While preparing to upgrade to Fedora-37 (planned for mid-April), I noticed that my emergency tools are seriously out of date. Those are memtest, Fedora live, and rescue. memtest was dealt with in a thread earlier this month. Now I'm trying to update my Fedora live USB stick to Fedora-36. I used Fedora Media Writer to do that. I saw no hint of trouble while using that. But when I try to boot up from the stick (USB-3, if that matters), I get varying bad results. Two tries failed to complete the boot. One try appeared to succeed, but I couldn't launch any applications. The applications I tried were Firefox, a terminal, and I don't recall the other. The last application launch attempt locked up the workstation.
This workstation is 10 years old. It uses bios. I've attached a PNG screen capture of what Files says is on the stick at the top level. I do not have a cell phone or camera to capture the boot screen when the boot fails.
Main question: How do I make a Fedora-36 USB live stick that really works?
Secondary question: I can't find a tool on my workstation to check the stick. Disks, GSmartControl, and Disk Usage Analyzer don't do that, How can I check the stick itself? I actually tried 2 sticks for the Fedora Media Writer. They both failed when trying to boot.
Did both of the sticks fail to boot in the exact same way? Or did they fail differently?
Failing to boot differently each time on 2 different sticks (and on the same stick several times) would make me think that there was an issue with the USB on the workstation you are trying to boot being unreliable. It is possible that the 10 year old USB is not 100% backwards compatible with the usb sticks you have.
What kind and size of USB sticks are you using?
The easiest test is this: dd if=/dev/<usbdevicename> of=/dev/null bs=64k status=progress
If you get an error from dd there will also be an error in messages file about the device. if dd reads the correct amount of data (total size if the stick--roughly) and gets no errors then it is very likely the USB stick is just fine.
On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 2:25 PM home user mattisonw@comcast.net wrote:
While preparing to upgrade to Fedora-37 (planned for mid-April), I noticed that my emergency tools are seriously out of date. Those are memtest, Fedora live, and rescue. memtest was dealt with in a thread earlier this month. Now I'm trying to update my Fedora live USB stick to Fedora-36. I used Fedora Media Writer to do that. I saw no hint of trouble while using that. But when I try to boot up from the stick (USB-3, if that matters), I get varying bad results. Two tries failed to complete the boot. One try appeared to succeed, but I couldn't launch any applications. The applications I tried were Firefox, a terminal, and I don't recall the other. The last application launch attempt locked up the workstation.
This workstation is 10 years old. It uses bios. I've attached a PNG screen capture of what Files says is on the stick at the top level. I do not have a cell phone or camera to capture the boot screen when the boot fails.
Main question: How do I make a Fedora-36 USB live stick that really works?
Secondary question: I can't find a tool on my workstation to check the stick. Disks, GSmartControl, and Disk Usage Analyzer don't do that, How can I check the stick itself? I actually tried 2 sticks for the Fedora Media Writer. They both failed when trying to boot._______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
On 3/23/23 3:09 PM, Roger Heflin wrote:
Did both of the sticks fail to boot in the exact same way? Or did they fail differently?
Failing to boot differently each time on 2 different sticks (and on the same stick several times) would make me think that there was an issue with the USB on the workstation you are trying to boot being unreliable. It is possible that the 10 year old USB is not 100% backwards compatible with the usb sticks you have.
What kind and size of USB sticks are you using?
The easiest test is this: dd if=/dev/<usbdevicename> of=/dev/null bs=64k status=progress
If you get an error from dd there will also be an error in messages file about the device. if dd reads the correct amount of data (total size if the stick--roughly) and gets no errors then it is very likely the USB stick is just fine.
Before opening this thread, one of the things I did after both sticks failed to boot was to then use Fedora Media Writer to put memtest on one stick, and then use that stick to do a memory test. That worked. So that stick (well, at least a part of it) is good.
