System won't boot from USB stick

Support
1

Okay, it seems my system is incapable of booting off of a USB stick. Neither the Ventoy stick, nor a USB stick made with dd works. Boot order is “Removable Device” “DVD” “HDD”.

What happens is a BEEP from the system (this is the normal reboot BEEP, always heard) then it sits there going through the boot options (I assume, it doesn’t say), after a while it reads the boot information off the HDD and continues to the normal system and the login screen, the system currently installed on the HDD.

Is there something else one needs to watch out for in the Bios to make it work, other than the boot order, I mean?

I have booted off a USB stick on an even older machine (the one I ran LinuxMint on, before 2021), that machine is probably from 2005 or maybe earlier, so one would assume that a machine from 2014 should be able to boot from USB with no problem.

The drives are as follows:

$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda      8:0    0 931,5G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0   300M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2   8:2    0 922,4G  0 part /
└─sda3   8:3    0   8,8G  0 part [SWAP]
sdb      8:16   1     0B  0 disk
sdc      8:32   1  14,4G  0 disk
├─sdc1   8:33   1   5,3G  0 part
└─sdc2   8:34   1     4M  0 part
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

I think my only option is to make a bootable DVD. Is there a slimmed ISO one can use that will fit on a 4.4 GB DVDr?

I have booted off a DVD before, this is how the system I use now was first installed. I chose to use a DVD since making a USB stick with dd takes about 1.5 hours:

sudo dd if=manjaro-kde-25.1-pre2-251215-linux618.iso of=/dev/sdb

Thanks in advance for any suggestions regarding the USB issue.

2

Does it take a comparable amount of time to simply copy the ISO to the prepared Ventoy device?

Try a different USB port, if you can.

Did you verify the checksum?
(in case of the Ventoy device: the checksum of the file that ended up on the USB device …)

Do you have to use that version?

manjaro-kde-25.1-pre2-251215-linux618.iso

It’s a rolling release distribution - it will all end up being the same anyway, after updating.

Even the minimal version of Plasma is more than 4.4 GB - not sure about the preview version that you want to use.

assuming your USB stick’s capacity is large enough to hold ~ 6 GB of Data:
sudo cp Manjaro.iso /dev/sdc
will work just as well as the more arcane looking dd command
(wait for the prompt to come back)

1 Like
3

No, it takes far less time. dd has always taken a lot of time for me, regardless of distribution. On my old computer it was even slower. On this one, circa 1.5 MB per second, on the old one, 1 MB per second. Most likely a hardware issue.

I have tried them all: one USB3 (marked as such on the outside) and the rest are (presumably) USB2, I have two of those.

Yes, on the HDD.

And, yes, on the Ventoy.

Both pass.

No. But since I am in the process of trying to update my current system to around that version, I thought it might be a good idea to have that as backup.

I might still have the old DVD laying around somewhere, but that’s from 2021, or around that time.

Yes, I know that. And this is my goal, to update. I just wanted a backup version to be able to run that in case of errors and problems with the updating process. Many seem to have had problems, so I wanted to be prepared. Therefore I have spent the last couple of days or so, backing up well over 700 GB (not removed from the drive, but backed up at least), cleaning out old orphan packages, removed all (at least most of) AUR packages, etc., to get it down to a state of “limited bloat.” I.e. as clean as I can get it without too much time being spent.

Note that this is just for being able to possibly repair a broken update, nothing else. No matter what I have it boils down to having a backup USB, since the ISO won’t fit on a DVD. And since the USB doesn’t boot, I don’t know how to solve it. Somewhat of a “Catch 22” so to speak.

I have both the preview version and the version from October (15th was it?) on the Ventoy, but since it doesn’t boot with that setup anyway, I got the preview version and used dd as a test. Of course, I could try with some older version using dd also, but I don’t see any success lurking on the horizon using that method.

And that is why I asked about if there are some slimmed down versions of ISO’s that may fit on a DVD. If it’s for repair reasons, it might not have to be the latest version, but I don’t know that for a fact, since I am unable to try it if the ISO’s are so large these days.

Oh, I just had a look and I still have that old DVD, actually. It’s version 24.2.1. I believe it’s the full Plasma ISO from back then.

