USB Stick not booting iso file

[Atip]

Thanks mimosa!

Even so this reply does not conform fully with the topic of this thread I can report that I successfully
burned a new DVD with SlackelLive-Kde. Putting it then on a USB stick failed.
Will report this in slackel forum.

[mimosa]

My impression is from Slackel's point of view, this is an upstream issue.

When you say the DVD was successsful, do you mean it booted successfully and the keyboard and mouse worked? And you made a bootable USB as before, and it booted, but the keyboard and mouse didn't work?

Have you tried, as I suggested above, booting into runlevel 3 so some diagnostic testing can be done?

[Tim CowChip]

I had some trouble getting a usb stick to work a while back. Shador told me to try something that worked for me.

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=4096

Then recreate the partition table and add one fat32 partition with gparted (as long as it creates a proper partmap) but any other tool should be fine too.

[knome]

Does the slackel usb installation have a syslinux boot chainloading to Grub2? If you have lots of partitions it may be that Grub2 gets confused. Booting from a usb stick usually names the stick as the first device (hd0) regardless of the machine's main devices. If Grub2 is chainloaded then this "mapping" may be lost.

Try troubleshooting from the Grub2 boot screen by dropping to a command line (enter "c") and then entering and editing the following (or similar) line by line. TAB completion should help in finding the relevant device/partition numbers and file names e.g. typing "(hd" then TAB will give you a choice of device numbers to try.

Code: Select all

grub> linux  (hd0,1)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1
grub> initrd  (hd0,1)/initrd.img
grub> boot

Please note the above code is just an example and is just to get you started in hunting down the correct device/partition numbers and file path/names.

[Atip]

My impression is from Slackel's point of view, this is an upstream issue.

When you say the DVD was successsful, do you mean it booted successfully and the keyboard and mouse worked? And you made a bootable USB as before, and it booted, but the keyboard and mouse didn't work?

Have you tried, as I suggested above, booting into runlevel 3 so some diagnostic testing can be done?

OK, booting from new burned DVD made me login and mouse/keyboard are working.

Making a clone to a USB stick failed, that is I cannot boot from the stick. All the files from
the DVD are on the stick. The process of making the the clone on the stick was normal.
BIOS seems to address the stick very briefly then switches to main HD boot.

Now just to check I booted into my old CD of Salix-Fluxbox-13.32 made a clone on a USB stick
and from that stick I can boot. So beats me what is wrong with Slackel.

[Atip]

knome, that is what I have suspected all the time that grub is confused which partition to use.
I reported this thought in the slackel forum.
I have 2 hard drives each with several partitions.
Will try once more your suggestion.

[Atip]

I had some trouble getting a usb stick to work a while back. Shador told me to try something that worked for me.

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=4096

Then recreate the partition table and add one fat32 partition with gparted (as long as it creates a proper partmap) but any other tool should be fine too.

Thanks! Followed this suggestion then copied all the files from salixlive-kde*.iso to the stick.
Go into stick /boot run sh ./install-on-USB.sh and now it will not boot from stick at all meaning
BIOS apparently does not see it.

UNFORTUNATELY THERE WAS A LITTLE MISSHAP.

I pasted that "dd......" and copied to terminal and the stupid thing run immediately before
I could change /dev/sdb to /dev/sdc.

Now I cannot access my second hard drive /dev/sdb.

Any suggestion to get that HD going again?

[mimosa]

I'm afraid to say it's very unlikely you can.

dd should come with a health warning. It is a very powerful tool with no safety guard.

If you stopped it quite quickly, it is conceivable there is some partition recovery tool that might help.

Regarding the USB stick, have you tried with a different one? Maybe this one is faulty.

[Atip]

I'm afraid to say it's very unlikely you can.

Regarding the USB stick, have you tried with a different one? Maybe this one is faulty.

After that misshap all partions and directories of that drive could be accessed. Only on reboot
it gave kernel panic.

Believe me by now I must have tried 20 times including changing sticks. Yes that stick is
healthy it runs Salix-Fluxbox-Live. I even on that stick changed in gslapt the sources to 14
instead of 13.32 then run update, execute and it came back not enough space.

[mimosa]

Don't change the sources like that. It won't work. You would first need to do a kernel downgrade - a bit tricky and far too much trouble. Some version of Salix or Slackel will probably work for you.

The first thing to go when you wipe a drive is the part that tells Linux where all the partitions are. So maybe that and part of the first partition are gone. Getting back the rest may be tricky, but perhaps soemone else can help?

I'm sure I don't now need to say: never use dd (aka "disk destroyer") without double and triple checking you have got it right and as applies to your own partitions, not the ones in the example.