mint partitioning error

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi,

for your purpose I recommend to use
https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html instead of
https://balena.io/etcher . Ventoy seems to be not that comfortable at
first glance, but at long last it is way more comfortable. You only
need to _copy_ as many ISO as you want and you can make all of them
persistent very easily.

I've got both balenaEtcher as well as Ventoy installed. Actually I'm
using Ventoy for xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso [1]. However, the
issue you experience with balenEtcher is explainable, see [2]. You will
experience the same issue when using Ventoy, but Ventoy
allows to use several ISO and each ISO can be booted with different
persistent storage dat files, you even could share dat files among
different ISO.

You do not have a regular Linux install _from_ the Mint ISO on your
USB stick, you are booting the Mint ISO, it's quasi like booting it,
when it's burned on DVD.

In short, resizing is impossible, even when using ext4.

Regards,
Ralf



[1]
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdf
Disk /dev/sdf: 29.3 GiB, 31457280000 bytes, 61440000 sectors
Disk model: Ultra Line      
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xc33e00ef

Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdf1  *        2048 33490943 33488896   16G 83 Linux
/dev/sdf2       33490944 33556479    65536   32M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
/dev/sdf3       33556480 61439999 27883520 13.3G  b W95 FAT32
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ sudo parted -l | tail -13

Model: Intenso Ultra Line (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdf: 31.5GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  17.1GB  17.1GB  primary  ext4         boot
 2      17.1GB  17.2GB  33.6MB  primary  fat16        esp
 3      17.2GB  31.5GB  14.3GB  primary  fat32


[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ /usr/bin/ls -hAl /mnt/v1.ventoy/
total 7.9G
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Jan  6 13:36 ventoy
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.6G Jul 31  2020 xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6.3G Jan  7 16:43 xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-pers1.dat
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ sudo smartctl -i /dev/sdf -d scsi
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-4.19.185-rt76-0.300-securityink] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:               Intenso
Product:              Ultra Line
Revision:             1100
Compliance:           SPC-4
User Capacity:        31,457,280,000 bytes [31.4 GB]
Logical block size:   512 bytes
scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0
Logical Unit id:      0x534d490033323830
Serial number:        AA00000000000489
Device type:          disk
scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0
Local Time is:        Fri May 14 08:20:54 2021 CEST
SMART support is:     Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is:     Disabled
Temperature Warning:  Disabled or Not Supported



[2]
"[...]
How can I configure persistent storage?

Some programs, usually oriented at making GNU/Linux live USB drives,
include an option to set persistent storage. This is currently not
supported by Etcher, so if you require this functionality, we advise to
fallback to UNetbootin.

[...]

Flashing Ubuntu ISOs

Ubuntu images (and potentially some other related GNU/Linux
distributions) have a peculiar format that allows the image to boot
without any further modification from both CDs and USB drives.

A consequence of this enhancement is that some programs, like parted
get confused about the drive's format and partition table [...]
Refer to the following message from Ubuntu's mailing list [3] if you
want to learn more.
[...]" -
https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/blob/master/docs/USER-DOCUMENTATION.md



[3]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-June/033495.html