I want to use my USB for M3 - for live or installing

[Jbenrod]

I have been using another distribution and I am new here to test M3 for consideration. I have downloaded the LiveDVD KDE 64 iso (1.5gb) to my clean formatted 16gb USB drive and that file is the only item on the USB.

First, after downloading I tried to boot from the USB and nothing happens. Next I click on the file and K3B opens up and wants to burn it to a DVD. I don't want
to burn it to a DVD but would like for it to open or expand onto the USB so it will be the boot device. K3B doesn't give me an option for the USB so how am I suppose to get the ISO ready to be a boot-able file?

In my other distubution I downloaded to the USB and and that is ALL I had to do - just directed the boot sequence to start at the USB and it was ready to go and loaded right up in to the OS and I figured this was how this would work; but I don't want to give up yet.

[Jbenrod]

Why will this distribution not boot or install from a cleanly formated USB drive?

[Ken-Bergen]

See
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation ... h_stick.3F
For how to put the hybrid ISO's that Mageia uses on a flash drive.

[Jbenrod]

Thank you for the link but if that is the best that this distribution has to offer it will not be suitable for myself or family users.

I mean one of the options "is intended to become part of a Mageia package " and requires a handful of packages to already be installed.
The other one offers a link for downloading that opens a text file but cannot be downloaded.

I'll check back in a day or two and see if anyone else has anything else to suggest and if not I'll conclude that this one still is pretty ruff and not ready
for users who are not advanced in Linux commands or have hours to waste.

[Lebarhon]

Hi,
If you have a Linux distribution at you disposal, you can do what you want without installing anything.
1. Copy the ISO file somewhere on the hard disk, say /home/[user]/tmp
2. Plug your USB stick in, do not mount it
3. Open a console with root rights
4. enter the command:

Code: Select all

# fdisk -l |grep Disk

to see what is the number given to your USB stick, say /dev/sdb
5. enter the command

Code: Select all

 dd if=/home/[user]/tmp/Mageia-3-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

6. Wait for a while, that's all. Take care to the capital letters, all the data on the USB stick will be deleted.

[isadora]

...but if that is the best that this distribution has to offer...
...I'll conclude that this one still is pretty ruff and not ready
for users who are not advanced in Linux commands or have hours to waste...

Most likely it's not intended that way, but sounds quite harsh.
Don't loose out of sight, we are talking about a community-built distribution.
That community is you and i, and all that hundreds of volunteers.
Offending is like hitting your own head.

So please refrain from dramatizing.

Concerning your comments:
"Most other linux distributions will not boot from a freshly formatted USB stick - as it would be empty, so what should it boot"

[Jbenrod]

Hi,
If you have a Linux distribution at you disposal, you can do what you want without installing anything.
1. Copy the ISO file somewhere on the hard disk, say /home/[user]/tmp
2. Plug your USB stick in, do not mount it
3. Open a console with root rights
4. enter the command:

Code: Select all

# fdisk -l |grep Disk

to see what is the number given to your USB stick, say /dev/sdb
5. enter the command

Code: Select all

 dd if=/home/[user]/tmp/Mageia-3-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

6. Wait for a while, that's all. Take care to the capital letters, all the data on the USB stick will be deleted.

This works perfect - thanks. I would suggest someone copy your complete instructions to this link

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation ... h_stick.3F

so other potential users can find them. All of the work to get where the package is today
is not going to help with exposure to potential users if many of them spend a couple hours of frustration and then move on without getting it to install.

Now I'm on to working on getting sound. That seems to be problem these days when one is using a video card that has an HDMI port as they want to be in control and over take the built in or on-board sound which may be preferred.

[doktor5000]

Code: Select all

 dd if=/home/[user]/tmp/Mageia-3-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

6. Wait for a while, that's all. Take care to the capital letters, all the data on the USB stick will be deleted.

This works perfect - thanks. I would suggest someone copy your complete instructions to this link

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation ... h_stick.3F

so other potential users can find them.

Well, what about https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation ... ce_Example

[Jbenrod]

It is one line and might be a poor example since it references the liveCD. (If they already
have the liveCD they might be booting from that CD whereas users downloading it are more likely to
install it on a USB.) A better example was given by Lebarhon and which also included a couple of lines of instructions warning about
capital letters and waiting a while.

You have to remember this distribution is now at the point of expanding
the user base to more people like me, from across the planet, who had never heard of Mageia until a few weeks ago.
They cannot appreciate all the work in the details if they give up at the point of installation. Get the product to
their desktops and then you are half way home!

[doktor5000]

Feel free to improve that wiki section, if you think it needs to be improved.

[Ken-Bergen]

It is one line and might be a poor example since it references the liveCD.

For what it's worth the reference is to a LiveCD iso (image) not a physical CD.
Of the twenty three supported images (Mageia2 and Mageia3) only four are DVD size. Which one should we use as an example?

Yes a section should be added showing how to determine which device /dev/sdX is your USB drive.
If you had two hard drives and taken Lebarhon's advice of using "of=/dev/sdb" literally you'd have wiped one of your hard drives.

One advantage of "mandriva-seed.sh" is that it will only see and write to USB drives.

[doktor5000]

One advantage of "mandriva-seed.sh" is that it will only see and write to USB drives.

The same as for David's application copyiso2usbX which even offers some more comfortable features

[Askance1]

I'm new to this distro of Linux, but I recently managed to get Mageia 3 live to boot from an SD card using windows 7. The method I used wasn't listed in the documentation so I thought it might be helpful to share. I downloaded the Live-iso, then I used a free utility called "Win32 Image Writer" to burn the iso onto a 2gb sd card. It was that simple. I rebooted the computer and selected to boot from the SD card in the bios startup screen. Voila, Mageia Live started up.

From the Mageia Live desktop, I installed the distro to an empty partition my hard drive. I didn't want to overwrite windows' boot record, so I installed Mageia's boot loader to thre same previously empty partition in which I had installed Mageia. After rebooting to windows, I used EasyBCD to find and add an entry for Mageia in the windows mbr. Everything works great. This is my first foray into this fork of Linux (have previously used Debian and Redhat variants), and I have to say I'm very impressed with the stability. Nice work, developers!