For the second stick, see the attached PNG file "Disks_leftsocket.png" for the Disks report about it when it's in the left USB3 socket. Here's the dd output:
----- -bash.3[~]: dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/null bs=64k status=progress 2016870400 bytes (2.0 GB, 1.9 GiB) copied, 9 s, 224 MB/s 30794+1 records in 30794+1 records out 2018148352 bytes (2.0 GB, 1.9 GiB) copied, 9.00462 s, 224 MB/s -bash.4[~]: -----
When I put the stick into the right USB3 socket, see the attached PNG file "Disks_rightsocket.png" for the Disks report about it when it's in the right USB3 socket. Here's the dd output:
----- -bash.4[~]: dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/null bs=64k status=progress 2015559680 bytes (2.0 GB, 1.9 GiB) copied, 9 s, 224 MB/s 30794+1 records in 30794+1 records out 2018148352 bytes (2.0 GB, 1.9 GiB) copied, 9.01046 s, 224 MB/s -bash.5[~]: -----
The sticks are Samsung, 32 GB, USB 3.1.
I sensed no pattern to how the boot attempts failed. But I can't be sure since I have no way of capturing the messages displayed while a boot attempt is in progress, or when it's done.
By the way, it's the workstation (a tower) that's 10 years old. The sticks are much newer, but I don't remember when I bought them.
Both USB3 sockets work fine when doing weekly incremental back-ups and looking at files on those back-ups.
On 3/23/23 1:25 PM, home user wrote:
While preparing to upgrade to Fedora-37 (planned for mid-April), I noticed that my emergency tools are seriously out of date. Those are memtest, Fedora live, and rescue. memtest was dealt with in a thread earlier this month. Now I'm trying to update my Fedora live USB stick to Fedora-36. I used Fedora Media Writer to do that. I saw no hint of trouble while using that. But when I try to boot up from the stick (USB-3, if that matters), I get varying bad results. Two tries failed to complete the boot. One try appeared to succeed, but I couldn't launch any applications. The applications I tried were Firefox, a terminal, and I don't recall the other. The last application launch attempt locked up the workstation.
This workstation is 10 years old. It uses bios. I've attached a PNG screen capture of what Files says is on the stick at the top level. I do not have a cell phone or camera to capture the boot screen when the boot fails.
Main question: How do I make a Fedora-36 USB live stick that really works?
Secondary question: I can't find a tool on my workstation to check the stick. Disks, GSmartControl, and Disk Usage Analyzer don't do that, How can I check the stick itself? I actually tried 2 sticks for the Fedora Media Writer. They both failed when trying to boot.
This afternoon (Sun., May 28), I retried Fedora Media Writer and a USB-3.1 stick, this time choosing Fedora-37 Workstation. There were no hints of trouble. But when I tried to boot from that stick, the boot screen sees the stick, but booting from it failed. I don't know how to capture the messages that were displayed.
So I turned to Stan's suggestion in the "/boot problem" thread to try a live DVD. It sure took a while to burn it. It sure took a while to boot it. But it does seem to have worked (one test only).
I'm puzzled and troubled that the USB stick method does not work. Could that have something to do with this being a BIOS rather than a UEFI workstation? But if that were the case, I would expect the DVD approach to also fail. Regardless, I'm glad the DVD method does work (though sure is slow). Since the DVD approach worked, I'm marking this thread SOLVED.
Thank-you.
On Sun, 2023-05-28 at 18:17 -0600, home user wrote:
I'm puzzled and troubled that the USB stick method does not work.
It could just be /that/ USB stick. Did you have another to try?
On Sun, May 28, 2023 at 9:17 PM home user mattisonw@comcast.net wrote:
On 3/23/23 1:25 PM, home user wrote:
While preparing to upgrade to Fedora-37 (planned for mid-April), I
noticed that my emergency tools are seriously out of date. Those are memtest, Fedora live, and rescue. memtest was dealt with in a thread earlier this month. Now I'm trying to update my Fedora live USB stick to Fedora-36. I used Fedora Media Writer to do that. I saw no hint of trouble while using that. But when I try to boot up from the stick (USB-3, if that matters), I get varying bad results.
Early USB-3 was problematic. Have you used USB memory sticks before? There have been cheap USB sticks that advertise a much higher capacity than they actually provide.
Two tries failed to complete the boot. One try appeared to succeed, but I couldn't launch any applications. The applications I tried were Firefox, a terminal, and I don't recall the other. The last application launch attempt locked up the workstation.
This workstation is 10 years old. It uses bios. I've attached a PNG
screen capture of what Files says is on the stick at the top level. I do not have a cell phone or camera to capture the boot screen when the boot fails.
Main question: How do I make a Fedora-36 USB live stick that really works?
