isolinux.bin missing or corrupt / normal.mod not found

[Teqleez]

Hi all, having troubles creating a bootable USB stick.

I have downloaded the ISO image (twice) and verified that its signature is correct.

I have tried other bootable usb tools as well as the dd command, and they finish seemingly correct, but when I boot from the USB stick, I get the same error on both old and new usb sticks (I have bought 2 new ones, different brands, just to test, but no difference).

(using legacy mode, etc., all works, I can boot other sticks in legacy mode, including an old Qubes 2.0 stick, so that is not the problem)

I am getting the following error output:

isolinux.bin missing or corrupt

errors '/boot/grub2/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found

Not sure what might be wrong.

I have tried on two different laptops with different BIOS software, one with Intel CPU and one with AMD CPU, but same problem on both.

What can be wrong?

[Frank]

What size are the USB sticks you are using? 4GB sticks are not big enough. It is known to be a problem (at least in the past) that in that case only part of the ISO image is copied to the stick - without any error messages being shown!

And make sure you are using dd to copy the image to the device /dev/sdX (X being the right letter for your stick) and not /dev/sdX1!

Regards, Frank

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[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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Are you sure you have big enough USB stick? R3.1-rc1 image is bigger
than 4GB...

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Teqleez]

I just found the problem now. 

I have tried 5 different sticks with 8gb-16gb sizes, same error.

I used the command:

sudo dd if=Qubes-R3.1-rc1-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdd1

- and I had manually made a 5,1gb/5,2 gb partiion with the rest as free space, in order to be able to use that free space for another partition later.

Now, I deleted the partition, so all the space on the USB stick is reported as free space, and ran:

sudo dd if=Qubes-R3.1-rc1-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdd

(only specifying the drive, no specific partition), 

- and now it worked.

Thanks for the quick response.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/29467-1449840174-69821%40sneakemail.com.

[Teqleez]

When I open Gparted to inspect the USB stick after the dd command finished, I get the following alert:

"/dev/sdc contains GPT signatures, indicating that it has a GPT table.  However, it does not have a valid fake msdos partition table, as it should.  Perhaps it was corrupted -- possibly by a program that doesn't understand GPT partition tables.  Or perhaps you deleted the GPT table, and are now using an msdos partition table.  Is this a GPT partition table?"

- What should I answer? (need to answer Yes or No)

- Should I be able to shrink the partition to use the rest of the space on that 16gb stick?

[Teqleez]

(ps. that USB drive is now actually /dev/sdc, not sdd - as I have removed/inserted various sticks meanwhile)

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 03:59:28PM +0100, Teqleez wrote:
> When I open Gparted to inspect the USB stick after the dd command finished,
> I get the following alert:
>
> "/dev/sdc contains GPT signatures, indicating that it has a GPT table.
> However, it does not have a valid fake msdos partition table, as it
> should. Perhaps it was corrupted -- possibly by a program that doesn't
> understand GPT partition tables. Or perhaps you deleted the GPT table, and
> are now using an msdos partition table. Is this a GPT partition table?"
>
> - What should I answer? (need to answer Yes or No)
> - Should I be able to shrink the partition to use the rest of the space on
> that 16gb stick?

You probably can't do that. Partition table on this installation image
is tricky - it have both valid (not fake) msdos table and GPT table.
This is to support both old and new systems with just one image. And
both DVD (DL) and USB. Implementation details are described here:
http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Isohybrid

In short it all means that if you edit any of this partition table,
you'll probably make it unbootable (either in UEFI or legacy mode).

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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