Roy's musings

I wanted to try out running Ubuntu from my USB drive (2GB). While I was searching for the right software, I came across UNetbootin utility. This utility is a lot simpler to use than the method provided in the Ubuntu site , a method that makes use of Win32 disk imager. The best part is, UNetbootin provides you options to create bootables from other operating systems like FreeBSD, NetBSD and other notable flavors of Linux. UNetbootin is not an installable, its just one .exe file. You download the exe file and start it. It will prompt you for the version of OS you would like to burn in your USB. Once you select, it will automatically download the ISO image file and burn it for you. In case you happen to have the ISO image file available on your local hard drive, you can provide that path too.

*** Update on 07/11/2009 *** The issue below has been marked as fixed. Refer to the release notes of 3.0.2 for a note on what has been fixed. I think now you can happily move back to VirtualBox 3.0 :-) After installing the VirtualBox 3.0, I ran my Ubuntu under that. When I ran update manager, my VM kept freezing. I realized that not only with update manager, even with Firefox trying to download a huge file, the VirtualBox freezes. Looks like this a known issue and there is a bug artifact for this one. As of now, there is no fix available and there is no ETA as well when the fix will be available. So I have happily reverted back to VirtualBox 2.2.4 version. I don't see that issue anymore.

The time has come to apply any critical kernel patches without rebooting the system. The tool that does this magic is called ksplice and shipped as a part of Ubuntu system (Jaunty). It would be a valuable part of any system that cannot afford to take a downtime. To learn more about ksplice, please read this Linux Magazine article .