I've been trying to install Ubuntu 8.04 on an 8 GB Kingston USB
pendrive. My computer is an ACER 7720 with 2 GB memory. I've managed to
sort out problems of getting it to boot. I get the login menu OK, but
the system hangs when it tries to go into Gnome or any of the other
GUIs. I just get a pale brown screen.

Looking on the web, I found this procedure, relating to an installation
on an ASUS EeePC laptop with an SDHC 16GB card -

sudo and edit the file /etc/rc.local and add this before "exit 0":

hal-set-property --udi $(hal-device | grep info.udi | grep
storage_serial_USB2 | sed -e 's/.*org/\/org/' -e "s/'.*//") --key
storage.removable --bool false

This will prevent gnome-keyring to segfault. This happens when the Root
device is on a removable media. Without this your gnome session will
hang after the first reboot.

Now you can switch back to graphical install screen (Ctrl-Alt-F6) and
tell the installer to reboot.

------------------------

I tried to do it retrospectively, but got the message 'Hal-set-property
not found' and it now doesn't boot up!

Other procedures I've seen for this type of installation don't say
anything about editing rc.local. Is this pecular to SDHC cards or the
EeePC?

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.