USB thumb-drives, a frustrating experience

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I am very glad that some, even most of you have had good experiences with 13.1. As usual, my experience has been less satisfactory. My own stupidity and incompetence is without doubt the (also as usual) source of most of my frustration, but I have a lot of gripes and moans. ( also as usual! Mr Henk v. V… if you feel that this topic is better placed in soapbox or elsewhere, please feel free…)
I am too tired and angry to itemise every hiccup that I encountered last evening, so for now, I will restrict myself to having a good old grumble about one tiny subsection of the process. I know that most of you have a great deal of experience and expertise, but please try to see with eyes of a new user, perhaps a MS refugee, or even a 'buntist or Minter, looking for pastures greener. Also remember that for a very large percentage of people, the Live USB images will be their very first experiences with opensuse, and if those experiences are anything like mine, probably their last.

I had some difficulty getting a thumb-drive to boot but that is for another place and time.

I downloaded and SHA1 and MD5 checked the openSUSE-13.1-KDE-Live-Build0084-x86_64.iso, put it on the USB drive using dd if=/path/xxxxx.iso of/dev/sdx

I boot up and a good-looking welcome screen appears very quickly, after a slightly-too-long wait, the options screen. hit the first option opensuse 13.1 live…

Up comes Geeko perched on his curly fern or whatever. And stops there. for a long time.

I have used linux/opensuse before, so I know to hit alt-F1 to see what is happening. Most new users will not. Many will give up right there.

I decide to reboot and have a look again at the options screen. What would a new user do?

“Check Media” would seem to be the obvious choice.

Kernel loads and then… wait wait wait wait
Then
“media CD1”
“md5sum check failed”.
Alt-F1 reveals the rather stark "media check failed YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Press any key to continue. Pressing any key does not ‘continue’ It does nothing…
Eventually, after bashing randomly at the keyboard it starts to boot!

Now I realise that the “media check” routine was probably written to check media written to a “CD” Except of course that this image would not fit on a CD. So for a DVD then. But who does that nowadays? So the “media check”, for I guess the 80% or so who are using USB drives, not only useless, but misleading and plain wrong. If there is no way that the image written to USB can be checked, then surely a warning on the options screen should say so?

So let us then, return to that options screen, and let us once more be the new user.
Let us press F1 for “Help”

Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear…

The “help” file is written FOR AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT INSTALLATION.

…

It is 03:00 here and I have not even started! So I will leave this TBC. Your comments are very much welcomed, I am not for once asking for advice, rather I would like to know what you think, and your experiences, pre-install, using USB’s

Cheers and goodnight!

2

Interesting, I found my USB install of 13.1 failed last night and I test many per-released Linux OS.

I then tried a DVD install of 13.1 and there I was up and running moments later.

I would prefer using my USB sticks as I do at least 2 or 3 per-released installs a week.

Must add I’m having a lot of fun with opensuse. :stuck_out_tongue:

3

If you have a copy of openSUSE running, you can use this bash script to create a LiveUSB stick from a downloaded ISO file.

S.C.L.U. - SUSE Create Live USB - Version 1.55 - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

The last comment even tells how to get the openSUSE 13.1 ISO files. I am sorry you have had issues using openSUSE, but consider that most users do not have a problem. So, when we see a distressed user, many will try to help. Good Luck …

Thank You,

4

I decided to try that, with about the same results.

The last time I tried that (probably with 12.3), it asked me to insert the media to check. This time it seems to have tried checking the USB. But if it is checking everything, then the MBR on the USB had been changed to create a hybrid partition, so that is probably enough to throw off the media check.

5

wakou wrote:
> I downloaded and SHA1 and MD5 checked the
> openSUSE-13.1-KDE-Live-Build0084-x86_64.iso, put it on the USB drive
> using dd if=/path/xxxxx.iso of/dev/sdx

After the hash checks

I always use imagewriter to write my openSUSE isos to usbs and memory
cards(the ones on phones). The same approach worked for me on 13.1
pre-release isos.

http://en.opensuse.org/Live_USB_stick#Install_ImageWriter

–
GNOME 3.6.2
openSUSE Release 12.3 (Dartmouth) 64-bit
Kernel Linux 3.7.10-1.16-desktop

6

Thanks guys, as I said, I am not really looking for advice, I am in no doubt that I could get a running live environment and install one as well, I am an experienced, if stupid, user of opensuse since 11.1.

I wanted, rather for us to look at it through the eyes of a virgin, who has never seen opensuse working, and has read good things and wants to try it.

James is kind and helpful, as are almost all of the users of these forums, and thank heaven for that, but when he says “most users do not have a problem” I fear he is not really seeing the issue, which is that many many users will try the USB route, and either fail at the first attempt, or even succeed but with sufficient doubts in their minds about the quality of the distro, that they simply choose another one. They will possibly be unaware of the very existence of the forums. I have in another thread pointed out some small but possibly significant inconsistencies in the wiki page…
https://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/install-boot-login/491495-booting-live-usb-wiki-page-some-thouights-rfc.html

And here is another discussion found when googling for a different issue:

Quick rant about USB live images : openSUSE

Having the “media check” only working for one circumstance, and not the most widely used one at that, is sloppy at best. Our new user might well download, hash-check, write his stick… Once twice, three times… And then just give up and get Mint or Ubuntu. At the very least, and very simply, the GRUB2 options screen should have a caveat… something like this:

http://wstaw.org/m/2013/11/15/plasma-desktopGT2893.png
before I had to sleep last night, I was going to report the glaring problems with the F1 help option from here. Does anyone of you know how I might get the help to display nicely outside the boot routine, I can then make some suggestions with an example at hand. (I can find it but don’t know how to make it display properly)

The file on the KDE-Live when on a USB stick is at:

openSUSE 13.1 KDE Live/boot/x86_64/loader/en.hlp

or if you “browse iso” using Dolphin it is here:

/openSUSE-13.1-KDE-Live-Build0084-x86_64.iso/ISO9660/boot/x86-64/loader/en.hlp

As I said before bed, this “help” is not very helpful, as it refers to a completely different bootable (I guess the full DVD), this is a sloppy or lazy oversight.

