Installer doesn't create bootable USB key

[fano]

I've try to use the installer to create a bootable usb key.

These are the things I've done:

1. Using the "Setup partions" I inizialized all the USB drive (that is only a single partion big as the whole drive)
2. Then I started the installer... all files are copied
3. The installer make the drive bootable and ask me to reboot
4. After reboot I choose in the bios boot menu my key as bootable device
5. Only a blinking " _ " appears... forever!

I'm using Hailu rev. 30637

My system is composed by: Cpu Athlon X2 3600+ Motherboard Asus M2NPV-VM with integrated NVIDIA 6150 GPU SoundCard SuondBlase Audigy USB Key Sandisk Cruzer Micro 8 GB

[mmadia]

Since USB booting tends to be hit or miss with some system, can you try using dd to write the image directly to the device, making certain that it is the raw device and not a partition on it? This would help to pinpoint the problem being with Installer and not somewhere else.

[mmlr]

It's a big difference between a device with a single partition on it and a device that has no partition at all. The approach you took can only work when there is no partition on the device, meaning that the raw device directly contains the filesystem with no partition table before it. If you have a master boot record with a partition table and then a single partition then only the partition will be made bootable. What is missing is a bootloader, in the same sense as you would need one when installing to a harddisk. Installing to the raw device directly only happens to work because the partition boot code that makes the partition bootable will then be written to the first sector so that the BIOS can turn over the control to it.

If indeed have an MBR and a single partition on that device, then this is not a bug. You're then just missing a bootloader.

[fano]

So using the "Inizialize" command in Setup Partition I have created a partition on it? Or no? This is a little unclear for me...

How can I "reset" the usb key to have no partition on hit and using the installer in the right way? I think I must use a third party partitioner...

[fano]

I forgotten to say for the dd thing I have to use the haiku.image file, right? I can't dd from the Live CD to USB directly (the CD should be in iso) so the command is:

dd bs=512 if=haiku.image of=/dev/disk/usb/0/0/raw

[mmlr]

It probably already had a partition on the device before. In DriveSetup you may be able to select the whole device instead of the partition and do the initialization on that instead. Not sure DriveSetup allows that though.

And yeah, for dd you'd use the haiku.image file.

[stippi]

Yes DriveSetup allows you to initialize the whole device, but for that, no partition table needs to exist. DriveSetup is incapable of any change that would change the table, including deleting an existing table or creating one when there is none yet. When you dd an image onto the stick raw device, you also delete the partition table, IIRC. So that would be an option.

[fano]

Nothing to do... I've started the compilation of the hrev30637 in my VmWare system this morning... but when I returned home the VM-System was frozed!!!

I've rebooted and the compiler says "No space left on device!" But df says that i have 12 Gb of free space was 12 GB...

This is the log:

jam haiku-image
[...]

BuildHaikuImage1 generated/haiku.image 
build/scripts/build_haiku_image: line 38: [: /boot/home/Desktop/Haiku: unary operator expected

Creating image ...
Writing boot code to "generated/haiku.image" (partition offset: 0 bytes, start offset = 0) ...
Populating image ...
Unzipping generated/download/Beam.zip ...
Unzipping generated/download/BePDF-1.1.1b1.x86.zip ...
Error while writing to file `/myfs/apps/BePDF/encodings/xpdf-chinese-simplified/CMap/UniGB-UCS2-H': No space left on device
Error: Command failed: No space left on device
Error: Command was:
  cp -f -r :generated/tmp/unzip/. /myfs/apps
Unzipping generated/download/BeZillaBrowser-gcc2-20090218.zip ...
Error while writing to file `/myfs/apps/BeZillaBrowser/BeZillaBrowser': No space left on device
Error: Command failed: No space left on device
Error: Command was:
  cp -f -r :generated/tmp/unzip/. /myfs/apps
[...OMITTED]
  mkdir -p /myfs/home/config/settings/beos_mime
Installing MIME database ...
Error: Failed to create `/myfs/home/config/settings/beos_mime': No space left on device
Error: Command failed: No space left on device
Error: Command was:
  cp -f -r :generated/tmp/mime/db/. /myfs/home/config/settings/beos_mime
Error while writing to attribute `COPYRIGHTS' of file `/myfs/system/apps/AboutSystem': No space left on device
Error: Command failed: No space left on device
Error: Command was:
  cp -a :generated/tmp/copyrightAttrs /myfs/system/apps/AboutSystem
Unmounting ...
...updated 480 target(s)...

I could download the hrev30637 raw image but is not present... maybe I could use the last raw image (I thing nothing is changed in this front) but I think that in this way (maybe) the test is not reliable..

What you think?

[fano]

I've installed Haiku on my usb key using the last raw image using dd and it works! Now that thanks to dd the eventually partition table is gone I could install hrev30637 using DriveSetup on the raw device and use the installer, right?

[stippi]

Yes, it should work now.

[fano]

And indeed It works!

But there is no way to facilitate this? I - ingenuously - thought that Installer can install Haiku in a usb key without hassle... indeed I've to destroy may partition table then do the dd thing (very slow process!!!) and I think with dd the space of the drive is reduced at the size of the image... so dd'ing is not a real solution... the installer should do this!

[anevilyak]

One of the summer of code projects aims to fix that deficiency, it's a known issue.

[stippi]

Yes, the Installer should eventually do it of course, but this problem is already tracked, so I am closing the bug. Thanks for your feedback and testing!

[bbjimmy]

Replying to stippi:

Yes, the Installer should eventually do it of course, but this problem is already tracked, so I am closing the bug. Thanks for your feedback and testing!

What ticket is tracking this?

[fano]

I've not found which is a duplicated but I reup this only to say that today I've retry to create a USB boot key using hrev35923 and work as exptected and the key is bootable, now!

No more DD is necessary and all my 8 GB are usable...