Recommended way to create Live USB when PC expects it to be different?

[Member Robin]

I can’t make the Live USB stick created by antiX Live USB maker get accepted by the PC, so I have to run 17.4.1 on it until I find a solution.

I have to create the stick either on antiX 19.3 or on 17.4.1. The point is: When creating the antiX Live USB stick for this PC originally, I used “unetbootin” from within an ubuntu 12.4 lts, and this stick boots flawlessly until today. Now I tried to create a new stick for antiX 21 from within the antiX 19 machine using the “Live USB Maker”, but this stick won’t boot on the PC in question.
I tried different settings on creation, e.g. gpt or non gpt. Nothing seems to help out.

I compared the sticks, and found the following main differences (the stick hardware itself is identically, both are 64GB Alcor Micro Corp. Flash Drives)
The old (functioning) stick created by unetbootin long ago contains a single partition, formatted fat32 and marked “boot” and “lba”. It was created to be fully featured, allowing “persistence all” to be run on this stick.

The new stick made by antiX Live USB maker contains two partitions, the first one of them formatted ext4 (primary), the second (also primary) is vfat. But the Boot message which comes up by this stick is:

searching for Boot Record from USB ARMD:FDD... OK
..
Boot error

instead of comming up with the antiX boot screen. It is not the antiX 21 immage, I tried to write the stick from an antiX 17.4.1 and antiX 19 image also, but when using the antiX Live USB maker for this, the stick always fails booting, whichever image is used.

I suppose the BIOS is only able to boot from first partition of the USB device and expects this to be formatted fat, not ext. Or it can’t even handle multiple partitions on the USB boot device at all, if it isn’t a real hdd. No Idea.
I tried already every single setting the BIOS allows, which is: USB-HDD, USB-FDD, USB-CDROM, USB-ZIP/MO.
Only “USB ARMD-FDD” would recognise the boot record from the USB stick. All other combinations show only: “No boot media found. Press any button to reboot”
And it needs also in the BIOS features setup “USB Function Support ENABLED” and “USB Function for DOS ENABLED” to make it actually boot. No other combination seems to allow a direct boot from the stick.

So, what is best practise to create a Live USB medium for this PC? Should I rather install unetbootin from debian repos, or is there a way to force antiX Live USB maker to create the stick the way it is expected by this PC?

Right now I can’t burn CD/DVD, so the USB stick is the only media I can create for antiX 21. I tried to betray the PC by booting with the old 17.4.1 CD, feeding “from=usb” parameter, and having antiX 21 stick plugged. Complains about wrong kernel version, but then starts up to text console, allowing to login, logout and shutdown properly. No X system available this way. But this experiment shows, the antiX 21 stick created by Live USB maker is fine for booting generally, it is only not formatted the way the PC expects it right at the beginning of boot process.

Can I somehow move the complete content of the ext4 partition as created by the Live USB maker to a fat32 partition? Which config files have to be modified for this? And where to put the contents of the UEFI partition in this case? (Just an idea, don’t have a clue whether it would work this way…)

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Moderator christophe]

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I’m away from my computer right now, so I can’t remember exactly — but under advanced settings in LUM, there is some box to check which will not allow for UEFI booting when checked. Perhaps that setting will adjust things for your bios.
Just a shot in the dark…

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member olsztyn]

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@ Robin:
This a very interesting topic. I believe it affects many older PCs, whose BIOS does not have the option to boot from USB removable media yet. Such PCs have just options to boot from USB media in emulation mode, such as USB FDD (Floppy drive) or USB HDD (Hard disk drive). Yours has more options to boot in some other emulation modes, but neither one is booting from USB as ‘removable media’, which mode was widely adopted later and the legacy emulation modes became history.

Experts in antiX Live technology most likely will know the answer to how to set Live-USB-Maker to create a bootable USB for your PC. I looked at options in command mode Live-USB-Maker and I did not see any to set Live creation mode to chose boot emulation mode.

