Tails no longer recommending balenaEtcher
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This sounded like a techy Ron Swanson.
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Don't use Fedora myself, but it may not be a hybrid ISO that becomes bootable when written... so I looked and you are missing a flag
dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=8M status=progress oflag=direct
From https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/creating-and-using-a-live-installation-image/
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Did you make sure that the
ofis correct?lsblkto make sure.If your sure it wrote to the right drive i would make sure that you have a good download. Did you run your checksums?
I think fedora works with secureboot but you might want to disable it just to see if that is the issue. I believe you can reenable it after install.
Make sure to go into the bios and boot from external drive/usb.
Out of 15 years of using
ddi have never had a problem. -
I did verify with
lsblk, with a listing before and after plugging in the stick to be absolutely sure.I also did verify the checksum of the ISO.
I'll double check SecureBoot, but as I mentioned, the same ISO written to the same stick with Fedora writer did boot in the same machine it wouldn't boot from with the
ddversion.I know it's something I did or didn't do to make it work correctly, so this is not me trying to dunk on
dd, just trying to understand what I did wrong. -
Ah! Thank you! I knew it was something I screwed up!
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You didn't screw up, you beautifully proved why the CLI is never a simple solution.
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just trying to understand what I did wrong.
You might not have done anything wrong.
There is also the possibility of a bad USB drive or write memory failure. There is lots of things that could go wrong that's not your fault. Might try a different USB or a different USB port on your machine.
You might want to try zeroing out the USB,
if=/dev/zero. Then you might need to make a new partition table. You can use something like gparted. Or https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-manipulate-partition-tables-with-fdisk-cfdisk-and-sfdisk-on-linuxYou can try GPT or DOS. I dont think it matters.
Not sure if the ISO will have the partition table so you might want make the new partition table just to be sure the stick defiantly has one. If dd overwrites it from the iso no harm no foul.
Thats all the troubleshooting steps I can think of right now.
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Here's a wildcard people might not know about: Raspberry Pi Imager
I use it because it's faster than Etcher and it also has a bunch of quick links to download popular images (mainly for RPI and other arm-based SBCs) in one click which is handy if you use those regularly.
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Are the scissors broken in your house, son?
At least one person got the reference!
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If that happens to you, that's both a great reminder that mindlessly copy-pasting commands from the internet is a terrible idea, and a chance to practice your restore-from-backup routine! I see no downsides.
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The comment said "SD Card" so it would be
/dev/mmcblk* -
This is why people trying to pass this as a primary option baffle me a bit. dd is not that bad in isolation, but all of these little commands add up.
If we want Linux to be mainstream, we need to accept that most users aren't going to be linux enthusiasts. They just want a PC that works normally.
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Dude really goes to a cyber security community and hits them with the 'i have nothing to hide'
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i still had issues using 150MB electron based bloated and heavy software instead of rufus, not that it worked for me anyway
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https://circle.gnome.org? Never tried their ISO software, I just use dd.
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I use a microSD to usb adapter and have 2 spinning rust disks. So it's /sdc for me, but i still always double check. Dd isn't called the disk destroyer for nothing.
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Unrelated to balenaEtcher but I haven't been able to flash ISO files from Windows 11, either by using Rufus, Etcher, Fedora Media Writer, or even the WSL. I need to borrow a computer running a FLOSS operating system or to install OpenBSD first, then from OpenBSD to download and burn an ISO file on my USB drive.
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Thats a shame, it was one of the few disk imagers that "just worked"
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I don't think
oflags=directhas any influence on the result. Apparently that's about disabling the page cache in the kernel, which can avoid a situation in which the system slows down due to buildup yet-to-write pages. -
I also read this as Ron's voice!Nah as much as i love doing stuff via terminal, I am extra paranoid specifically about writing to the wrong device and losing data; I prefer as many confirmations as possible that I'm writing to the correct drive, and graphical installers tend to give me just a few more reassurances. A few examples would be stuff like
- a graphical representation of partitions (the general layout of a drive tends to offer an easy 'fingerprint' in my mind; like the pattern of partitions help me confirm I'm looking at, say, a Debian install USB compared to a single-partition general purpose storage disk)
- icons for different types of devices, like an SD card, USB, or hard disk icon
- confirmation dialogues summarizing what device is targeted, and what all will be performed
I'm also the kind of person who stares at a written email worrying about every last nuance of my phrasing, so
️ definitely a me problem, I think!
