My adventures making a live USB

[Head_on_a_Stick]

when specifying BS, does it map transfers exactly to hardware blocks? Obviously it can't with BS=512B or 4M if hardware blocks are 4k.

Well, I can't claim to know the technical details but it does seem that a bs setting that is not an exact multiple of the sector size on the disk would cause some transfer inefficiencies.

The beauty of the cp method is that sort of detail is left to the kernel, which I'm pretty sure knows better than me

[dotlj]

I have used cat example.iso > /dev/sdx for many years, much like using cp and it's never failed. I have used dd but for install images, you can't go wrong with cat.

[Bulkley]

Here's the exact command I used:

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dd if=MX-17.RC1_x64.iso of=/dev/sdd bs=4M && sync

Works perfectly.

When I run

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dd if=MX-17_x64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M && sync

what I get is a beautiful antiXlive USB with antiX, boot and EFI directories plus cdrom.ico and version. It looks great! tUnfortunately it is not recognized by either of my computers and won't boot.

For the record, my desktop runs Debian Stretch with openbox and my laptop runs Devuan Jessie. Both machines are more than eight years old.

Edit: I changed the laptop BIOS from UEFI to Legacy and it booted the MX live USB. Why does that help?

[Thorny]

How dare you!

Chuckle! I dare because I am an old guy and don't care what anyone thinks of me. I am retired and past caring about my rep as it won't affect my income or my ability to enjoy my life on the downhill slope.

I never used #!, I went straight to Arch 'cos Waldorf's crusty old kernel didn't support my hardware

I'm sorry for offending you. That explains why I don't remember you from #! forums, I had an install for a while but I always liked real Debian better. It was nice that the developer actually responded to posts sometimes and that is also one of the strengths of MX, developers take part and that may even be one of the reasons that it is so polished.

Anyway, what sort of ****ing idiot would sit there typing out

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# dd if=example.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4k

When `cp example.iso /dev/sdb` does exactly the same thing...

Well, I can't speak for all the ****ing idiots out here but I probably do it from habit, when I find something that works I tend to keep using it. The older I get the more I dislike change.

(Please don't find this disrespectful, I don't mean it to be.)

I don't at all, I like for people to speak(write) their minds plainly. One of the good things about DUF is that the Moderation is not heavy handed. In my opinion, it is much more like the real world than the forums for that OS that should not be named.
BTW, I truly meant that comment.

[Thorny]

When I run

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dd if=MX-17_x64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M && sync

what I get is a beautiful antiXlive USB with antiX, boot and EFI directories plus cdrom.ico and version. It looks great! tUnfortunately it is not recognized by either of my computers and won't boot.

After I shot my mouth off yesterday, I decided I'd better check to make sure. So I dd'd the ISO I had to a 2G stick and when finished I took it to my netbook and booted it up to that stunning MX desktop.

I used MX-17_January_x64.iso, is that the same version you used?

Edit: I changed the laptop BIOS from UEFI to Legacy and it booted the MX live USB. Why does that help?

Maybe stevo can answer that, if he choses to, I am not familiar with UEFI although I've seen quite a few posts about early UEFI on older machines that are not standards compliant.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I'm sorry for offending you

No, please, no offence was taken at all and I do hope my rather colourful reply did not ruffle your feathers too much — I was trying to have a little bit of banter but my social skills are somewhat lacking so that is always a risky move.



EDIT: to stay on topic: the MX-17 ISO image does appear to support UEFI booting:

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alpine:~$ parted Downloads/MX-17_x64.iso print
WARNING: You are not superuser.  Watch out for permissions.
Model:  (file)
Disk /home/empty/Downloads/MX-17_x64.iso: 1273MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start  End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 2      170kB  3586kB  3416kB  primary               esp

alpine:~$

[Innovate]

It's a cross-platfrom application.
I've known that liveusb install before unetbootin since on windows before came here.
How could many linux ppl forget about it?
Debian was lack unetbootin from jessie, stretch long ago
download liveusb install .deb file & install would be piece of cake on debian jessie, stretch.

[Thorny]

I'm sorry for offending you

No, please, no offence was taken at all and I do hope my rather colourful reply did not ruffle your feathers too much — I was trying to have a little bit of banter but my social skills are somewhat lacking so that is always a risky move.

No problem. I am Aspie. However I have lived long enough and had enough painful experience to learn some ways to exist along with the normals. Banter is fine and yours is generally intelligent and that is appreciated. Sometimes I chuckle at what you write to others. I have a lot of respect for your technical skill, I don't know even half of what you know about video cards. Thumbs up.

And now, before someone accuses me of "white knighting" you, I'll STFU.

[Bulkley]

download liveusb install .deb file & install would be piece of cake on debian jessie, stretch.

It is. Liveusb install can be installed via

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gdebi live-usb-install-2.5.12-all.deb

or one can open

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zxvf live-usb-install-2.5.12.tar.gz

and run from inside ~/live-usb-install with

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./live-usb-install.py

. Either way, while you can do practise runs as user you need to be root for it to stick.

As Innovate noted, Liveusb install is a Windows application that has been Linuxized.

[Bulkley]

[quote="Thorny"]. . . I've seen quite a few posts about early UEFI on older machines that are not standards compliant./quote]

That explains a lot. Thanks. I suspect that much has changed since the first time I made a live-CD. For one thing, distros have become bloated and won't fit on a CD, thus the USB. To put this in perspective, my first Linux (Caldera) came on a single 3 1/2" floppy disk that I found in the back of a magazine.

[Pick2]

... to learn some ways to exist along with the normals.

We call them Mundanes here

Just kidding

[Thorny]

[OT]

We call them Mundanes here

Chuckle!

[Innovate]

As Innovate noted, Liveusb install is a Windows application that has been Linuxized.

I should thank you for you to confirm review how far better it is. Now I'm confident with this tool.
In fact, I was doubt how far it's good/bad from unetbootin it's been underrated so long no review until finally today.
I was planned to choose pre-install between unetbootin vs liveusb install on my custom build debian but hesitate until now.

There're many rare gems of these apps floating every where on internet & github.