Secondary question: I can't find a tool on my workstation to check the stick. Disks,
GSmartControl, and Disk Usage Analyzer don't do that, How can I check the stick itself? I actually tried 2 sticks for the Fedora Media Writer. They both failed when trying to boot.
This afternoon (Sun., May 28), I retried Fedora Media Writer and a USB-3.1 stick, this time choosing Fedora-37 Workstation. There were no hints of trouble. But when I tried to boot from that stick, the boot screen sees the stick, but booting from it failed. I don't know how to capture the messages that were displayed.
So I turned to Stan's suggestion in the "/boot problem" thread to try a live DVD. It sure took a while to burn it. It sure took a while to boot it. But it does seem to have worked (one test only).
I'm puzzled and troubled that the USB stick method does not work. Could that have something to do with this being a BIOS rather than a UEFI workstation? But if that were the case, I would expect the DVD approach to also fail. Regardless, I'm glad the DVD method does work (though sure is slow). Since the DVD approach worked, I'm marking this thread SOLVED.
You are lucky to have elderly hardware that still works. I worked in a research lab with equipment controlled by PC's, so here are several really old PC's doing "mission-critical" tasks running DOS or ancient Windows versions, and even one Apple Mac Power PC tower and specialized ISA cards.
Having the ability to boot a Live Linux distro (without the hassle of wriing a DVD) is often useful for troubleshooting, so it would be a good idea to ensure your USB devices work reliably. You can mount the iso Linux and use cmp to check for files that differ between .iso and USB. You could also find a way to check the USB key on another system. Many libraries have PC's available to the public -- contact the person who manages the PC and ask if you could try the Live Distro. There may be a linux users group in your area.
(replying to Tim and George)
Thank-you Tim and George.
On 5/29/23 7:01 AM, George N. White III wrote:
Early USB-3 was problematic. Have you used USB memory sticks before? There have been cheap USB sticks that advertise a much higher capacity than they actually provide.
I've been using USB sticks for several years, and USB-3.0 sticks for a few years. For this, I'm using 32 GB Samsung USB-3.1 sticks. Samsung is one of the good brands, right?
On 5/28/23 10:21 PM, Tim via users wrote:
It could just be /that/ USB stick. Did you have another to try?
After posts from Tim and George, I did more "experiments":
0. At the start, stick_1 has "mt86plus_6.20_64.iso" on it. stick_2 has "Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso" on it, but in pieces.
1. I used Fedora Media Writer to put "mt86plus_6.20_64.iso" on stick_2; no hint of trouble. I tested it in both USB-3 ports; it worked fine.
2. I used Fedora Media Writer to put Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso" on stick_1; no hint of trouble. I tested it in the left USB-3 port; it failed. I tested it in the right port; it succeeded.
3. I used Fedora Media Writer to put "mt86plus_6.20_64.iso" on stick_1; no hint of trouble. I tested it in both USB-3 ports; it worked fine.
4. I used Fedora Media Writer to put Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso" on stick_2; no hint of trouble. I tested it in the left USB-3 port; it failed. I tested it in the right port; it succeeded.
It seems that the problem is not /that/ stick. memtest consistently working in both ports and on both sticks suggests to me that neither the ports nor the sticks are at fault. But Fedora Live behaves inconsistently.
All that entropy talk in the user's list recently: might some of that entropy be infecting Fedora Live? (just kidding)
On 5/29/23 7:01 AM, George N. White III wrote:
... You can mount the iso Linux and use cmp to check for files that differ between .iso and USB.
My Downloads directory (from which the copy to the sticks comes) has one .iso file; the stick has a few folders and several files. How would I do that cmp?
With Fedora Live apparently working adequately if the stick is in the right port, the original goal is satistied.
On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 4:05 PM home user mattisonw@comcast.net wrote:
- I used Fedora Media Writer to put Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso" on stick_1; no hint of trouble. I tested it in the left USB-3 port; it failed. I tested it in the right port; it succeeded.
Instead of Media Writer, you could try using dd to write the iso to the stick - something like "lsblk" to identify the device for the USB stick and then "sudo dd if=Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=1m" where /dev/sdX is the USB stick. I've always used dd like this and I have never had a problem booting off of the resulting USB stick.
