Problem creating bootable usb thumb drives

[bobbicat]

I've had a reply on the Gparted Forums acknowledging the problem and promising to look into it.
In the mean time, I suggest the safest way to address this problem would be to use Method B as outlined at the Gparted web pages.
My experimental results, above, are just shots in the dark, there are no guarantees of outcome or reliability. Don't take chances with your valuable data.

[Qqmike]

I'll try to look at this again sometime soon. (I'm not crazy about the isohybrid stuff ...) I'm tied up doing some unrelated experiments with UEFI. I'm noticing your use of fdisk instead of gdisk. So you're getting UEFI boot mode on MBR (instead of GPT)?

[bobbicat]

I have always started with a standard fat partitioned dos thumb drive when creating a bootable from an iso. It has always worked.
My Kubuntu thumb drives boot happily as UEFI and are produced in this way. Of course my computer drives, ssd and sdX, are GPT partition tabled and all have Linux partitions, apart from the required efi vfat boot partition.


I had toyed with the idea of GPT partition tabled thumb drives, but came to the conclusion that it produced no advantage. A standard usb drive comes with a dos partition table and a fat partition, so unless absolutely necessary why change the default - apart from the need to experiment and broaden knowledge there is no reason I can see to change.
I haven't used any OS apart from Linux for many, many years so my system doesn't have the 'adjustments' some have to make to allow for those 'other ways' of doing things.
Ever since one of those alternate commercial operation systems offered to correct 'errors' then proceeded to chew up all the data it contained I have given 'other methods' a wide berth.
I am happy with the reliability I have found in Kubuntu and away from all that.

So you're getting UEFI boot mode on MBR (instead of GPT)?

I cannot give a simple explanation. I am no expert. Google is to blame. It led me to this point.


from wikipedia:

An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc.
Hybrid disc formats include the ability to be read by different devices, operating systems, or hardware.

There is a procedure I am not exoert enough to explain fully, but I will try to convey what I understand.
An iso of itself will not boot from a thumb drive. To make it do that it needs a structure added that the computer can work with.
An iso and a hybridised iso, look the same but the hybridized iso has this function.
When the hybridized iso is copied to the thumb drive a number of background processes run. I don't think the initial partition table and partitioning are important, as the hybrid iso overwrites what is there, creating non-standard structures, which then permit a boot option for the PC. You see it isn't simply a file that is copied, some sort of partition adjustment also takes place, these changes are probably not read correctly by ordinary disk utilities.

There is quite a lot of technical info out there for anyone willing to Google. Searches for syslinux-utils, isohybrid and UDF are productive.


All of this comes with the caveat that I am an amateur poking around in stuff I probably shouldn't. The outcome is not guaranteed. My expertise is perhaps only in Googling, not in the subject I am researching.

...AND at this point I must quote your quote, Mike:

You must act as if you know what you are doing; when, in effect, you know nothing.

THEN there is also my fav quote from Picasso:

Computers are useless - they only give answers

*addition*
it occurs to me that if you have, like me, been messing with this stuff, then when you are done it might be an idea to dd zero the thumb drive, to clear out those 'odd bits' that have been inserted here and there.

Warning: as always with dd, "be careful with that axe, Eugene!!!"

(I only put the last bit in cos I like the Warning wrap tag )

ALSO
NEVER use three words when you can fit in 33

(I was twenty minutes late to work this morning - I had got so caught up in writing this)

[bobbicat]

The expert on Gparted-live has replied on the Gparted Forum in a negative fashion and has closed the bug as needing no action.
He denies that gparted offer a dd method, though at this time it is plainly visible on the website
I posted a reply - this is no way to encourage bug reporting.


Incidentally, on the Gparted live website, the claim is that their iso's are, isohybrid, made from Debian live and so should copy to and boot from a thumb drive with no problems.
My research above is therefore only background and not directly connected with the issue.

[Qqmike]

Reading your posts above, point by point, it seems we are on the same page right down the list. I feel the same as you about being an "expert." If I'm an expert at anything it might be on being logical, organizing information, and then communicating it (though that might be a matter of opinion here). It is fun to learn this stuff, then to write.

I posted (mainly opinion!) at Gparted again, you might check it if you have time.

As for the dd warning ... well, while messing with this, I accidentally wrote gparted to one of my kubuntu flash drives! How TH I did that happen is a mystery, I mean you got sda, sdb, and you got sdc ... There's only three choices, and I know it's not sda ... You can imagine my dismay when I booted the flash drive, expecting Kubuntu to come up live, and I got the GParted screen. I thought, That's impossible! I sat there staring at my PC and that thumb drive for several minutes trying to figure out how gparted showed up on my OS flash drive! It made me stupid for a second or 180 or so.

I agree about zero-ing out the flash drives now and then. Especially with GPT, as you have a backup Partition Header and a backup Partition Table (of partition entries) located at the end of every drive. Utilities pick up on those artifacts and report GPT signs, broken GPT?, convert to MBR or fix GPT? -- it throws off all sorts of wild garbage.

[bobbicat]

Talking about artifacts, I found gdisk was able to pick out then remove UDF bits that the iso left behind, to -z zap out the UEFI stuff with one click and to leave a drive with no partition table whatsoever, all interesting and useful - despite my leaning towards fdisk, dos partition tables and fat partitions on thumb drives. I suppose I just feel more comfortable, secure, with default. I'm guessing the day will come when fat and dos will be thrown out completely and some more capable system will replace it on the larger drives that are bound to evolve.