Some time ago I was facing a similar issue how to boot from USB stick on such PC, where only USB-FDD and USB-HD were emulation options to chose, no option to boot as ‘removable media’. I was lucky to have USB media sticks that were capable to be set as HD by flipping their boot emulation mode. Those were HP USB sticks and to flip their boot emulation mode to HD made them bootable on my PC, as they looked to the BIOS as HD, capable therefore of multiple partitions visible to some operating systems such as Windows.
The software I used to flip the boot emulation mode was Lexar USB Format Tool:

https://pendriveapps.com/flip-removable-bit-lexar-usb-format-tool/

Worked perfectly for me with those sticks but not all sticks have such capability to flip boot emulation bit. So my suggestion would be to check if your sticks can be flipped, ahead of better solution (options) coming from antiX Live team… Also there might be other tools to do that in addition to Lexar nowadays, as booting media from older PCs are not such uncommon requirement…

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by olsztyn.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Forum Admin dolphin_oracle]

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if you are just trying to create installation media, then you can use the “image” mode of live-usb-maker, which will make a single-partition “DVD-on-a-stick” setup, but such media will read-only. OK for installation, not OK for things like persistence.

[Member Robin]

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Many thanks for all your input. But non of the proposed solutions is appliable here:

The USB drive is needed with persistence, since I can’t hdd-install antiX on this PC: There is an “untouchable” Windows-2000 installation on its drive, running offline for A0-pen plotter and Microstation CAD and Rendering software on outdated Windows, needing a hardware dongle not being able to run virtualised under Linux, and the hdds of this old machine are not that big. So the new antiX has to run here from persistent USB stick as before, when the CAD station is not in use.

I tried to flip this magic byte of the USB drive using this windows tool you’ve mentioned, but it doesn’t have any affect on this stick. Obviously this setting is hard coded in the firmware here.

And yes, for sure I already tried the special option in Live USB maker which makes the stick not bootable by UEFI, but it didn’t change things.

So by now I’m lost, how to make the new antiX 21 version run on the PC from persistent Live USB stick, as fine as the 17.4.1 runs right now.

An additional option in Live USB maker to create the USB Stick tailored for this kind of legacy BIOS would be great. As said before, it works with all its Live features flawlessly, when the expectations of the PC BIOS for recognising it as valid boot device and being able to read its partition format are met.

So any further suggestions to create or modifying the stick to meet the expectations of this PC are welcome, I’ll check everything I can manage.

So long
Robin.

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Moderator christophe]

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Alright.
What about making a legacy-only boot usb using extlinux?
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/booting-antix-frugal-only-from-hdd-without-any-full-installed-os-with-extlinux/
The original post rambles, I know, and you’d have to adjust from sda to sdb (or whatever the usb is seen as). I use it on usb sticks as well as hdds for legacy bios computers (with all kinds of persistence)… so maybe it would work for you. Try hdd emulation setting in bios. 🙂

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member olsztyn]

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christophe wrote:

What about making a legacy-only boot usb using extlinux?

Thanks you brought this methodology up… I remember that following your publishing this I played a lot with your extlinux way and it worked for me very well, although that was on hard disk.
In relation to Robin’s case, I checked my three desktops (all older desktops), which I have not been used for some time as all I do is on laptops now, and all three have the same issues as Robin described… In those times desktops typically provided booting capability from USB in FDD, CDD or HDD emulation but not ‘removable USB media’ mode.
Robin’s post brought back my memories that my failing to make Live antiX boot on those desktops, except flipping boot emulation bit on my old HP (only 4Gb) sticks, made me let those desktops sit in storage useless. All I have been using since are laptops, somewhat newer that those desktops, all booting fine from removable media.
Such deficiency of old desktops (many really old laptops too) is mitigated to some degree by the fact they typically have DVD drive, and considering many antiX users are actually installing to HD not booting Live from USB, this issue has not been widely brought up.
However the interesting (and very valid) point Robin is bringing up is that it is not that such desktop is not capable of booting from USB removable media, as proved by one created with Unetbootin, which boots fine in one of boot emulation mode, but that antiX Live fails to boot in any of those modes.

So the general question was posed – what is the difference between Unetbootin and antiX live boot architecture that makes booting successful for Unetbootin and not so for antiX on such older desktops. And how antiX Live boot can be made successful.
I am very curious myself. Not for the sake of those old desktops sitting in storage, but to make antiX Live boot more capable – more universal, that would boot on more hardware.

