I have made a nice fat32 extlinux-bootable usb stick with nice graphical menus and everything. I have downloaded the DVDs and LiveCDs of openSUSE (and others) and copied their contents to different folders on the usb stick. So far so good, I can do the following:
boot openSUSE 11.4 x64 gnome livecd
boot openSUSE 12.1 x64 gnome livecd
boot msdos
boot gparted live
install openSUSE 11.4 x64
install openSUSE 12.1 x64
install SLES11sp1 x64
install SLES11sp2 x64
install VMware esxi4.1
install VMware esxi5.0
However, I cannot install openSUSE 12.2 x64 and I cannot boot the openSUSE 12.2 x64 gnome livecd. Used the same methods as for the 12.1 and for 11.4, but no success.
When booting the livecd, I get “Failed to find MBR identifier !” (which is in the “include” file in initrd, function “searchImageISODevice”).
When booting the installation, it starts loading but then at some point it doesn’t recognize the installation folder as a “Repository”. I get the ncurses yast, but if I Start Installation, select the USB stick as Harddisk, and enter the path to the installation folder, it sais that no repository found (or something similar). Looks to me that the installation system can’t read fat32 filesystems anymore (strangely, as 12.1 was fine). I may be wrong though.
So, could anybody give me some hints and direct me in the right direction? What has changed from 12.1 to 12.2 that it’s not possible now to update my nice multiboot usb-stick? I’m also curious, what was the reason for the change?
The first thing that comes to mind is: did you check the md5sums of the downloads?
You could also create a single USB stick from one of the ISO’s. If that does work, there’s something wrong on the multi-install stick.
BTW. I used to create a thing like this for both 32 and 64 bit KDE-Live-CD’s some years ago. Nice little hobby project
Yep, first thing I did was to check the md5sums - all fine here.
Single USB stick from the LiveCD works fine. However, when you have a single-os USB stick, the filesystem is different, and the files and folders positions in the file system are different (for example in multiboot they’re not on the root of the USB stick’s filesystem).
The openSUSE developers made major changes in the initrd file (compared with 12.1) which are preventing me from booting from a fat32 usb stick with a different boot loader…
Problem of installing from ISO (loopback) image was mentioned here by many people already. I think someone who can reproduce it should finally open bug report.
True. This was one of the first things I’ve tried when I was in the beginning in making the usb stick. It never worked, so I gave up on it.
However, I’m not using the iso file in my current setup. I copy the iso contents into a folder on the usb stick and use the linux kernel and initrd that are in this folder for the boot process… Worked like a charm in both 11.4 and 12.1, but not with 12.2.