I need some guidance installing ubuntu

[mbozzi]

No, the problem here is that you burned the disk image to a particular partition instead of the disk as a whole. It's not that simple. In order for the media to successfully boot, not only the bootable flag needs to be set, but certain information has to be in a specific spot on the disk. For this reason you must copy the iso to the whole drive (i.e., /dev/sdX, not /dev/sdXN).

Neither Unetbootin nor a trivial copy (dd) is sufficient to create a multiboot USB. I should have read your question fully before pointing you to that, so I'm sorry.

Basically, you must install a boot-loader (e.g., GRUB2) onto the boot partition, and configure it to boot the installed disk images in their respective partitions.

You will need to perform a similar (but a little simpler) process when you do this on your hard drive. This page explains the process for USBs:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Multiboot_USB_drive

[CPPAWhile]

Thanks, I've started reading that link. I DID set the boot flag and it still does not see it as a boot device. Intuitively, I kind of thought I needed some sort of boot sector "magic" such as Grub. At least nothing's broken yet that I can tell.

[CPPAWhile]

This will take a long time. I now feel like it would be best to just create a USB stick with a fat32 of about 701.61MB which is what I have now. Then make the next partition take up the rest of the stick. I apparently don't need all of the partitions. I have now copied the boot folder from Ubuntu since it has grub in it so that I will be able to "install" this. I have no Ubuntu environement as I'm running Fatdog. My Ubuntu will now disappear since I'm going to repartition the drive to have only two partitions. I guess I need the fat32 since I will run this as UEFI. I will definitely NOT know how to install Grub even if the article tells me how as I've never used the concept of install other than with make install. I will need to formulate a set of commands that I can use to get Grub installed somehow. I can try what they describe but I don't know if Fatdog can do that. I know that it CAN do a make install, I do that all the time.

[CPPAWhile]

I need to clarify some terminology here:

By boot partition, I assume that is just the little 512MB or so partition that's for the basic boot - as in a boot sector with some lines that describe which OS will boot. So it's the first one. So this can be quite small - it could probably have been quite small were it not for the fact that GRUB probably has a lot of stuff bundled with it - like musical chimes, icons, splash-screens, perhaps advertisements for vacations in Cancun, or whatever.

[CPPAWhile]

Perhaps I should just make fatdog my first OS on the flash stick. I don't mind this, but I really need to install Ubuntu. I guess if I master how to use and configure Grub I should be able to have a menu pop-up and ask me which OS I want to boot, like the old DOS/Windows menus.

[CPPAWhile]

I now have my USB Flash listed as a boot device and it's booting up to Fatdog more or less just to make sure I can boot.

I just had to follow the directions for creating a bootable Flash USB stick for Fatdog. So now I can hopefully reconfigure stuff so that I will be able to boot/Install Ubuntu. The procedure for making a Fatdog-bootable USB is quite easy, takes about 5 or 10 minutes.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/faqs/uefi-flashdrive2.html

I am a little bit surprised that it's taking so long to boot from the USB flash though - perhaps I was wrong to think that it will be much faster than from my DVD? It's still not quite there yet. I guess the load of the file vmlinuz takes a long time? Let's hope - I'm still on the splash screen with the Fatdog. Still no OS yet.

[CPPAWhile]

It almost seems like it initially booted from the flash stick, then since I had the CD-ROM listed as the next one, it then eventually booted from the CD. It seems to have used Now I have to try to prove that the flash boot actually worked by disabling the CD-ROM boot. I wish I had a way right now to tell which device I just booted from. I will just take the CD out and reboot and pray it works.

[CPPAWhile]

Wow, I took the CD out this time, and I rebooted. It came up in only about < 1 minute - extremely fast boot! But it's still using my old savefile - which is fine, I don't mind, I just didn't expect that. My limited knowledge of this stuff leaves me in the dark, but at least it can boot really fast now. 10x faster I would guess.

And I've now proven that it can boot without the CD, by simply removing the CD from the drive, and forcing it to boot from the flash stick.

So now it's on to Ubuntu I hope!

[CPPAWhile]

The link you gave me about multi-booting Arch Linux is so confusing and jumps around so much that I cannot even understand it AT ALL.

I would have no idea what to do. Perhaps I have to study it for hours until something sinks in. But it's the worst article I've ever seen in my entire life. It should just take one simple commonly occuring example to illustrate. Now I will have to read and reread it ten times.

[CPPAWhile]

The sizes they describe here will never work:
This configuration is useful for creating an universal USB key, bootable everywhere. First of all you must create a GPT partition table on your device. You need at least 3 partitions:
A BIOS boot partition (type EF02)
An EFI System partition (type EF00 with a FAT32 filesystem)
Your data partition (use a filesystem supported by GRUB)
The BIOS boot partition must be sized 1 MB, while the EFI System partition can be at least as small as 50 MB. The data partition can take up the rest of the space of your drive.
Next you must create a hybrid MBR partition table, as setting the boot flag on the protective MBR partition might not be enough.
Hybrid MBR partition table creation example using gdisk:

[CPPAWhile]

I wonder if I could try to look at a typical Ubuntu (even specific to my version) grub2.cfg file and then try to merge it into my grub file for fatdog? And just make sure it has all it needs. The initial boot is what I don't really know enough about. I guess I just have to do some reading. PErhaps I can boot Fatdog from a .iso like Ubuntu. I'll ask about this on the forum as I don't know how to answer it.

[CPPAWhile]

An idea just occured to me - I might just want to buy another USB stick - they are not that expensive, and simply install Ubuntu to it. I can try something more sophisticated later. I can just have a different USB stick for each OS. I need to get this stuff done in a hurry and it will be easy to install Ubuntu alone on a USB stick. Sound practical and possible? I think so. I guess it's ok to swap back and forth from boot to boot or occasionally.

[mbozzi]

The link you gave me about multi-booting Arch Linux is so confusing and jumps around so much that I cannot even understand it AT ALL.

Yes, Arch's documentation assumes prior knowledge.... More than that, I guess, it can't be read linearly. :X

You would not need a hybrid boot table - instead, you could get away with installing GRUB in UEFI mode, copying the disk images onto the media, and changing grub.cfg to add menu options for them. You only need to bother with the hybrid table if you'll be plugging this drive into computers which expect a master boot record.

Alternatively, you can certainly just use 4 flash drives and put one disk image on each of them.
Good luck!

[CPPAWhile]

From your post, it's doable to dual-boot Fatdog and Ubuntu - in fact, someone published a way to boot Fatdog in the .iso way and got it to work. They had to make some comments about grub, or grub2, that's all. I am posting the below link for those who want to edit grub.cfg and get the right menu entries (namely me).

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=950305#950305