How to edit a (read-only) file on USB installer...

AndrewS

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Dec 2, 2019, 2:57:34 PM12/2/19

to qubes-users

Good evening

First post here...

I made a bootable USB istaller for Qubws 4.0.1 using the dd comand in Linux Mint 19.2. This gave me a USB stick that booted OK on the (rather old, and totally unsuitable for Qubes I know) laptop I made it on. When I tried the stick in a more modern laptop, it wouldn't boot, stalling on a panic in core 1. There is a suggestion in the documentation on the Qubes site to edit out a couple of lines in BOOTX64.cfg, but all the files on the installation stick are read-only.

Suggestions on how to proceed would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Claudia

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Dec 7, 2019, 8:12:34 AM12/7/19

to AndrewS, qubes-users

AndrewS:

Welcome to the list. Sorry for the delay, I must have missed this
somehow. Can you post a copy of the terminal (commands and their output)
when you try to modify the files?

If you're getting "Read-only filesystem" make sure you're mounting the
first partition (EFI system partition) as fat32. Do not mount the entire
device as an ISO filesystem. For example, you want to mount /dev/sdb1,
not /dev/sdb.

If Gnome auto-mounts the drive when you insert it, try ejecting
(unmounting) it and then mount it manually.

Make sure you're running as root. If you're getting "Permission denied",
you probably just need to `chmod u+w /path/to/file`, edit, and then
`chmod u-w /path/to/file`.

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AndrewS

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Dec 9, 2019, 12:54:23 PM12/9/19

to qubes-users

Thanks for your reply, which I just saw. I feel rather foolish now... I was in fact mounting /dev/usb, rather than /dev/usb2 (there is actually a file called BOOTX64.cfg in both partitions, but the one in /dev/usb is read only, even though the owner of the file (me) has read and write permission. The file in /dev/usb2 has no such restrictions and I could edit it without problems, so I commented out the lines referring to noexitboot and mapbs. As soon as I have access to the other laptop I'll see if it has made any difference.