mkusb PPAs for vivid (Phill Whiteside)

[Nio Wiklund]

Hi again,

*More about gnome-disks*

I have checked after wiping the first megabyte with mkusb and
reinstalling into the USB pendrive. Tiny Core is still booting, so a
bootloader was written.

Maybe, when the img extension is [automatically] selected, 'Disks' does
not write any bootloader into the image, while it does make a complete
bootable image, when the iso extension is [automatically] selected.

I read the manual

man gnome-disks

but it is very brief, four options (including help). At least in Lubuntu
Vivid, nothing happens when I select help from the menu, so it is not
straight-forward to get detailed information, but I found this link
explaining the objectives

https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Disks

It seems to be in an active development phase.

Best regards
Nio

Den 2014-11-17 07:19, Nio Wiklund skrev:
> Hi Andre,
> [Replying inline]
> Best regards
> Nio
> 
> Den 2014-11-16 20:02, Andre Rodovalho skrev:
>> I can't get boot when I restore a drive. Maybe because my root dir is
>> not /dev/sda1. My first partition is a swap...
>>
>> Or maybe you can get a boot drive because grub was already installed on
>> your MBR, and you restored the image on a bootable drive...
> 
> I'll check what happens after wiping the first megabyte with mkusb.
> 
>> I do store the image as .img (default), how you got a .iso file?
> 
> 'Disks' created an iso file extension by default. Maybe it recognized
> the ISO9660 file system. I think it was when using Lubuntu Vivid.
> 
>> The uncompressed result is not good, this is why I do not use to make
>> image of /home partition. It is ok for me to store 12gb img files on my
>> external drive, but not the /home... I do like to make /home separate,
>> that is why I don't use OBI for this, specifically...
> 
> Would it be worthwhile to make the OBI recognize and manage a home
> partition (to check in /etc/fstab and take action when there is a home
> partition)?
> 
>> I remember I tried to compress the generated .img file, and then restore
>> it using a command line pipe. But I had no luck, maybe I needed to know
>> some more specific parameters to get that done...
> 
> Or would it be more useful to make a script that wraps dd into something
> safer and more user friendly? Or consider using rsync or fsarchiver?
> 
>> I can do exactly what I do with DD, and get a .gz file. But as you said,
>> sometimes you can mess things up with DiskDestroyer...
> 
> I think you have found a method that works well for your purpose :-)
> 
>> 2014-11-16 13:35 GMT-02:00 Israel <israeldahl at gmail.com
>> <mailto:israeldahl at gmail.com>>:
>>
>>     On 11/16/2014 08:53 AM, Nio Wiklund wrote:
>>     > Hi again,i
>>     >
>>     > I've tried 'Disks' alias gnome-disks in Lubuntu 14.04.1 and Vivid.
>>     >
>>     > I could make it create an iso file from a partition, but not from the
>>     > whole drive. Trying from the whole drive gave me an error both running
>>     > as a regular user and with sudo. (I tested with a Tiny Core iso file,
>>     > which is small so it was fast.)
>>     >
>>     > When I restored from the image of the partition I got a working boot
>>     > drive. (I cloned the Ubuntu mini.iso in between so that the pendrive was
>>     > changed.) I think this is not logical (and not corresponding to how dd
>>     > is used). Restoring a partition should not restore the whole drive, but
>>     > I guess it is intended to work this way.
>>     >
>>     > I could make it flash, clone alias 'restore' a boot USB drive from
>>     > another iso file (I tested with the Ubuntu mini.iso (because it is small
>>     > so it was fast).
>>     >
>>     > -o-
>>     >
>>     > Conclusion: I'm glad that I learned about this feature of 'Disks'. It is
>>     > certainly possible to use in order to make a USB boot drive. There is an
>>     > extra 'final warning window', so it should be safe enough to use. And
>>     > best of all, it offers a working solution, when the Startup Disk Creator
>>     > suffers from a really bad bug (# 1325801) plus several minor bugs.
>>     >
>>     > -o-
>>     >
>>     > But of course, I still think that my mkusb is better ;-)
>>
>>     +1
>>     :)
>>     > One important extra feature of mkusb is the ability to use general
>>     > compressed image files (an iso file often contains the compressed
>>     > container squashfs, but is not itself compressed). Another extra feature
>>     > of mkusb is the ability to check if the content of the iso file matches
>>     > that of the pendrive, and suggest updating for iso-testing. And there
>>     > are several informative windows including a final warning with red
>>     > background.
>>     >
>>     > Best regards
>>     > Nio
>>     >
>>     >
>>
>>     --
>>     Regards
>>
>>
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