I have 15.3 Leap and want to install 15.6 Leap as a fresh install. This page tells me to use ImageWriter and this one says I can’t use Impression with Leap. I’ve used 2 USB drives on 2 different Dell desktops and always get an error “No bootable media” when I select boot from USB. I have confirmed boot flag is set in the small partition. Am I going to have to do this with DD?
When were these Dells new? Do they support UEFI booting? Are you trying to use USB3 sticks in USB2 ports? I’ve never had luck trying that.
All my Dells are too old for UEFI. My experience with Imagewriter has been unremarkable, as has dd. That said, I’ve also had mostly good experiences with Ventoy. Why not try dd if Imagewriter seems to have failed you, and if that fails too, Ventoy?
While skipping versions is officially unsupported, I have successfully skipped up to three releases by disabling all non-default repos, and removing any software from alternate repos when necessary to make any step along the way successful. Zypper is a highly competent upgrader that gets lots of exercise in Tumbleweed. Running zypper pa --unneeded can help you rid your system of cruft if necessary after all is over.
/distribution/leap - openSUSE Download still shows 15.4 & 15.5 along with 15.6 and 16.0 if you wish to try one version at a time zypper upgrades after being thwarted attempting a fresh 15.6 installation by unruly BIOS.
Older Dells but they support UEFI. USB3 sticks in USB3 ports. USB2 in USB2 port didn’t work, either. Ventoy had more bad press than good when I searched the web. I go way back in computers but I’ve used dd only once and would be happy not to have to.
After the first failure I formatted one of the USB’s FAT32. Didn’t help. I can’t remember how I got the “No bootable media” error but I just tried again and it was “Selected boot device failed. Press any key to restart the system.”
I’m not really skipping versions. I’m trying to install 15.6 as a new installation, keeping /home.
@ComputerUser I always use dd… For example dd if=openSUSE-Tumbleweed-DVD-x86_64-Snapshot20250522-Media.iso | dd bs=4M of=/dev/sdd iflag=fullblock oflag=direct status=progress
I’m 85 years old and my brain is too tired to wrestle with dd when there are, or used to be, decent GUI solutions. Unetbootin has worked for me before and I might try it, but it’s getting old, too.
I’m not convinced I’m not doing something stupid with the PC and it’s not an OpenSuse problem, but I’m out of ideas.
Something that may not be apparent when writing to USB is that command completion does not necessarily equate to write completion. It can take a while for the actual write to disk from RAM after the claim to write to has finished. Next time you try to write an iso to USB, follow-up the write command (or a GUI writer tool) with a sync command. You may be surprised how long it takes sync to return a prompt. IME it is only at that subsequent prompt that USB write is assured complete, and thus removal (or rebooting) safe.
BTW, I don’t use dd any more either. I use ddrescue instead. I like its normal feedback, which may warn better if the target media isn’t what you hope it to be.
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Imagewriter wants you to start with an empty USB slot and not insert the device before you start Imagewriter. Then it unmounts the device when it’s done. I don’t think you can do anything with it unless you remove the device and re-insert it so it will be recognized and you can mount it.
I just ran Imagewriter again and will just leave the device in the slot for a while. Tomorrow maybe UNetBootin and others.
I tried Ventoy and it made a bootable USB that I could copy the .iso file to. I haven’t figured out how to actually install it but the fact that Ventoy made a USB that would boot makes me think my problem was imagewriter.
I copied the .iso to the device and then clicked the icon to unmount the device in Device Notifier and it took about 5 minutes before it would unmount so MrMazda, you’re right about things not happening immediately.
As a word of caution: don’t follow “recommendations” of Ventoy blindly. Read:
I got it done with ImageWriter. Dumb mistake: I didn’t look past “USB legacy boot” as a boot option. Should have used “USB UEFI boot”. Thanks for all the advice.