You can also use dd to copy the usb stick back to a file, and compare the two files with cmp. (The original iso file should be an initial segment of the stick copy.) Maybe you can use cmp to directly compare the iso and the usb device, but I've never done it that way. --Stephen
On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 1:44 PM Go Canes letsgonhlcanes0@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 4:05 PM home user mattisonw@comcast.net wrote:
- I used Fedora Media Writer to put
Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso" on stick_1; no hint of trouble. I tested it in the left USB-3 port; it failed. I tested it in the right port; it succeeded.
Instead of Media Writer, you could try using dd to write the iso to the stick - something like "lsblk" to identify the device for the USB stick and then "sudo dd if=Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=1m" where /dev/sdX is the USB stick. I've always used dd like this and I have never had a problem booting off of the resulting USB stick. _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
On 5/31/23 2:44 PM, Go Canes wrote:
On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 4:05 PM home user mattisonw@comcast.net wrote:
- I used Fedora Media Writer to put Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso" on stick_1; no hint of trouble. I tested it in the left USB-3 port; it failed. I tested it in the right port; it succeeded.
Instead of Media Writer, you could try using dd to write the iso to the stick - something like "lsblk" to identify the device for the USB stick and then "sudo dd if=Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=1m" where /dev/sdX is the USB stick. I've always used dd like this and I have never had a problem booting off of the resulting USB stick.
Tried this yesterday evening. It failed. It did not like the "bs=1m" at the end of the command. After looking at the man page, I guessed that you meant "1M" rather than "1m". Tried again. The copy (dd) apparently worked (no errors or warnings), but the boot failed.
I did my weekly patches today. Then tried this (with "1M") again a few times. I got inconsistent results: * two failures to boot. * once it booted ok, but attempts to launch Firefox, a terminal, and the system monitor failed. * twice it booted ok, but Firefox apparently locked up after a few minutes. * once it booted ok, and the few applications I tried did work. Results suggest that the sticks are ok, and the sockets are ok. Something else is bad; I don't know what.
I'll look more closely at George's post tomorrow.
On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 5:05 PM home user mattisonw@comcast.net wrote:
(replying to Tim and George)
Thank-you Tim and George.
On 5/29/23 7:01 AM, George N. White III wrote:
Early USB-3 was problematic. Have you used USB memory sticks before?
There have been cheap USB sticks that advertise a much higher
capacity than they actually provide.
I've been using USB sticks for several years, and USB-3.0 sticks for a few years. For this, I'm using 32 GB Samsung USB-3.1 sticks. Samsung
is one of the good brands, right?
The crooks copy name-brand packaging. Bogus USB drives can be introduced anywhere in the supply chain, so the problem is usually discovered only when it refuses to hold advertised capacity. Some reports say they silently discard data past the physical capacity and fill reads with garbage, so casually transferring a large file will appear to work until you actually check the contents.
On 5/28/23 10:21 PM, Tim via users wrote:
It could just be /that/ USB stick. Did you have another to try?
After posts from Tim and George, I did more "experiments":
- At the start, stick_1 has "mt86plus_6.20_64.iso" on it. stick_2 has
"Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso" on it, but in pieces.
- I used Fedora Media Writer to put "mt86plus_6.20_64.iso" on stick_2; no
hint of trouble. I tested it in both USB-3 ports; it worked fine.
- I used Fedora Media Writer to put
Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso" on stick_1; no hint of trouble. I tested it in the left USB-3 port; it failed. I tested it in the right port; it succeeded.
- I used Fedora Media Writer to put "mt86plus_6.20_64.iso" on stick_1; no
hint of trouble. I tested it in both USB-3 ports; it worked fine.
- I used Fedora Media Writer to put
Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso" on stick_2; no hint of trouble. I tested it in the left USB-3 port; it failed. I tested it in the right port; it succeeded.
It seems that the problem is not /that/ stick. memtest consistently working in both ports and on both sticks suggests to me that neither the ports nor the sticks are at fault. But Fedora Live behaves inconsistently.
USB3 uses frequencies higher than USB2, so other devices can be affected by poor shielding at the ports, and kinked cables or excessively long leads connecting port to system board cause deterioration of the signals. Are both ports soldered neatly to the system board with short leads? Consider adding a USBC card to an older desktop.
All that entropy talk in the user's list recently: might some of that entropy be infecting Fedora Live? (just kidding)
On 5/29/23 7:01 AM, George N. White III wrote:
... You can mount the iso Linux and use cmp to check for files that differ between .iso and USB.