Yesterday I was trying to test the suggestion from dolphin_oracle to Live-USB-Make a read only (dd mode) one-partition stick, just for testing if such one-partition antiX Live would boot one my old desktops, but so far Live-USB-Maker fails with an error. Whenever I chose ‘Clone running system’ and select dd mode, the’clone’ blanks out, starts partitioning USB media and then fails with an error.
I will try to do ISO snapshot instead and then attempt dd mode from ISO snapshot. This is just an experiment for me but may shed some light on answer to Robin’s partition question, as the cause of not booting…

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator christophe]

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I use it on usb sticks as well as hdds for legacy bios computers (with all kinds of persistence)

So I recommend a try, if you are interested in it potentially working for you. I don’t know if it will work for you, but I’m thinking it just might…

From USB, it acts like a hdd (set up the same, etc.). So to my mind,
it emulates a hdd…. (But what does my mind know?…) 🤐

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member olsztyn]

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christophe wrote:

From USB, it acts like a hdd (set up the same, etc.). So to my mind,
it emulates a hdd…

I believe you are right and your experience confirms booting all kinds of legacy computers. I will need to revisit that process you outlined…
The thing I do not understand with Extlinux is that starting with version 6.0 Syslinux and Extlinux merged and are supposed to be the same but it is not clear to me as those files still appear to be different.
Thanks again and Regards.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member Robin]

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christophe wrote:

What about making a legacy-only boot usb using extlinux?
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/booting-antix-frugal-only-from-hdd-without-any-full-installed-os-with-extlinux/
The original post rambles,

Many thanks for the link to this forumthread.
I followed exactly your instructions found there, creating the partition, dd-ing the mbr and installing extlinux on this stick (/dev/sdd here) instead of the hdd (/dev/sda and /dev/sdb) as you’ve described. But I couldn’t make it accepted by the PC in any way.

It always says (just like the stick created by antiX Live USB maker):

searching for Boot Record from USB ARMD:FDD... OK
..
Boot error

or even only
searching for Boot Record from USB ARMD:FDD... OK
and nothing happens anymore.

Whereas the originally used 17.4.1 stick which is booting properly on this PC comes up with the message

searching for Boot Record from USB ARMD:FDD... OK
..
SYSLINUX 6.03 CHS 20171018 copyright (c) 1994 - 2014 Peter Anvin at al
loading gfx-cpio..

and coming up happily with the antiX boot screen.

So I ended up with cloning the original (functioning) 17.4.1 stick by
dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd bs=500M

This procedure took some hours, unattended, until the 64 GB were 1:1 copied.
But then, a miracle happened: The cloned stick comes up, booting fine, exactly as the original, even with all stored boot configuration settings present and enabled persistence, just like the original.

I have no clue what makes the difference, since I had tried before to create the stick exactly the same way manually (one single partition, fat32, boot markers set exactly the same, installing syslinux or extlinux and the config files either in sub folder or in partition root directly, making the UUIDs match… all in vain.). Only the 1:1 clone boots now, but still to antiX 17.4.1… Next step will be: This is to be changed to 21 on this cloned stick which has the invaluable advantage that it boots the PC actually.

Well, no idea what’s behind all this. I’m not that experienced with all these live boot techniques, so I’d conclude: I made somewhere some mistake probably, not being able to find out the reason in the time given for this task. So I plead for adding a checkbox in the antiX Live USB maker tool like “create legacy stick”, automatising this complicated task. I don’t think I’m too much unexperienced in handling different OS on PCs and working on console, and I wonder how a complete newcomer would manage this. It will probably end up with “Let’s buy a new PC… even antiX won’t boot this one.”, while this is simply not true. It’s only the USB-Stick being formatted the wrong way for his device.