If that will work for repairing any problems that may occur, could I maybe use that for this purpose? Or is it too old and lacking things needed for newer versions of Manjaro?

I will, of course, test to boot from that DVD prior to updating anything, since it’s quite old. In my experience, time and DVD’s aren’t exactly close friends.

Thanks for your input.

4

My personal rescue ISO is 2.5G - you can find it at manjaro.dk

It is a customized Manjaro - with kernel graphics only - and no installation options.

It boot to CLI and after applying keyboard configuration (both) one can load a plasma wayland session from command line…

1 Like
5

@linux-aarhus Cool! That is very slimmed down. I will burn it on a DVD and try to boot from it.

Thank you so much! 8)

6

You do know that GRUB is capable of loading an ISO directly from your system disk ?

I have a folder in my root called /miso and a custom grub config which makes it possible to boot the iso directly - it will likely need adaption for your use case

 $ cat /boot/grub/custom.cfg 
menuentry "Rescue"  {
    set isofile="/miso/rescue-25.iso"
    set dri="free"
    set lang="en_DK"
    set keytable="dk"
    set timezone="Europe/Copenhagne"
    search --no-floppy -f --set=root $isofile
    probe -u $root --set=abc
    set pqr="/dev/disk/by-uuid/$abc"
    loopback loop $isofile
    linux  (loop)/boot/vmlinuz-x86_64  img_dev=$pqr img_loop=$isofile driver=$dri tz=$timezone lang=$lang keytable=$keytable copytoram
    initrd  (loop)/boot/amd_ucode.img (loop)/boot/initramfs-x86_64.img
}

It can also boot from a ventoy disk - after selecting the ISO you get a default and a GRUB option - if one option don’t work try the other…

1 Like
7

It was more of a rhetorical question - dd is quite a specific command … with not good defaults for this kind of operation.
It’s essentially both overkill and the wrong tool for the job.

A major reason to not use it
but simply use cp instead.

I only ever use the minimal versions.
Quite good enough for your stated purpose as well.

Here is the names and sizes of all of the ones I currently have here:

jo@vajo:~/Downloads$ ls -hl ./manjaro-*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 libvirt-qemu kvm 3,0G Okt 16 12:00 ./manjaro-cinnamon-25.0.3-minimal-250609-linux612.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 libvirt-qemu kvm 4,0G Okt 16 11:46 ./manjaro-gnome-25.0.10-minimal-251013-linux612.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 libvirt-qemu kvm 4,5G Okt 16 11:12 ./manjaro-kde-25.0.10-minimal-251013-linux612.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 libvirt-qemu kvm 4,0G Okt 16 11:26 ./manjaro-xfce-25.0.10-minimal-251013-linux612.iso

all of the versions are installed as a VM

8

@linux-aarhus This was even better, I think. This would mean that as long as I have enough free space and the HDD isn’t borked, I can get it up and running from any old ISO, regardless of its size.

Hmm, the next logical step, can grub mount a USB drive/stick and then read the settings which would point to the USB instead of that special directory? Or is this wishful thinking?

This page https://checkmk.com/linux-knowledge/booting-grub-usb-stick tells about putting grub on a USB, but I wonder if in my case that would be the same thing as I have now, with the non-bootable USB stick.

9

You don’t need anything fancy - it can be done with grub - on the USB - this document is from before ventoy, October 2020.

→ [root tip] [How To] Multi ISO USB with storage partition

Ventoy uses grub and efi to provide the iso selection menu - just like it was done before - ventoy simplifies the amount of intervention needed.

1 Like
10

What motherboard do you have? Seems more likely a BIOS setting or related problem to me here.

Maybe you need an additional key pressed (while you have the correct boot order).


Not that any of this helps the problem…

Sometimes Ventoy is overkill. I would agree, dd notation is pretty archaic. But if you know:

  • input file if=
  • output file of=
  • block size bs=

Don’t specify either if/of, or both, and it beautifully uses standard in/out. (Great for on the fly compressed ISOs.)

Just knowing that, and you can do soooo much that Ventoy can’t (with data). They are just 2 very different things.

That’s why I use both.

I use this command as well a lot. This should work.

