Problem using Rufus to write USB [Solved]

[measter]

Target: write Mageia-5-LiveCD-KDE4-en-i586-CD.iso with Win7 Rufus or other

Solutions:
Usbdumper works but only using Win commands for erasing disk
Rufus (included in list of alternatives elsewhere^2) works but requires using alt-I dd mode instead of default

Most or almost all distros can be written to USB successfully using Rufus or UNetBootin. Mageia advises^1 against UNetBootin and recommends Usbdumper. On another wikipage^2 from 2014 June Mageia advises some/3 alternatives which include Rufus. But Rufus in default mode for .iso writes a USB that fails to boot successfully.

The download page "Dump Mageia ISO on a USB flash drive" window for usbdumper could also include a link to the alternates at the link^2 below, and the wiki^2 could include advice about using Rufus alt-I dd mode instead of its default.

Standard/default Rufus to write Maeia to USB results in a failed boot. Likewise for YUMI.

A discussion of this problem before solving in the Rufus forum at GitHub led to the advice to use Rufus alt-I mode which is a dd strategy. That mode works for a successful USB boot for Mageia's .iso. Usbdumper also works, but it requires using Win's commandline which could expose some user to cleaning their Win partition.

^1 https://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/ Dump Mageia ISO on a USB flash drive - For windows use usbdumper.exe

^2 https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Dump_Mageia_ ... tive_tools
Win32 Disk Imager,
Rufus.
WinImage


--
Mike Easter

[doktor5000]

Thanks for the extensive feedback, will check to update our documentation accordingly.

[measter]

The Rufus developer Pete Batard has insight into why Usbdumper.exe errors in writing to the USB require what I consider 'dangerous' Win commands to erase the USB, and gives a link to his code to prevent that problem. Rufus is open source.

"... having a handle and a lock to a Physical Windows drive will still not allow you to write data over a Logical Drive (i.e. partition) unless you also have obtained a lock to them. So they manually require people to remove these partitions first." (code illustration) https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/blob/m ... at.c#L1571

Batard also seems to disagree with the strategy employed by some .iso developers method of creating hybrid .iso which is not FAT32 which is the most common USB file system. Apparently that strategy affects Mageia. My Mageia thread at Rufus in GitHub https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/542

--
Mike Easter