Now I’m going to transfer (root copy) all the contents of a default antiX 21 boot stick ext4 partition created by the Live USB Maker to the big fat32 partition on this functioning cloned stick and updating the UUIDs in the config files. Hope I will manage finding all the places I need to modify within the configs…

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Member olsztyn]

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Robin wrote:

So I ended up with cloning the original (functioning) 17.4.1 stick by
dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd bs=500M
This procedure took some hours, unattended, until the 64 GB were 1:1 copied.
But then, a miracle happened: The cloned stick comes up, booting fine, exactly as the original, even with all stored boot configuration settings present and enabled persistence, just like the original.

This is expected that such exact copy should work the same as the original as the copy is sector by sector.
Now it is a matter of replacing the old antiX 17 with antiX 21 it seems…
I also created today an extlinux based USB antiX Live stick per process outlined by Christophe and boots correctly on my laptops but did not have the time to retrieve the old desktop from storage yet to test if they would boot from such stick.
However I have a question to Christophe and other experts, to leverage experience with Extlinux:
What is the difference nowadays between extlinux and syslinux? When I am looking at extlinux boot files they seem exactly the same as syslinux boot files – ldlinux32 and ldlinux.sys. Previously I thought they were different but apparently after extlinux and syslinux merged into one boot system, they are the same it seems…
If so then is there any difference now, except slightly different syntax of config file?
Thanks and Regards…

Update:
After more research it appears to me syslinux and extlinux are basically the same. It seems that extlinux was made to be able to boot from Linux file systems, while syslinux originally booted just from Fat32 partition, but after merging these now they are the same files. Please someone let me know if I am mistaken…
Both can read syslinux.cfg config file, however if the extlinux.conf file is present then it takes precedence over syslinux.cfg.

As far as setting up syslinux/extlinux to boot multiple Frugal or Live instances – my thanks to Christophe for outlining methodology in the original thread. This works very well, both on internal hard disk or USB sticks…

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by olsztyn.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator christophe]

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@olsztyn – I don’t know what sys/extlinux is about, regarding their merging. It seems more confusing than having 2 distinct but similar programs.

@Robin – Is that stick that boots (that you cloned with dd) — was that made with unetbootin or antiX Live usb maker?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member Robin]

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@olsztyn Many thanks for the additional insights to extlinux/syslinux.- I was a bit confused by this also.
@christophe The clone was made from the old stick created once still on ubuntu 12.4 lts using unetbootin. No stick made by the antiX Live USB maker would boot this PC.
@dolphin_oracle As said already, I can’t install on this PC, so I need a not-read-only USB stick. A “DVD on stick” is not enough.

—

Now the results:
More strange things are going on… Wasn’t halloween over this year already? Seems not for this stick. It’s haunting, I’m afraid.

OK, what I did: I came to the conclusion it should be enough to replace the complete folder boot and antiX in the stick by the ones from antiX 21. In a frist step I renamed the original antiX 17 folders “…/boot” and “…/antiX” to “…/boot-17” and “…/antiX-17”, and copied the respective folders from the antiX 21 stick as created by Live USB maker in their place. While researching the configs I came to the conclusion there shouldn’t be any additional changes necessary inside. It should work out of the box when replacing these two folders completely.

Now, the stick boots still, Boot record is accepted and Syslinux comes up still. But after the lines

searching for Boot Record from USB ARMD:FDD... OK
..
SYSLINUX 6.03 CHS 20171018 copyright (c) 1994 - 2014 Peter Anvin at al

now it shows up with a new idea:

Warning: No configuration file found
boot:

Nothing else. Whatever I type there, nothing happens.

OK, double checked the config files needed are all present, named correctly and the permissions are fine also. The new config file syslinux.cfg sits in the very place where its double from antiX 17 has been before, and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. Also the contents look not that different from the original, so it should be found and read correctly now, showing at least antiX boot menu. No way…

But now the really strange thing comes: Just to be sure I renamed the replacement folders I had copied from the antiX 21 system to “boot-21” and “antiX-21”, and created a fresh copy from ORIGINAL (ver 17) folder, which I (you remember) had moved to boot-17 and antiX-17, assigning the fresh copy to the expected folder names “boot” and “antiX” and leaving the original folders with their “-17” trailer. What should I say: Same “Warning: no configuration file found” as with the folders copied from 21 antiX now here also. What the hack?