Well my knowledge has expanded a little through this experience. Thanks for being there to bounce my ideas off, Mike. I don't know how much progress this guy at Gparted will make, after all he has closed my bug without taking any action, but. as you say, its a great utility and useful to beginner and old hand alike. (Though am I being disloyal? Perhaps it is KDE Partition Manager that should be getting my attention.)

...and sympathy over the scrubbed Kubuntu thumb, it could have been much worse. I've been there, too, only saved by the skin of my backup.

[SecretCode]

Warning: as always with dd, "be careful with that axe, Eugene!!!"

(I only put the last bit in cos I like the Warning wrap tag )

Great. Now I have to go to Pink Floyd in Spotify.

[SteveRiley]

sudo isohybrid --uefi /path/to/gparted-live-0.22.0-1-amd64.iso

Nice find.

Given that the KDE partition manager now fully supports GPT, you can do graphical partition management using a Kubuntu ISO and KDE's partition manager. Alas, efibootmgr isn't included in the ISO, so you'll need to be connected to the Internet and apt-get install it if you need it.

[bobbicat]

Hmm ---> so I AM being disloyal, using a Gnome utility
I thought as much.

please, please, don't take the above too seriously !!!

(maybe a nudge to whoever to point out how useful that little extra [efibootmgr] could be on an iso??)

Meanwhile I think I done enough nudging - I seem to have got myself involved in troubleshooting Gparted-live, the bug is reopened and I'm in way, way above my gum boots.
I was going to ask for some wisdom here but maybe I'll go to Ubuntu Forums - it would, perhaps, be more appropriate.

[bobbicat]

The latest version of GpartedLive [gparted-live-0.22.0-2-amd64.iso] now addresses UEFI and legacy as it should and I have learnt a little about boot processes.
Also I've now been through the 'report a bug' routine from start to end.
Thanks for the interest you guys have shown. I will now mark this thread solved. (well I would if I knew how)

[Qqmike]

At the top of the first page--"Thread Tools" drop-down > Mark as Solved. ;-)
I'll check into your GParted Live tip, thanks.

[bobbicat]

The drop-down menu at Thread Tools gives me:

Show Printable Version
Email this Page...
Unsubscribe from this Thread
Add Poll to this Thread...

I get no option to 'Mark Thread'
I am using Kubuntu 1504, if that is relevant
Posting Permissions are all On, with HTML code Off
I am Browsing in rekonq

I can find no way to edit the thread title
Is that an Administrator only privilege, perhaps?

[Qqmike]

I think you should be able to edit. But, the way to do it is with the "Thread Tools" drop-down. It sounds like you were not logged in, based on the result you see with Thread Tools. You may have been accidentally logged out. When you do log in, remember to check that little box below your name that say Remember me (that will keep you logged in).

I am starting to work through the thread at GParted bug, downloaded the test iso, will try to get time to dd-test that iso.

[Qqmike]

I posted at the GParted forum. I'm still waiting for an email confirmation to register at GNOME Bugzilla.
This:

(I'm awaiting a reply to my request to register at GNOME Bugzilla.)
I tested the new test GParted testing iso and it works great.
Here:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=749500
This:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted … -amd64.iso

I did this slightly differently than kubuist in preparing the flash drive.

First, we both reported the error obtained with the previous version of GParted. I also got that error upon running fdisk on the GParted flash drive:
sudo fdisk -lu
Error: Invalid partition table - recursive partition on /dev/sdb.

I took that same flash drive and simply zero-ed it out with dd:
mike@mike-desktop:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=16M
dd: error writing ‘/dev/sdb’: No space left on device
485+0 records in
484+0 records out
8127512576 bytes (8.1 GB) copied, 1239.65 s, 6.6 MB/s

Then without creating any partition table (i.e., no partitioning, no formatting--just the "raw" cleared-out flash drive), I ran this dd:
mike@mike-desktop:~/Downloads$ sudo dd if=gparted-live-0.22.0-2-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=16M
14+1 records in
14+1 records out
241172480 bytes (241 MB) copied, 39.713 s, 6.1 MB/s

Re-booting the PC with this live GParted flash drive, entering my UEFI firmware setup (ASUS H-97 Plus motherboard), the flash drive showed up both ways, as a

UEFI bootable choice and as a BIOS=legacy-CSM choice:
UEFI: (FAT) KingstonDataTraveler 2.0 (7751 MB)
and as
KingstonDataTraveler 2.0 (7751 MB)

I booted to the UEFI entry. And it booted perfectly, fast, it did its configuring, and opened with the GParted screen with no error messages.
Perfect. Thanks for the great work.

[bobbicat]

I think you should be able to edit. But, the way to do it is with the "Thread Tools" drop-down. It sounds like you were not logged in, based on the result you see with Thread Tools. You may have been accidentally logged out. When you do log in, remember to check that little box below your name that say Remember me (that will keep you logged in).

Nope I'm definitely logged in (here I am posting a reply )
But I get nothing apart from what I reported above in 'Thread Tools'.
This sounds like a digression to me. Maybe I should be reporting a Forum bug.

The Bugzilla sign up is an instant automated email, if I remember it rightly.
It sounds like your application fell over Mike.

Back on subject, I'm almost certain that it matters not how the thumb drive is presented but, so there's no argument about having done things wrongly, I tried each time to start with the partitioning and formatting you would expect when the usb drive is brand new and straight out of its blister pack.
...but I also get the angle of trying things out in alternative ways. Sometimes a better approach is discovered like this.

*addition*
I see you did eventually get allowed into Bugzilla.

Disk booting has always been a mystical and arcane subject as far as I was concerned. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. It would no doubt be useful on occasions to have an idea how things work.