Re: Debian images and USB sticks

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

Renato Bispo wrote:
> -> I partitioned my USB stick using gparted, setting the boot flag on the
> partition I wanted to put the image.

Now i wonder whether the stick already contained MBR code which
would jump on the marked partition or whether gparted installed such
x86 machine code.

See
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record#System_bootstrapping
The third paragraph seems to describe what you experience. A small program
which looks for the bootable/active flag and executes the code at the
start of that partition.


> (I think it's relevant to say that I
> tried to do the partitioning and formatting of the stick using fdisk and
> mkfs.fat, having the same result in the end of the process, according to
> gparted, meaning everything there looked the same, but I couldn't boot from
> the stick doing it that way, I would get stuck in the black screen with the
> blinking cursor.)

Looks like gparted installed the code. But i cannot find hints in the web.

Please show the first 512 bytes of the working stick:

  dd if=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1 | od od -t x1


Have a nice day :)

Thomas