I would just increase the block size from the default 512 bytes. Just adding something like:

sudo dd if=manjaro..iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

That increases it 2000 times more than the default, which should make it substantially quicker. Writes on cheap NV-flash sticks, are usually the bottle neck, but you usually want something greater than 4k for most things.

Whether you go Ventoy or dd. It’s writing about the same amount of data. (But without increasing block size, copying a file will be a lot quicker, aka Ventoy.)

11

I meant:
dd was overkill
it can do sooo much indeed - but none of that is needed to write a complete file to a device

depending on the options you give to the command, it may take many times longer to complete than … it would have taken by simply using the cp system tool
… or cat for that matter … :wink: - and there are a few more options to achieve the same
shell redirect, for instance

… no need to argue about this here, though

12

In case you come back verifying dd command procedure, there is a guide:

As @Molski mentioned speed depend on bs selection and your USB key writing speed capability. In most cases bs=1M is a good decision if you don’t care about fine-tuning for a specific device.

I think the procedure using dd has advantages if it’s come to the point of verifying the checksum.

13

I am not done yet, been busy with some off computer things (we’re closing in on Yule, as us Swedes call it, and one does want to eat at somewhat semi-regular intervals), so I will investigate the option of using grub and storing the ISO files in a special directory as suggested by @linux-aarhus. Therefore I will mark this as the solution, since it seems to be the easiest option. I will go through the instructions and try and set it up tomorrow (19th).

Thanks also to @Molski for mentioning the speed setting together with dd. Old USB sticks are slower than what we can buy today and this is a limiting factor as well. Plus, I think I read somewhere while still on LinuxMint that while writing to a USB stick using dd it was better to go slowly to avoid errors, so I never bothered with setting other options. Next time I use the command, I’ll try that 1M setting and see if it works.

Thanks to all and merry/happy whatever-you-celebrate this time of year. Personally, I don’t celebrate anything.

14

But I hope you still have yourself a good time! :wink:

(in Sweden it is dark for even longer than here - the price you pay for longer days in the opposite season :wink: )

15

And with no snow on the ground, it’s even darker.

16

It will come.
Even here it will.
For some short amount of time - but it depends on where exactly in … Germany
Several orders of latitude below yours.

… and:
it is only two or three days from now until it all turns around -
the days are getting longer again, the darkness slowly subsides :smiley:

17

@Molski, @linux-aarhus and all others who may have an interest.

The computer can now boot from the Ventoy! 8)

Glancing through what people had been writing in this topic, my eyes fell on what @Molski asked about motherboard. Mine is an Acer so I went on the web and searched for some time and found this page, via the LinuxMint support forum:
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/548095/acer-predator-g3-710-how-to-boot-from-usb-or-dvd?tab=all

They discuss some of the things I have been trying to solve, so I sat down with pen and paper and jotted down things to check.

There was an extra step in the Bios, just as Molski suspected, one that gives you an extra options menu when F12 is pressed and only there can you elect to run from the USB stick. IMO this is a very weird setup, I suppose it’s there to protect those who gladly put anything onto their computer and run it.

So a huge thanks to @Molski who, IMO, should have had the solution tag attached. Not sure if this can be, or is desired, to change by some admin.

One more thing, although I believe that I originally installed with the option free drivers, this option no longer works when running off the Ventoy. It blinks a few times, then stalls completely. If I run with proprietary drivers, it runs fine. Is this something to be concerned about?

I know that the pacnew file from x months ago, contained a bunch of new stuff. I don’t trust such new stuff that comes up out of the blue, so I never introduced things like microcode, since this hardware is older than recent, so to speak, and those microcode files have dates from 2006, so real old. The system works fine without those things and since it is mentioned that the pacnew files are “suggestions” (or some wording like that), I felt even less willing to fiddle around with all that. Any input on this matter?

Now that this Ventoy gadget seem to be working I might test to fiddle around more. We’ll see.

As for the grub adventure. I have the grub meny up and running, but since this Ventoy started working, I didn’t introduce the settings file. One of these days, when I have more time (ha, ha, ha) I will maybe get that up and running as well. It’s good to have options.

2 Likes
18

I agree with this choice as it is indeed a BIOS setting; have changed the Solution. :wink:

1 Like
19

This topic was automatically closed 3 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.