reblu’s UBUSB menu package
  The modified version of the freedos image (FDUBCD.IMG)

For offline pwd recovery and grub, you will need the igz equivalents of the iso and to allow booting from the CD ROM you will need the the bootable CD Wizard image

• grub.igz
  offline.igz
  bcdl.igz

8. Copy all the contents of the UBCD\images subfolder into the root of the USB stick
9. Remove grub.iso and offline.iso from the root of the USB stick.
10. Copy the contents of the UBUSB menu package into the root folder of the USB stick
11. Copy the new bcdl.igz, grub.igz and offline.igz files to the root of the USB stick.
12. Rename FDUBCD.IMG to freedos.img and copy it to the root of the USB stick.
13. Copy syslinux\com32\modules\chain.c32 to the root of the USB stick
14. Edit the syslinux.cfg in the root of the USB stick and replace

Code: Select all

  LABEL insert
  KERNEL vmlinuz 
  APPEND 

with:

Code: Select all

  LABEL insert
  KERNEL vmlinuz 
  APPEND ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=en apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=miniroot.gz nomce quiet BOOT_IMAGE=insert

(the APPEND is on line 487 in my copy of syslinux.cfg)
Note that the APPEND line is one, single line.

And there you have it. Really, these are reblu's instructions with a couple of minor tweaks. I just used the HP USB Formatting tool and syslinux because they had worked well for me in the past and were less confusing for me. Most likely the makebootfat approach will work just fine as well.

[Myk3]

I work for a pc company and am trying to run mhdd from usb drive... i am able to run memtest86+ with ubcd or only using syslinux is there a way to edit syslinux.cfg to run diskemu instead of memdisk??

i have tried to download the diskemu and run it but it says ( can not find kernel)


i can get MHDD to run on most desktops but when i try it on laptops it frezes but memtest still works... thanks

[sonika]

Nice work guys, the 3 of you rock!! This is exactly what I've been trying to do. Can't wait until I've got the time to give it a shot.

Would be good as well if we could make some sort of a wrapper so that the iso could be run directly off the USB flash drive tho.. the main reason being that I've also added quite a few other apps like ERD2005 and Partition Magic, Ghost etc to the UBCD and I'm not sure they will run (mainly erd2k5) with the changes you've suggested.

This is definitely a good direction for this to take, as that CD is my most commonly used tool and with it all on flash drive it's a hell of a lot more portable and I've just about always got my flash drive on me.

Once again keep up all the good work, you guys rock

Sonika

[stevodude]

Hmm just tried your method, but non of the freedos apps run, just says loading feedos and sits there forever.
onyl apps that seem to work are the linux image's
ie none of the hdd tools, or speedtest etc work.

any thing I can look at? I copied the FDUBCD.imd to freedos.img to usb ( which I assume is being used for all the dos apps? ).

cheers, stevo

one thing that is a little confusing is step 7 - download and extract the 2 files, I'm ok with the menu one as you say to copy the contents to the usb, and just rename the fdubcd.img to freedos.img, but what about the extracted files from it? doesn't need extracting?...

btw I used the ubcd 3.4 image, maybe should go back to an earlier version?

oh and "9. Remove grub.iso and offline.iso from the root of the USB stick. "
at that point there was no grub.iso in the root of the usb stick.

[Victor Chew]

Hi,

UBCD V4.0 Beta 1 is out for testing, and this version includes a modified version of ubcd2usb for running UBCD off a memory stick.

Could you guys try it out and let me know if you hit any problems?

Thanks!

[thE_invincible]

C:\USBBOO~1\ultimate\tools\ubcd2usb>
C:\USBBOO~1\ultimate\tools\ubcd2usb>ubcd2usb C:\usb boot\ultimate H:\

UBCD2USB: Creating bootable UBCD memory stick ...
UBCD2USB: *WARNING* YOUR USB KEY IS ABOUT TO BE REFORMATTED!
Press any key to continue, press ESC to abort
UBCD2USB: *WARNING* YOUR USB KEY CONTENTS WILL BE LOST!
Press any key to continue, press ESC to abort
UBCD2USB: Launching 'makebootfat' to format USB drive
device_start 0 [sectors]
device_size 2015232 [sectors], 984 [MB]
device_geometry 984/64/32 [cylinders/heads/sectors] (ZIP-Drive compatible)
bios_drive HDD
Error 87 reading the device.

(ERROR) 'makebootfat.exe' failed

Drücken Sie eine beliebige Taste . . .

this is error message... i can't understand this message, because, it reads something out of the usb - drive / key.

does anybody know what kind of problem that is ?

great
thE_iNviNciblE

[thE_invincible]

okay i found some switches... but the error apears although

C:\USBBOO~1\ultimate\tools\ubcd2usb>ubcd2usb C:\usb boot\ultimate H:\ -Y -D 1

UBCD2USB: Creating bootable UBCD memory stick ...
UBCD2USB: Launching 'makebootfat' to format USB drive
device_start 0 [sectors]
device_size 586114704 [sectors], 286188 [MB]
device_geometry 581463/16/63 [cylinders/heads/sectors]
bios_drive HDD
fat_start 63 [sectors]
fat_size 586114641 [sectors]
fat_bit 32
fat_sectorpercluster 32
Error 1450 writing the device.

(ERROR) 'makebootfat.exe' failed

Drücken Sie eine beliebige Taste . . .

why this Error 1450 apears ?

TIA

[Seanster]

Hi. It worked fine on my pny 512m stick. Thanks.

J:\tools\ubcd2usb>ubcd2usb.bat J:\ E:

UBCD2USB: Creating bootable UBCD memory stick ...
UBCD2USB: *WARNING* YOUR USB KEY IS ABOUT TO BE REFORMATTED!
Press any key to continue, press ESC to abort
UBCD2USB: *WARNING* YOUR USB KEY CONTENTS WILL BE LOST!
Press any key to continue, press ESC to abort
UBCD2USB: Launching 'makebootfat' to format USB drive
device_start 0 [sectors]
device_size 1003520 [sectors], 490 [MB]
device_geometry 490/64/32 [cylinders/heads/sectors] (ZIP-Drive compatible)
bios_drive HDD
fat_start 32 [sectors]
fat_size 1003488 [sectors]
fat_bit 32
fat_sectorpercluster 8
write 245760 [sectors], 120 [MB]
UBCD2USB: At this point, you might want to unplug and plug in your USB drive
again to refresh the system's view of its content ...
Press any key to continue . . .

[face]

Copying with ubcd2usb worked without any problems, but when i reboot i get the failure:

could not find kernel image: linux

i checked the folders on c: and on my usb disk, the only difference is the file "ldlinux.sys" i have copied isolinux.cfg in root on usb but still the same.....