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

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

Hi,

Richard Owlett wrote:
> The error message block is titled
> > It is not possible to create more than 1 primary partition

There should still 2 MBR partition table slots free. Both could become
primary partitions, although a provident partition editor could force
you to use the last partition as extended partition where more logical
partitions can be created.


> Gparted reports existing partition information to be:
>
> Partition   | File system | Label               |  Size      | Used
> /dev/sdc1   | unknown     |Debian 11.2.0 amd64  |   4.00 KiB |       ---
> unallocated | unallocated |                     |   1.98 MiB |       ---
> /dev/sdc2   | fat16       |                     |   2.53 MiB |  2.52 MiB
> unallocated | unallocated |                     |  29.81 GiB |       ---

That's quite some misperception.

  /sbin/fdisk -l debian-11.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso

says

  Device                           Boot Start    End Sectors  Size Id Type
  debian-11.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso1 *        0 772095  772096  377M  0 Empty
  debian-11.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso2       4060   9243    5184  2.5M ef EFI (FAT-12/

I guess that gparted's confusion is because of the nested partitions.
Another cause could be the GPT and APM debris. (It is the main job of
make_isombr_part to remove this.)

In order to check the theory about nested partitions you could delete
partition 2 which you don't need for BIOS booting.
E.g. by this interactive run:

  $ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
  ... welcome messages , maybe use p to get the table shown ...

  Command (m for help): d
  Partition number (1,2, default 2): 2

  Partition 2 has been deleted.

  Command (m for help): w
  The partition table has been altered.
  Syncing disks.

Maybe gparted likes it better afterwards.


> >    http://scdbackup.webframe.org/make_isombr_part.c

> After successful compilation I don't recall having actually attempted to use
> it.

But
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/03/msg01225.html
looks like you ran it and then inspected the resulting partition table:

>...> Device     Boot   Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
>...> /dev/sdb1  *          0  1140735  1140736  557M  0 Empty
>...> /dev/sdb2          4156     5531     1376  688K ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
>...> /dev/sdb3       1140736 15130623 13989888  6.7G 83 Linux


Have a nice day :)

Thomas