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Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB

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  Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2019-01-31 09:16 -0800
    Re: Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2019-01-31 09:31 -0800
    Re: Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2019-01-31 18:52 +0100
      Re: Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2019-01-31 10:24 -0800
    Re: Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2019-01-31 18:50 +0000
      Re: Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2019-01-31 11:19 -0800
        Re: Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2019-01-31 21:48 +0100
        Re: Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB "David W. Hodgins" <dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org> - 2019-01-31 18:18 -0500
          Re: Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2019-02-01 02:52 +0100
            Re: Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB "David W. Hodgins" <dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org> - 2019-01-31 21:09 -0500

#53449 — Examine (and fix?) non-booting USB

I have two USBs; one which boots to a live partitioned Ub Mate 18.04.1 
made from an .iso with mkusb* (front end for dd), the other which has 
the same UbMate installed to the USB using the Ub Ubiquity installer on 
the live UbMate according to these guidelines**.  The latter does not boot.

How can I see (and paste here) what is wrong with the one which doesn't 
boot with such as fdisk or other?  Should it be possible to retro-create 
a boot part and put a grub there?

The first parts certainly looks different in GPartEd.  The one which 
boots has a fat32 part with a usbboot label and a boot flag.  The one 
which doesn't does not.  I thought the Ubiquity installer was supposed 
to do that if I told it where I wanted the boot manager.  I created the 
parts with GPartEd and the mount point prior to starting the Ubiq installer.

The installed 16G USB does have a 1G fat32 part which I created at the 
front, but it is almost empty and has no boot label nor boot flag.  All 
of the 4.5 G of install is on an ext4 part.

* https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb  mkusb - tool to create boot 
drives
** 2014 Sep: 
http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014/11/install-real-ubuntu-os-usb-drive/ 
  How to Install The Real Ubuntu System on USB Flash Drive


-- 
Mike Easter

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#53451

Mike Easter wrote:
> I have two USBs; one which boots to a live partitioned Ub Mate 18.04.1

The live Mate has persistence and a grub.  Can I get grub to find the 
install on the other USB and put it in its menu so that I can boot into 
that Mate install and use it to fix its own first part?

-- 
Mike Easter

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#53452

On 31/01/2019 18.16, Mike Easter wrote:
> I have two USBs; one which boots to a live partitioned Ub Mate 18.04.1
> made from an .iso with mkusb* (front end for dd), the other which has
> the same UbMate installed to the USB using the Ub Ubiquity installer on
> the live UbMate according to these guidelines**.  The latter does not boot.
> 
> How can I see (and paste here) what is wrong with the one which doesn't
> boot with such as fdisk or other?  Should it be possible to retro-create
> a boot part and put a grub there?

I know of a good script that analyzes how a computer would boot, looking
at *all* the connected disks:

<https://github.com/arvidjaar/bootinfoscript/raw/master/bootinfoscript>

The snag for you is that it doesn't analyze a given disk only.



-- 
Cheers, Carlos.

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#53453

Carlos E.R. wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:
>> I have two USBs; one which boots to a live partitioned Ub Mate 18.04.1
>> made from an .iso with mkusb* (front end for dd), the other which has
>> the same UbMate installed to the USB using the Ub Ubiquity installer on
>> the live UbMate according to these guidelines**.  The latter does not boot.
>>
>> How can I see (and paste here) what is wrong with the one which doesn't
>> boot with such as fdisk or other?  Should it be possible to retro-create
>> a boot part and put a grub there?
> 
> I know of a good script that analyzes how a computer would boot, looking
> at *all* the connected disks:
> 
> <https://github.com/arvidjaar/bootinfoscript/raw/master/bootinfoscript>
> 
> The snag for you is that it doesn't analyze a given disk only.
> 
Tnx.

I'm currently learning about boot-repair tool.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair


-- 
Mike Easter

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#53454

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Hash: SHA256

Mike Easter wrote:
> I have two USBs; one which boots to a live partitioned Ub Mate 18.04.1 
> made from an .iso with mkusb* (front end for dd), the other which has 
> the same UbMate installed to the USB using the Ub Ubiquity installer on 
> the live UbMate according to these guidelines**.  The latter does not boot.

If you _installed_ ubuntu to that usb, where did you install grub?  Not
/dev/sda by any chance, did you?


