Used Studio ImageWriter to put these images on to 2 USB Discs
The “Live” image will boot, the “DVD” image will not?
Reversed the images on the USB sticks - no change?
After ImageWriter(ing) the USB sticks, I can see them with LSUSB, Partitioner (FAT & ISO9660) & dmsg -w - but not with Dolphin (not mounting?)
I am not aware that my BIOS has a switch to enable/disable USB booting. As I understand it, if the USB stick/drive is preped correctly, it will show up in the BIOS F8 Boot Menu.
Any suggestions, please. I don’t need any more reasons to put off the upgrade (although I realty hate this job - it never works “out of the box” for me )
In my experience, the DVD installer on a USB does not show up with Dolphin, but the live image does. However, this should not affect whether you can boot the USB.
In any case, you should be able to do your upgrade with the live media.
I think from your answer, I can conclude that the DVD image should boot.
The question for me now is: Why not?
Do you know if the Live Image and the DVD Image boot via the same technology? MBR/UEFI?
I appreciate your comment regarding upgrading with the Live Image but that carries a higher risk than using the DVD image.
As an aside, do you know if I can avoid reinstalling all my apps following a clean install.
If after the next install (assuming that this upgrade fails again!) I install the apps to separate disc?
Just like I do with the /home partition?
I don’t know the answer to that. I suppose it could be something that your BIOS does not like.
Do you know if the Live Image and the DVD Image boot via the same technology? MBR/UEFI?
Both can boot either way. The boot screen will look different, depending on how you boot. When you use UEFI, the booting is done with “grub2”. When you use MBR booting, the it is done with “syslinux”.
I appreciate your comment regarding upgrading with the Live Image but that carries a higher risk than using the DVD image.
You could also try an online upgrade using “zypper dup”. I think there’s a page about that in the openSUSE Wiki.
As an aside, do you know if I can avoid reinstalling all my apps following a clean install.
If after the next install (assuming that this upgrade fails again!) I install the apps to separate disc?
Just like I do with the /home partition?
When I was managing computers at work, I always installed to “/usr/local”, which was a separate partition. But I was compiling applications myself. If you are using pre-built applications, then there is less flexibility in where to install them.
Hi,
If you want to put installers, LiveCD and other files all on the same USB stick…
I just posted a tool that supports all of that.
Just Install Ventoy on your USB stick, then copy all the files you want to the first partition on your stick.
When you boot your USB stick, it’ll automatically find images which are meant to boot and display a menu for selection.
This is how I do the vast majority of version upgrades. Hardly a month goes by that I do less than one to a Distribution installation. My last one was last night or the night before (Leap 15.2 to Jump 15.2.1). My average is probably close to 3 per month. It’s the very same way probably most Tumbleweed users, on average, upgrade multiple times per month, if not per week. Zypper is a very highly competent, thoroughly tested tool. It’s certainly worth at least considering for a point/minor/maintenance upgrade like 15.1 to 15.2.
This sounds familiar. I have noticed that with older computers/servers at least (the only ones I can afford), booting from a USB image is strongly affected by choice of UEFI or BIOS boot (apparently two different things - haha - well I know they’re two different things… I think…) and there’s also a BIOS (UEFI?) setting as to whether to “allow” USB boot (various wordings), the device boot order, and sometimes “USB hard drive” boot. I think F11 during POST often can choose a boot source.
For me, it’s trial and error. My solution on my older computers is to choose the BIOS boot option upon initial install - that way I don’t have to keep waving dead chickens over the UEFI to try to get it to boot from a USB image. Some of my computers are OK with USB image booting even in UEFI mode. Go figure. (I think I also remember Opensuse complaining during an install about not having UEFI set up correctly, but the memory is foggy.)
I remember (mostly) learning BIOS decades ago - it was semi-intuitive. It may be wise to actually learn UEFI soon.
If your BIOS does not have CD/DVD in it - you cannot boot off of a USB attached CD/DVD. Most are now set up to boot from a USB drive image - not a CD/DVD image.
None of my new Dell Laptops can boot from a USB attached CD/DVD drive. But the boot fine from a USB disk (but may say that it is a floppy depending on the image on the USB drive - my Memtest86+ 4 MB USB drive says floppy when it is plugged in but boots fine).
A big Thank You to all of you, for your very helpful suggestions.
Should anyone is a similar position to me, find this thread, this confession may just apply to you;)
Basicly, it was not a technology problem at all. More a case of geriatric frailty!
I have a number of USB controllers in my system. All but one are mounted in the motherboard expansion slots.
It is only the on-board USB controller that is checked by the BIOS for USB bootable devices.
In my fumbling, I had placed the Live Image in the slot connected to the on-board USB controller, and the DVD Image in a slot connected to one of the other controllers.
So, the Live Image would boot - the DVD Image would not.
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