Re: Problem creating iso for a USB stick

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 4:55 PM, Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:

On Thu 16 Jan 2014 at 16:02:00 +0100, Stelian Iancu wrote:

> I am trying to create a USB stick with Wheezy which would auto-install.
> I've managed to create the iso successfully following the instructions
> here: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed/EditIso
>
> I've checked the resulting iso with vmware fusion on my mac and it works,
> i.e. it auto-installs Debian successfull.
>
> However, after writing it to a USB stick, it doesn't boot, and I don't know
> why.

What is the output of

fdisk -l <your_ISO> ?

It is this:

fdisk -l test.iso

GNU Fdisk 1.2.4

This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the

GNU General Public License for more details.

Disk /root/debian/test.iso: 263 MB, 263192576 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 251 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/root/debian/test.iso1 * 1 251 257008 17 Hidd HPFS/NTFS

I have no idea why it's HPFS/NTFS.

> The command I used to create the iso is as follows:
>
> xorriso -as mkisofs -D -r -J -joliet-long -L -A "Custom Install CD" -b
> isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -iso-level 3 -no-emul-boot
> -partition_offset 16 -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o ../test.iso
> -isohybrid-mbr /usr/lib/syslinux/isohdpfx.bin ../cd
>
> Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

Not really (learning to use xorriso is on my to-do list) but the Debian
images have the command used for their creation in the mkisofs file in
.disk. You could also try the isohybrid command, which comes with the
syslinux package.

I just tried the isohybrid command and it didn't help. After dd'ing the resulting iso to the USB drive, it still won't boot.

It's funny you mention the mkisofs from .disk. By some sort of a miracle, I've found it as well. It looks like this:

/home/93sam/xorriso -as mkisofs -r -checksum_algorithm_iso md5,sha1,sha256,sha512 -V 'Debian 7.3.0 amd64 1' -o /org/cdbuilder.debian.org/dst/deb-cd/out/2amd64/debian-7.3.0-amd64-NETINST-1.iso -jigdo-jigdo /org/cdbuilder.debian.org/dst/deb-cd/out/2amd64/debian-7.3.0-amd64-NETINST-1.jigdo -jigdo-template /org/cdbuilder.debian.org/dst/deb-cd/out/2amd64/debian-7.3.0-amd64-NETINST-1.template -jigdo-map Debian=/org/cdbuilder.debian.org/src/ftp/debian/ -jigdo-exclude boot1 -md5-list /org/cdbuilder.debian.org/src/deb-cd/tmp/2amd64/wheezy/md5-check -jigdo-min-file-size 1024 -jigdo-exclude 'README*' -jigdo-exclude /doc/ -jigdo-exclude /md5sum.txt -jigdo-exclude /.disk/ -jigdo-exclude /pics/ -jigdo-exclude 'Release*' -jigdo-exclude 'Packages*' -jigdo-exclude 'Sources*' -J -isohybrid-mbr syslinux/usr/lib/syslinux/isohdpfx.bin -J -joliet-long -cache-inodes -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -eltorito-alt-boot -e boot/grub/efi.img -no-emul-boot -isohybrid-gpt-basdat -isohybrid-apm-hfsplus boot1 CD1

After removing all the jigdo related options, I've tried the resulting command and it didn't work. It gave me an error related to -isohybrid-gpt-basdat. Upon further investigation, I found out that the version of xorriso that is in Wheezy is older (1.2.2) and apparently doesn't support this option. The current version is 1.3.4. Also, as you can see, they use a manually compiled xorriso, I would assume: /home/93sam/xorriso.

So I guess I will try to compile xorriso manually and try, again, with the Debian command (without the jigdo options).

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