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-- 
|_|O|_| 
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

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#53455

Dan Purgert wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:
>> I have two USBs; one which boots to a live partitioned Ub Mate 18.04.1
>> made from an .iso with mkusb* (front end for dd), the other which has
>> the same UbMate installed to the USB using the Ub Ubiquity installer on
>> the live UbMate according to these guidelines**.  The latter does not boot.
> 
> If you _installed_ ubuntu to that usb, where did you install grub?  Not
> /dev/sda by any chance, did you?
> 

No.

When I looked at the problem USB with GPartEd, it didn't look at all the 
same as the USB that boots, but boot-repair has a function to give me a 
summary of what it sees.  Here's a small part of that from the top:

-----------------

=== Boot Info Summary: ===

  => Windows 7/8/2012 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda.
  => Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb and looks at 
sector 1 of
     the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and 
looks
     for (,msdos3)/boot/grub. It also embeds following components:

     modules
 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     fshelp fat part_msdos biosdisk
 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  => Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdc and looks at sector
     13401584 of the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this 
location
     and looks for (,gpt2)/boot/grub. It also embeds following components:

     modules
 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     fshelp ext2 part_gpt biosdisk
 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------

The live working USB is 4G sdb, the inop USB install is 8G sdc.  So, I'm 
surprised to see that there is a grub in the mbr of the problem usb.  I 
just need to figure out how to get it seen as a boot device by my 
system.  My boot menu sees the USB but it doesn't boot from it, just an 
instantaneous flash of info seen when there is no boot sector on a device.

-- 
Mike Easter

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#53456

On 31/01/2019 20.19, Mike Easter wrote:
> Dan Purgert wrote:
>> Mike Easter wrote:
>>> I have two USBs; one which boots to a live partitioned Ub Mate 18.04.1
>>> made from an .iso with mkusb* (front end for dd), the other which has
>>> the same UbMate installed to the USB using the Ub Ubiquity installer on
>>> the live UbMate according to these guidelines**.  The latter does not
>>> boot.
>>
>> If you _installed_ ubuntu to that usb, where did you install grub?  Not
>> /dev/sda by any chance, did you?
>>
> 
> No.
> 
> When I looked at the problem USB with GPartEd, it didn't look at all the
> same as the USB that boots, but boot-repair has a function to give me a
> summary of what it sees.  Here's a small part of that from the top:
> 
> -----------------
> 
> === Boot Info Summary: ===
> 
>  => Windows 7/8/2012 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda.
>  => Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb and looks at
> sector 1 of

This text is formatted the same way as the bootinfo script I mentioned;
I would not be surprised if they share code.

-- 
Cheers, Carlos.

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#53457

On Thu, 31 Jan 2019 14:19:19 -0500, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

>   => Windows 7/8/2012 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda.
>   => Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb and looks at
> sector 1 of
>      the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and
> looks
>      for (,msdos3)/boot/grub. It also embeds following components:
>
>      modules
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>      fshelp fat part_msdos biosdisk
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   => Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdc and looks at sector
>      13401584 of the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this
> location
>      and looks for (,gpt2)/boot/grub. It also embeds following components:
>
>      modules

The boot may be failing due to the location within the disk. I'd try
creating a small /boot file system near the physical start of the drive.
Remember the 1024 cyl limit on bios firmware systems?

Note, the fat32 on the live image is likely due to the iso being set up
to boot in either uefi or bios firmware mode, while the installed system
is clearly set up for bios only firmware mode as that is was the installer
detected.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

-- 
Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
email replies.

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#53458

On 01/02/2019 00.18, David W. Hodgins wrote:
> The boot may be failing due to the location within the disk. I'd try
> creating a small /boot file system near the physical start of the drive.
> Remember the 1024 cyl limit on bios firmware systems?

Only very old computers were affected by that.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_1024>

<http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm>

-- 
Cheers, Carlos.

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#53459

On Thu, 31 Jan 2019 20:52:42 -0500, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

> On 01/02/2019 00.18, David W. Hodgins wrote:
>> The boot may be failing due to the location within the disk. I'd try
>> creating a small /boot file system near the physical start of the drive.
>> Remember the 1024 cyl limit on bios firmware systems?

> Only very old computers were affected by that.

Agreed, but given the description of what resulted from the installer,
it wouldn't surprise me if the bios firmware is old, even in a relatively
new (non-uefi) motherboard.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

-- 
Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
email replies.

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