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Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

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CwF
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Re: Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

#21 Post by CwF »

Wheelerof4te wrote:On Windows, use Rufus..
Or WinSetupFromUSB_ But still saying the best solution is DriveDroid.

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debiman
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Re: Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

#22 Post by debiman »

CwF wrote:For this quest, and the OP really, look into recycling a smartphone with drivedroid. That covers this functionality much easier. Managing is reduced to dl'ed image into directory. Grub choice is redundant, just open drivedroid, select one of the dozens of iso's , plug into computer usb and boot... I used this to hop when I hopped. I used it for any install to a real machine.
so you're telling the big G everytime you boot a live distro.
i'll stick to usb sticks thankyouverymuch. i can handle the almost unbearable extra effort.

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Re: Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

#23 Post by CwF »

debiman wrote: so you're telling the big G everytime you boot a live distro.
Actually funny story. I did say recycle....The 'phone' I used for this, and a few other functions, went for 2-1/2 years without a sim card. Further, it's phone/dialer/gsmradio.apk was removed. It couldn't even call 911. Anyway, the funny part is the big G did in fact hose it this last March with an OTA update over wifi. Not even my wifi. So I suppose the phone had a 2-1/2 year backlog to report...

Think a little further debiman. Sorry that's to complicated for you. At least I never had to recreate the grub for every change I made. It also provided a second port to the booted computer that was writable, or mount a pool so chicken/egg installs didn't happen, firmwares, etc....Usually happened many miles from the nearest internet or cell access...

More effort initially maybe, higher level skill maybe, simply vastly superior solution. Just saying...
Also saying the other solutions have lots of catchup to do...
And about a male2male usb boot, serious about that too....

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Re: Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

#24 Post by debiman »

so you're saying installing an apk requires a higher skill level than succesfully burning a usb stick?
you're also saying a lot of other things that i do not agree with, but well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

#25 Post by CwF »

No, not trying to irritate you. I am sarcastic though about tin hat subjects. My point is a recycled phone is way easier. Easier in setup. Easier in use. Possibly faster. It does not notify anybody. It does not spy on you.
The main convenience is simply download the iso, stick it in DD's image directory and choose from the menu = way easier that re-doing or modifying the Grub on the usb for every change. Even rufus and WSFUSB takes more effort than DD when you add or delete an iso..

And that's removal of components I mentioned, not installing an apk. So yes, let's disagree that the big G knew what I was doing, or cared.

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Re: Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

#26 Post by debiman »

+1 for removing the gsm software etc.

i seem to remember a discussion a few years back (and ongoing i guess):
mobile (android) phones phone home even with all networking switched off (airplane mode) - and i also distinctly remember that some of this happens on a firmware level, meaning that uninstalling apks won't help a bit. keyword: baseband.
i'm also pretty sure that google devs are clever enough to put their phone home functionality straight into the kernel, and not some apk that an ingenious user or ROM developer might remove.

i tried a few searches but could not find the appropriate articles.
stupid internet, it has the attention span of a preschool kid.

all this has lead to people building hardware that specifically switches all that completely off ("kill switch"), in addition to using a decidedly non-google gnu/linux OS.
you might want to call them (and me) tinfoil-hatters if it pleases you, but they have sprung $ 2.7 million so far for one project alone for that, and serious development on hard- and software is in its final stages. that might warrant some reconsideration.

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Re: Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

#27 Post by fsmithred »

dd won't work for a multi-boot usb unless the image you use is already multi-boot.
That way looks interesting, and it should work. But if you want to have any persistent volumes where you can save files or configuration changes that will still be there after a reboot, you could use refracta2usb.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/refrac ... -2.3.6.deb
http://www.ibiblio.org/refracta/docs/re ... ta2usb.txt

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Re: Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

#28 Post by CwF »

debiman wrote:i seem to remember a discussion a few years back (and ongoing i guess):
I might be in a few. Maybe a new thread in OffTopic, we're dragging this off subject...building a wheeled mobil of sorts a few years ago I thought of using a SDR array that can find phones to verify such things. The timing to do a test never happened, so no conclusion. I'm fairly confident the phone never communicated on the gsm radio to any consequence at least. There was no personal info on the phone anyway.

Then the reality of google finding it on wifi was a simple mistake. I shut it down while on someones wifi. It rebooted with that link up avaialable and the rest is history.

I'm familiar with the librem phone. I'm more interested in the bands it ultimately supports, that seems to be a rolling subject.
fsmithred wrote: you could use refracta2usb.
That's a good idea. I think refracta is limited to a single partition image? Not really a problem though. Earlier I mentioned I'd go another route, vm's, but that's it's own complication. Once you have vm capability it is simple to make an image as diverse and complicated as you want and then dd that image to the usb. Back to the OP we're limited to his 8G's. A little tight for more than one OS. I did make one with Peppermint/Voyager back when I was still deciding. Compressed to a file that image was 17.1 GB unoptimized.

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Re: Trying (And failing) to make a bootable USB

#29 Post by fsmithred »

refracta2usb uses a fat32 partition, marked bootable, for the operating systems. You can either put the intact iso file or the contents of the iso file on the usb. (Each OS gets its own directory). You can have a second (or third, or more) partition (linux partition) for persistence, either using the whole partition or using loopback files for each persistent volume.

Right now I have four different live live systems on one 8GB usb stick, and 2 of those 8GB are being used for the second partition. Most live isos are between 500 and 1500MB, so a few will fit. If you do regular installs like you would on a hard drive, instead of using live systems, 8GB will fill up pretty fast - you might get two systems to fit.

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