OK, next check. I renamed the fresh copies to the trailer “boot-17-fail” and “antiX-17-fail”, and moved the original folders from “boot-17” and “antiX-17” back to “boot” and “antiX”. And now the system boots again normally. No complaints about missing configuration files anymore.

Since I don’t believe in haunting, except on Halloween night 😉 , there must be some kind of strange name translation error happening when renaming/copying the files and folders on the fat32 file system from within antiX. I don’t believe syslinux expects to find a config file in a hard coded offset position of a drive, as Win2000 does… So there must be some kind of filename confusion happening when writing/copying the files and paths, so they are invisible to syslinux on boot time. Probably antiX shows me on console and also in file manager a different name as actually used on the fat32 file system? I recollect something… Wasn’t there an issue on DOS level the filenames will look like “BOOT~1” “BOOT~2” “BOOT~3″and “ANTIX~1” “ANTIX~2” “ANTIX~3” instead of the real file and folder names? But how to access these from within antiX and make them fit, if this should turn out to be true and the reason for all the struggle?

Any ideas? I’m tired of copying files and folders useless back and forth all the time… There must be a way to give the folders and files the very name as the original has had, or to prove this suspicion is not the reason and I have to look for another causation.

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Member Robin]

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Some researching this morning quarried some possible reasons for all these strange things happening to my syslinux config file: It seems sometimes to be not found by syslinux, even if it is actually present in the expected directory… I would call this a bug. But is it a bug of BIOS, or a bug of the Stick (hardware) or a bug of syslinux itself? … Doesn’t matter, it is enough to know it exists, and how to treat it.

From a posting on stackoverflow I learned this is so called normal behaviour of syslinux on flash drives. It describes three types of errors occurring when modifying the config file on a stick:

It turns out, any of these can appear whenever I try to change and save the syslinux.cfg file on the thumbdrive; or when I make changes in the casper image files, and I rsync or copy them to the thumbdrive. Maybe the copying process (since it may change the sectors where the files are located on the thumb), “confuses” parts of the boot process – although, this shouldn’t happen, since also the working procedure above starts from a blanked, syslinux’d thumbdrive, to which files are copied after; so I think this may point to failing sectors on the thumbdrive.

OK, then let’s analyse from boot prompt.

But when trying to access the ROSH shell from syslinux boot prompt in order to find out what’s actually going on here (aka debug), nothing happens.

There is nothing I can type at the prompt which would produce anything other than the stupid message
"Loading... failed: No such File or directory"
So I decided to check all Control combinations the keyboard allows, and there are actually some of them recognised:
Ctrl + p → ??
Ctrl + i → ??
Ctrl + u → ??
Ctrl + n → shows next entry from the list of commands you have typed before
Ctrl + m → executes a command form the list of commands you have typed before
Ctrl + j → ??
Ctrl + l → ??
Ctrl + r → Prints “reverse-i-search” and allows to search your list of last entered commands
Ctrl + v → Prints syslinux version

All in all, not very useful, what is found by these control sequences. Seems there is no way to get some more detailed information what syslinux “sees” recently or which directory it is working in, and where this stupid config file is hidden all of a sudden.

OK, the guy who has posted his findings at stackexchange explains, you’ll have to clean the stick completely except for the ldlinux.sys file and rewrite all files and directories at once from a backup copy to make syslinux work again on the stick. So I’ll give his method a try this evening when back home, hoping to make this notchy piece of boot loader software work finally on this PC. I want to see antiX 21 in action finally. Wouldn’t ever have pictured there are that many and heavy pitfalls in my path…

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi Robin, thanks for insights,
Sometimes usb sticks are a real bitch, on several occasions the only way I could get a boot has been the dd method.
I have 2 Transcend 64GB sticks, Jet flash 790, these are known to have controller weirdness. One needed an online repair.
Both could not be persuaded to boot from new. I did a dd copy of a working stick, fixed.
OT:
As you say halloween ghosts, I think the transcend ones are from Ullambana, chinese common name Zhongyuan because they are
hiding in or behind the controller. A place in the beyond the beyond, unreacheable to walking man unless fully enlightened. 🙂

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