Recent changes to USB install howto

Discussion for USB install howto page

David Do — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 04:36:20 -0000

You've got to create a new partition table for the drive before copying files so then you need to create a partition that is large enough for the .iso while leaving enough unused space for your desired persistent disk space. So before you even mount the drive for copying, you need to make the separate partitions first. otherwise, you can try shrinking your current partition that has the OS and then create a new partition in the unallocated space if gparted lets you.

Discussion for USB install howto page

zebulon-1st — Sun, 10 Oct 2021 15:20:28 -0000

After using either a cp or dd command, even followed by a sync command and even unplug / replug the USB-stick, I don't have the same results than on your capture of GParted :
- no 1st partition, it's all the 16 Go USB-stick that seemed to be used by IO
- file system is "iso9660" instead of "unknown"
- no flags / can't change them
- no "unallocated" entry to make the 2 partition for "persistence" data

Where did I go wrong?

Discussion for USB install howto page

David Do — Fri, 29 May 2020 03:03:40 -0000

Hey Clivus, did ou get past all the mentioned issues with the latest 2019 (io-live--2019.01--full-k4.19.20-k4.19.20-rt12-amd64) version using Unetbootin? I've been having to using the 2017-03 version because I couldn't seem to get it to work.

Tried all the various noacpi acpi=none nvidia.modeset=0 nomodeset tricks one would normally do when using a later nvidia card but continue to run into the aforementioned issue of

(initsram) : no aufs found.

Just wondering if you had no issues with the latest version as I wouldn't expect you to be able to help with the inistram issue.

Discussion for USB install howto page

David Do — Sat, 23 May 2020 10:26:10 -0000

You mean for posts from @Volodymyr and @louphil (AKA Phil Gay)? Seems to be in the right place.

As for exFat I was using Rufus but after overcoming other issues ran into their issue this morning. So thanks for posting, I'll give it a try if the progress I was attempting by switching over to using a linux system to make the USB drive doesnt work.

I had started to think it was maybe because I was using a USB 3.0 Thumb drive as I recall having issues in the past with other distros but not sure if anyone else has any input on that?

Discussion for USB install howto page

Clivus Nondog — Sat, 23 May 2020 07:51:17 -0000

opps! That was for another thread. Doh!

Discussion for USB install howto page

Clivus Nondog — Sat, 23 May 2020 07:32:35 -0000

I had this problem. Eventually realised it was the 4Gb limit on Fat32. Unetbootin doesn't know exfat. Ext4 worked eventually.

Discussion for USB install howto page

David Do — Fri, 22 May 2020 04:25:30 -0000

if going from SD card to using a USB stick gave you a marginal increase in what could be seen, it may not be a filesystem issue with grub but that your BIOS is buggy and can't properly handle large drives ( http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html ).
This translates into the BIOS being unable to read blocks past a certain point in the drive, and so if your root filesystem starts before that limit, but ends after that limit, then some files will be accessible at boot through the BIOS and others won't.
The standard way to work around this problem is to create a small /boot/ partition near the beginning of the drive, to ensure that everything that needs to be read through the BIOS, can be.

Regarding Gparted's error message, the fake msdos partition table refers to the MBR format, which could have been changed while you were erasiing the other partitions and not doing a complete flash. When formatting, make sure not to do a quick format and make sure whatever program you're using actually goes through the memory slots and changes each bit to 0 for a non-recoverable type of wipe.

Discussion for USB install howto page

David Do — Fri, 22 May 2020 04:14:53 -0000

You can format it using extFat format.

Discussion for USB install howto page

phil gay — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 09:17:07 -0000

First considering the ISO I downloaded is OK ... But I encounter the same problem as Volodymyr .
The USB device is a 32Go SD card adapted on an USB stick ...

I firsts tried to flash directly to the SD card, with same results as Volodymyr : "(initsram) : no aufs found", then "can not mount /dev/loop0, etc ... " all with a command-line looking bootloader ....

Finally, after unsuccessfull tries on the USB stick adaptation, I could obtain the "splash" bootloader : but if trying to boot any one option seem to run correctly, the boot abort on a blank screen without any possible control ... Only an hard reset is efficient ...

But I'm in doubt the ISO is corrupted . I think your méthod to create Flash drive isn't detailed enought ... For example, I got different results if I format Vfat first or not, or ext4 ... The best result ( splash bootloader ) were obtained in erasing all partition table on the stick ... But Gparted don't reconize any partition table after flashing the stick . So I wasn't able to create a new "persistence" one ... Gparted only found errors GPT signature . Here is the message :
> /dev/sdc contains GPT signatures, indicating that it has a GPT table. However, it does not have a valid fake msdos partition table, as it should. Perhaps it was corrupted -- possibly by a program that doesn't understand GPT partition tables. Or perhaps you deleted the GPT table, and are now using an msdos partition table. Is this a GPT partition table?

So how the USB device have to be formated, partitonned, etc, before flashing it ? Great thanks in advance : 2 days of big crisis ....

Discussion for USB install howto page

Manu Kebab — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 19:06:26 -0000

Hi :) I'll upload another iso as soon as possible... I think it's a bug related to the iso file size