My Downloads directory (from which the copy to the sticks comes) has one .iso file; the stick has a few folders and several files. How would I do that cmp?
With Fedora Live apparently working adequately if the stick is in the right port, the original goal is satistied.
On Thu, 2023-06-01 at 18:38 -0300, George N. White III wrote:
USB3 uses frequencies higher than USB2, so other devices can be affected by poor shielding at the ports, and kinked cables or excessively long leads connecting port to system board cause deterioration of the signals. Are both ports soldered neatly to the system board with short leads?
That reminds me of an old problem, regardless of which version of USB:
On many PCs the front panel USB sockets have a really poor quality flylead from the front panel to USB header pins on the motherboard. While this was often not a problem with the original slowest USB speeds, it sometimes was, and very unreliable with faster speeds.
And I wish USB stick manufacturers would stop making silly designs, I was asked to copy a file to one the other day, and it was too fat to fit into the socket with other things plugged in next to it.
On 6/1/23 3:38 PM, George N. White III wrote:
On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 5:05 PM home user <mattisonw@comcast.net mailto:mattisonw@comcast.net> wrote: [... snip ...] The crooks copy name-brand packaging. Bogus USB drives can be introduced anywhere in the supply chain, so the problem is usually discovered only when it refuses to hold advertised capacity. Some reports say they silently discard data past the physical capacity and fill reads with garbage, so casually transferring a large file will appear to work until you actually check the contents.
[... snip ...] USB3 uses frequencies higher than USB2, so other devices can be affected by poor shielding at the ports, and kinked cables or excessively long leads connecting port to system board cause deterioration of the signals. Are both ports soldered neatly to the system board with short leads? Consider adding a USBC card to an older desktop.
I do not the resources to give the tower that kind of physical.
I have no idea how to compare the one iso file to the several directories and files on the stick.
I looked around for another way to check the sticks. I thought if I put something huge on the stick, and then use diff, that would do the job. My /home is over 22 GB. So if I re-format the stick, copy /home to the stick, and do a "diff -r", that would test much of the stick. But diff can't compare contents of binary files. So I looked at cmp. That does not have a recursive option. I have not been able to find any other commands to do a recursive binary compare.
On Fri, 2023-06-02 at 20:28 -0600, home user wrote:
I looked around for another way to check the sticks. I thought if I put something huge on the stick, and then use diff, that would do the job. My /home is over 22 GB. So if I re-format the stick, copy /home to the stick, and do a "diff -r", that would test much of the stick. But diff can't compare contents of binary files. So I looked at cmp.
As a brute force and ignorance approach, you could copy some very large files (such as an ISO) several times to the thing, compare them against the original file.
Hi
On Fri, 02 Jun 2023 20:28:10 -0600 home user wrote:
But diff can't compare contents of binary files.
No: it can:
diff /bin/ls /bin/pwd Binary files /bin/ls and /bin/pwd differ
In your case you only need to know if the files differ, thus use
diff --brief -r ...
diff --brief /bin/ls /bin/pwd Files /bin/ls and /bin/pwd differ
On Sat, 2023-06-03 at 09:01 +0200, Francis.Montagnac@inria.fr wrote:
Hi
On Fri, 02 Jun 2023 20:28:10 -0600 home user wrote:
But diff can't compare contents of binary files.
No: it can:
diff /bin/ls /bin/pwd Binary files /bin/ls and /bin/pwd differ
In your case you only need to know if the files differ, thus use
diff --brief -r ...
diff --brief /bin/ls /bin/pwd Files /bin/ls and /bin/pwd differ
Or just use cmp.
poc
On Fri, Jun 2, 2023 at 10:28 PM home user mattisonw@comcast.net wrote:
I have no idea how to compare the one iso file to the several directories and files on the stick.
You can mount the iso file with "sudo mount file.iso /mnt", and then use "diff -r /mnt /stick" or similar.
Assumes: - you don't already have something mounted on /mnt (if so just use a different mount point) - /stick is where you have the USB stick mounted - change to whatever you are actually using - media writer or whatever you used to create the USB stick does not alter contents
-
Francis.Montagnac＠inria.fr -
George N. White III -
Go Canes -
home user -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
Roger Heflin -
Stephen P. Carrier -
Tim