Re: Conviently having netinst.iso on a 32GB flash drive

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

Hi,

Richard Owlett wrote:
> > Currently I use
> > > dd if=netinst.iso bs=64M of=/dev/sdb
> > I would like way to copy it such that:
> > 1. a legacy BIOS could launch it

This should work fine after above dd run.


> > 2. Gparted would not complain about block size

Usually the partition editors complain about the weird mix of MBR partition
table, GPT, and Apple Partition Map (APM), of which the former two serve as
boot lures for EFI firmware and the latter is useless.

What complaints exactly do you get from gparted when trying to add a
new partition ?


> > 3. there would be at least two partitions usable misc files

songbird wrote:
> one of the nice people here posted a program for doing this
> called make_isombr_part (or something similar).

That was me.

Presentation of first version:
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/03/msg01215.html

Richard Owlett's encounter first failed because the binary was amd64 and
his architecture was i386:
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/03/msg01218.html
I then proposed to build it from source, which seems to have succeeded:
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/03/msg01225.html


> i have two versions of it now, but it was a five years ago and
> i don't recall if i made the changes or got a new version from
> the author.  :)

Your request for a dry-run mode was fulfilled by a new version:
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/03/msg01268.html
which needed a fix because of a misleading program message:
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/03/msg01270.html
That's the version which is still available as
  http://scdbackup.webframe.org/make_isombr_part.c
  MD5 dd3e1a16e9593f908a1ce9ec848fd929

(My local version is slightly younger and seems to have been augmented
for being able to determine the USB stick size on FreeBSD, too. Dunno
whether this was for real use or just some finger exercises for myself.)


>   3. add boot loader (syslinux)

Why this step ?
The ISO brings a SYSLINUX/ISOLINUX boot loader for legacy BIOS (and GRUB
for EFI). The MBR of the ISO hops onto the ISOLINUX boot image which then
brings up the SYSLINUX boot menu.

What negative effect did you see when not performing this step 3 ?


Have a nice day :)

Thomas