Problem: A USB stick cannot boot with any of Porteus, the boot-repair LiveUSB, or SystemRescueCD. It used to be bootable with Porteus, and before that it could boot with other Linux LiveUSB distributions.
Solution: Ventoy
Workaround ∞
A heretofore unknown grub bootloader USB, Super Grub2 Disk, was dded onto a stick, and works to chain-load a secondary drive which has its own bootloader.
Perhaps if I could use it for USB stick preparation I could then install another distribution overtop of it.
After using Super Grub2 Disk, putting Slackware 14.2 on it worked just fine.
Putting Porteus on it worked once but I hard powered-off in the start of my first bootup and thereafter could not get the thing to work.
Fucking fuckity fuck fuck.
Things which failed ∞
- LiLi USB Creator
- UNetbootin
-
In Linux
- Deleting the partition
- Creating the partition slightly smaller than maximum.
- Using various methods.
- This worked with one other stick..
-
\dd bs=4M if=/dev/zero of=/dev/STICK
Perhaps alternately I could have used one of the programs in Testing USB storage which wipes a drive to test it..- Format it in Windows
- Then LiLi USB Creator (Windows) with SystemRescueCD 4.8.3 x86
- It takes forever to write the MBR, is it copying the files at that time?
Strangely, my original single working stick didn't boot until I completely powered off my machine and started back up again, so there's something else going on. Future testing has to include this complete power down.
flagging the partition as bootable ∞
I'm not sure at what point I tried this, probably after farting around with partitioning in Linux but before zeroing it and formatting.
How to Create a Bootable USB Drive Without Using Any Software
How to Create a Bootable USB Drive Without Using Any Software
Let us assume that the flash / USB drive is the D: drive and the DVD installer located on drive F :. The first step, we will navigate Command Prompt to set installation DVD as its active directory.
- By default, Command Prompt's active directory for Administrator permission is on C:\Windows\System32> . We will navigate Command Prompt to set on DVD (F:) as its active directory. Just type
f:
then hit Enter, and the active directory changed to F:. - Type
cd boot
and hitenter
. Active directory changed to F:\boot> . - Type
bootsect /nt60 d:
and hitenter
. Creating boot sector on D: drive (USB flash drive). - Type
exit
and hitenter
to close the Command Prompt. Until this step we have made a bootable USB drive sucessfully, and the flash drive is ready to be used as a boot media.
Notes ∞
- See also What makes bootable media bootable?
-
How can I identify which of my USB drives can be made bootable?
To do ∞
- Rufus worked with Devuan 2.0.0 i386 -minimal and -desktop
- List of tools to create Live USB systems
- Try one of the Plop Boot Managers
- https://superuser.com/questions/391176/flipping-the-removable-media-bit-alternatives-to-bootit
-
https://www.getusb.info/flip-your-bit-usb-utility-to-make-local-drive/
- BootIt
- Sketchy, not found on https://web.archive.org/web/20171122083951/http://www.lexar.com:80/support/downloads.html
TODO:
Last updated 2024-07-21 at 05:49:42
Footnotes
- etcher.io is a redirect, was https://www.balena.io/etcher [ ↩ ]