Thanks Doug for your time, that means a lot to me!
I used Balena and got the download from the internet program files, their is about 4 downloads there, I used the XZ file, with nothing telling me a mistake was made along the way, copied to a usb 64gb stick and it copied fine with no notable errors.
So I F12 the start and booted to the stick, it showed that it was there and went forward, but it did not have a boot command I guess on the stick because it said no OS to boot from or to. Perplexed and regards W7PAU Paul
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On Sun, Feb 6, 2022 at 9:57 AM, Doug Reed via groups.io <
n0nas@...> wrote:
Hi Paul.
I can't tell from your message what the problem is.
Did you download the ISO archive to a Windows box?
I often worry about download errors, but if the file unzips without error the download was correct.
Did you expand the archive file on the Windows box using 7zip, as the instructions say to do?
Did you use a NTFS-formatted drive as the destination for the expanded file?
Did you write the resulting file to a 32GB USB drive using Balena Etcher or Win32 Disk Imager?
If you did all this, then the resulting OS should probably boot.?
When I first downloaded the ISO, I was using a Linux system as you are and I could not get the ISO to work. It made no sense that I couldn't expand the file on Linux since it is using a version of 7zip for Linux. After being advised to follow the directions, I moved the archived file to a Win7 laptop, installed 7zip, verified I had a hard drive formatted as NTFS, and unzipped the file to that drive. My first ISO write attempt was to a "16GB USB drive". It failed as being too small and wouldn't boot, so I tried again with a 32GB drive. It wrote and booted fine.?
What annoyed me most during this process was that none of the programs did a decent job of explaining what the errors were. The programs either worked or gave a vague and general error message. Only one program on Windows finally gave an error message with a hint of the problem. The root cause of my unzip problem on Linux is that the Windows version of 7zip has an extra high-level compression mode that the Linux version does not have. A secondary problem is that the expanded file exceeds the 4GB limit of FAT32 that most USB sticks seem to use. That is why a NTFS-formatted destination was required. The final problem with the 16GB USB drive was because the expanded ISO was originally from a drive just slightly larger than the one I was using. Changing to a 32GB drive solved that problem.
After all that, if you still have problems making it boot, I have to suggest it might be an issue of legacy USB boot drive, or my old favorite of systemd vs isolinux vs grub, now with added UEFI spice. I've never had good luck with boot problems other than trying different hardware. In this case you already. know the hardware works with Linux, so you don't need to fall back to my favorite of using a Knoppix DVD as Proof the hardware can boot Linux. I believe Dave has stopped using that extra compression mode so we should be able to expand future ISOs on Linux. Good luck!
73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.
