USB installation instructions are incomplete

[tailsb...@tormail.org]

Hi, ive been trying to get the qubes R2b1 iso onto a usb drive by going
into terminal and finding the usb address:

"where /dev/sdX is replaced with your usb stick, which is determined by
running dmesg and looking for a line like:

[32656.573467] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdX] Attached SCSI removable disk

where sdX is sda,sdb,sdc, etc... and thats the usb address."

And then i type in the instructions with the iso in my home directory:

dd if=Qubes-R2-Beta1-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sde


The cursor moves down to the next line and then it stops, and i can type
like its a text editor so i guess thats terminals way of crashing. What i
dont get is why you cant make your iso bootable with the universal usb
installer, or just provide a simple script to make the usb bootable. This
is very frustrating and anti-user, please fix this.

[Marek Marczykowski]

On 19.02.2013 04:49, tailsb...@tormail.org wrote:
> Hi, ive been trying to get the qubes R2b1 iso onto a usb drive by going
> into terminal and finding the usb address:
>
> "where /dev/sdX is replaced with your usb stick, which is determined by
> running dmesg and looking for a line like:
>
> [32656.573467] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdX] Attached SCSI removable disk
>
> where sdX is sda,sdb,sdc, etc... and thats the usb address."
>
> And then i type in the instructions with the iso in my home directory:
>
> dd if=Qubes-R2-Beta1-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sde
>
>
> The cursor moves down to the next line and then it stops, and i can type
> like its a text editor so i guess thats terminals way of crashing.

Just wait until copy to USB is finished... This will take few minutes
depending on your USB stick speed.

> What i
> dont get is why you cant make your iso bootable with the universal usb
> installer, or just provide a simple script to make the usb bootable. This
> is very frustrating and anti-user, please fix this.

Universal USB installer is mostly for images not prepared for USB boot. Qubes
ISO is already prepared for it. Qubes also uses non-standard bootloader
configuration to start Xen and tools like the above most likely will produce
unbootable stick.

If you want to write Qubes iso image to USB stick under windows, you can also
try image writer (https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer).

--
Best Regards / Pozdrawiam,
Marek Marczykowski
Invisible Things Lab

[Dario Faggioli]

On mar, 2013-02-19 at 03:49 +0000, tailsb...@tormail.org wrote:
> "where /dev/sdX is replaced with your usb stick, which is determined by
> running dmesg and looking for a line like:
>
> [32656.573467] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdX] Attached SCSI removable disk
>
> where sdX is sda,sdb,sdc, etc... and thats the usb address."
>
> And then i type in the instructions with the iso in my home directory:
>
> dd if=Qubes-R2-Beta1-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sde
>

And, in fact, I think everything is fine, I followed the same steps and
ended up with a fully functional boot stick.

> The cursor moves down to the next line and then it stops, and i can type
> like its a text editor so i guess thats terminals way of crashing. What i
> dont get is why you cant make your iso bootable with the universal usb
> installer, or just provide a simple script to make the usb bootable. This
> is very frustrating and anti-user, please fix this.
>

Ehm... On the contrary, it's the "dd way of working". What is happening
is just dd is writing the image on the USB stick. Be a little bit more
patient, resist the temptation of killing it via Ctrl+C or anything
similar, give it some more time and it will just finish nicely and
cleanly.

I can't imagine any simpler script than a one line command...

Regards,
Dario

--
<<This happens because I choose it to happen!>> (Raistlin Majere)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dario Faggioli, Ph.D, http://about.me/dario.faggioli
Senior Software Engineer, Citrix Systems R&D Ltd., Cambridge (UK)

[bradbury9]

I do share Dario's opinion on keeping thins simple.

There is a way to get s progress bar using pv and pipes:

pv -tpreb /dev/sda | dd of=/path/to/iso

but if you complicate the process it would be more difficult to know what step failed, the dd or the pv pipe.

Try to keep things simple :-)

[Marek Marczykowski]

On 19.02.2013 09:04, bradbury9 wrote:
> I do share Dario's opinion on keeping thins simple.
>
> There is a way to get s progress bar using pv and pipes:
>
> pv -tpreb /dev/sda | dd of=/path/to/iso

Actually in reverse order:
pv /path/to/iso | dd of=/dev/sdX

>
>
> but if you complicate the process it would be more difficult to know what
> step failed, the dd or the pv pipe.
>
> Try to keep things simple :-)
>
> El martes, 19 de febrero de 2013 08:52:31 UTC+1, Dario Faggioli escribió:
>>