[SOLVED] Liveusb-creator and install DVD

[sidebrnz]

For various reasons (not important here) I've decided that the best way to fix what's wrong with my laptop is to nuke, reformat and re-install from scratch. Normally, I'd download the install DVD's .iso, but I'm having trouble getting things to burn correctly on either my desktop or my laptop. Instead, I've been trying to use liveusb-creator to move the .iso onto an 8 GB flash drive, as I know that the laptop can boot that way. I've tried, twice, but I end up with only 171.3 MB used. I've not done anything with the partitioning/formatting of the drive because I didn't have to when I put a liveCD image onto a smaller drive. Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong? Do I have to reformat it first with an ext4 filesystem?

[nonamedotc]

Since you are using linux, why not use dd to write the image (DVD/Live image - both work!) to USB. For me, it has worked every single time!

dd if=/path/to/image of=/dev/sdX

In my experience, I have used dd when the USB was partitioned as ext4, FAT32 and NTFS - this should not matter (I believe).

[sidebrnz]

The whole point of liveusb-creator is that it's supposed to do it right without your having to know or use things like dd. And, in fact, every time I've used it, I had to do it again from a CLI to have it fix the MBR, something that I don't think dd can help you with. I may end up using dd, but it's not exactly urgent, and I'd like a chance to find out what happened and how to either avoid or correct it if possible.

[nonamedotc]

Unfortunately, I have never used liveusb-creator with Fedora since I have always used dd. But, yeah, it would be interesting to see what the problem really is .. I will try when I get home and post what I get. Cheers.

[sidebrnz]

I just went over to Bugzilla and found this: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=781661 a bug that's been sitting for over two years without any activity. Maybe the comment I just made will wake up the maintainer.

[george_toolan]

Two years? Your calendar must be broken too ;-)

This is a missing feature and not a bug.

Description : A liveusb creator from Live Fedora images

The installation DVD does not contain a "live" operating system like the Fedora LiveCDs.

Please be very careful when you use dd, because unlike liveusb creator this will erase the whole drive.

You could also try to use the netinst iso together with the installation DVD on a 8+ GB usb drive.

[glennzo]

Sideburnz, here's the reply everyone hates. It worked for me. I don't say that to taunt, just to suggest that something else is amiss and to hopefully help filter down to the real cause of the issue(s) you're having with this tool.

I had a spare 8GB thumb drive and an alreay downloaded live F17 KDE ISO. This morning, after reading this thread, I installed liveusb-creator from the stock Fedora 17 repos, called it from the command line, selected the ISO and the target drive and went to town. Here I am, replying from Fedora 17 Live KDE booted off of the thumb drive.

Let me add that the thumb drive had been previously formatted EXT4 and was empty.

[DBelton]

There were differences in putting a DVD iso and a LiveCD iso onto a USB drive. For awhile, livecd-creator couldn't create a usable USB drive from a DVD image. You need to use livecd-iso-to-disk instead of livecd-creator.

I believe they fixed the bug in F17 where a dd'd DVD image worked ok, but there were issues before that, even with using dd to create a USB from the DVD.

My suggestion is to try using dd first, if that doesn't work, then use livecd-iso-to-disk to create the USB drive.

[sidebrnz]

Yes, Glennzo, it also worked for me to put a LiveCD image (Xfce spin) on a flash drive. So? It doesn't work to put an install DVD image on a drive. And, I know that dd overwrites, which is why I bought a new 8GB flash drive for it. DBelton, it doesn't really matter, does it, what's been fixed in F17, when I'm using F16. However, I'll try installing the F16 version of livecd-iso-to-disk and see what happens.

[DBelton]

If you are using F16, then definitely use dd. The F16 installer is what was broken and had problems using an image created with dd. F17 I believe was fixed. So, using dd (even if from F16) should work on a F17 DVD image.

I can't remember if livecd-iso-to-disk worked from F16 or not. I am pretty sure it did. It created a weird USB stick, had a LiveOS image and copied the DVD image over as an iso file, but I believe it set things up properly for the installer to work.

Edit:

The issues were that anaconda (the installer) wouldn't look on a USB drive for the install repo, and forced you to set up a network connection to use the online repos. If you didn't set up a network connection, then you couldn't install (it found no repos)

[deanej]

They fixed that? Funny that they should do so only for the last version of Fedora before the anaconda re-wright.

[sidebrnz]

I used livecd-iso-to-disk and it worked. Sort of. It verified the .iso and told me that it didn't like how the drive was formatted. I ran it again with --noverify and --format and AFAICT it worked Just Fine. I should be able to use the rest of the drive to save what little I need to keep from my home folder before I reformat everything. (I've never changed UserIDs over to the new ones, so this is the easiest way to fix things up.)

[sidebrnz]

Interesting. I've not had time to back up what I want to keep and re-install, but I've had the time to find out something odd about this drive: ever since I've put the .iso on it, Fedora considers it to be owned by root, and only root has write access to it. I've even ejected the drive, physically removed it and re-inserted it, but nothing changes. I'd hoped to be able to use the 3.6 GB or so free space to store what I'm backing up, but it doesn't look like that's going to work. Other drives, however, mount properly. (This is on my desktop, with F16 and Xfce, if it matters.) Not that it's that important, but does anybody have any thoughts on the matter?