The reason I am doing this is that this very screen is the “shop-window” for new users, a disappointing or untrustworthy experience here could easily put them off our wonderful distro for life!

7

I have no time to show this properly, but anyone who has a Live-KDE (Or I guess Gnome) can have a look to see what I mean…
At the GRUB2 selection menu screen hit F1

There is a help file which says, and I paraphrase:

Welcome to opensuse 13.1…

blah blah…

options are:
Boot from Hard disk (This is option 4 on the liveUSB)

Installation

Installation-ACPI Disabled (NOT THERE!)

Installation-Local APIC Disabled (NOT THERE!)

Installation-Safe settings (NOT THERE!)

Rescue System (NOT THERE!)

Firmware Test. (NOT THERE!)

Memory Test

The install options, APIC, ACPI and Safe-settings are in fact under F4 in the Live-USB screen. Rescue and Firmware check do not exist at all.

Then it goes on to list what should happen when we press the various Fx keys from this screen.

F2 and F3 are fine but F4 it tells us that this should offer “Install Source” options. It does not, as above it offers the various fallback boot options, APIC ACPI etc
F6 should be “Driver install” but does not exist at all.

(I have booted to a Net-Install USB before, and the Firmware/Rescue options are there on-screen. The firmware test fails, but gives no advice about what this might mean.)

8

On 2013-11-15 10:16, wakou wrote:
>
> Thanks guys, as I said, I am not really looking for advice,

But you are in a “I want advice forum”, rants go to soap, or chit chat,
or… >:-P

> And here is another discussion found when googling for a different
> issue:
>
> ‘Quick rant about USB live images : openSUSE’
> (http://tinyurl.com/lfkwbgh)
>
>
> Having the “media check” only working for one circumstance, and not the
> most widely used one at that, is sloppy at best. Our new user might well
> download, hash-check, write his stick… Once twice, three times…
> And then just give up and get Mint or Ubuntu. At the very least, and
> very simply, the GRUB2 options screen should have a caveat… something
> like this:

It is known by what you call the experts :wink: that the media check does
not work for usb sticks. It can not. It only works for CDs or DVDs.
Nobody has thought (or can not be done) to improve the feature to at
least say so.

> [image: http://wstaw.org/m/2013/11/15/plasma-desktopGT2893.png]
> before I had to sleep last night, I was going to report the glaring
> problems with the F1 help option from here. Does anyone of you know how
> I might get the help to display nicely outside the boot routine, I can
> then make some suggestions with an example at hand. (I can find it but
> don’t know how to make it display properly)
>
> The file on the KDE-Live when on a USB stick is at:
>
> openSUSE 13.1 KDE Live/boot/x86_64/loader/en.hlp
>
> or if you “browse iso” using Dolphin it is here:
>
> /openSUSE-13.1-KDE-Live-Build0084-x86_64.iso/ISO9660/boot/x86-64/loader/en.hlp
>
> As I said before bed, this “help” is not very helpful, as it refers to a
> completely different bootable (I guess the full DVD), this is a sloppy
> or lazy oversight.
>
> The reason I am doing this is that this very screen is the “shop-window”
> for new users, a disappointing or untrustworthy experience here could
> easily put them off our wonderful distro for life!

Write a bugzilla! You found a problem, thus report it. Not to us, but to
“them”. Or more than one.

openSUSE:Submitting bug
reports

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

9

While we are on this, here’s my experience with using a USB:

  • Media check does not work (as previously described);
  • Boot from hard disk does not work. It just boots again from the same USB;
  • Select source (after hitting F4) does not seem to work. When I do that, I usually finish up with the installer telling me that it cannot find the repos. However, if I do not select source, it finds the repos just fine.

Those probably all work from a DVD, but not from a USB.

10

Sounds like someone needs to file a bug report.

11

Bugged:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=852170
Also, re, boot from hard Drive:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=848902

12

Let me say that booting from the local hard disk did work for me from a openSUSE 13.1 GM LiveUSB KDE boot thumb drive I made with my SCLU bash script running from openSUSE 12.3. It seems that this operation is greatly affected by the PC ability to identify multiply boot devices and may not be the fault of grub 2. For instace, if I have two or more external boot devices, I am unable on my Dell XPS 13 Laptop to say which one to use. I don’t think that is grub’s fault. One thing is for sure, you know what your PC is doing, just be aware it may be hardware related, in my opinion.

Thank You,

13

It wouldn’t be grub2 anyway. As far as I know, the live media are booted using syslinux (except in UEFI mode).

As far as I know, if I boot from a USB, my BIOS modifies things so that the USB appear so be the first hard drive. So when I select “boot from hard drive”, it presumably boots the first BIOS hard drive which is again the USB.

I’m not sure anything can be done to prevent that, but perhaps the screen message could be better worded as perhaps:

Boot from hard drive (might not work if using a USB).

14

On 2013-11-25 18:16, nrickert wrote:
> Boot from hard drive (might not work if using a USB).

The thing is, it works for other people.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

15

On 11/25/2013 06:23 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2013-11-25 18:16, nrickert wrote:
>> Boot from hard drive (might not work if using a USB).
>
> The thing is, it works for other people.

But not for me. If I boot the USB and tell it to boot the hard drive, it reboots
the USB. I either have to remove the stick before I reboot to configure the
system, or I need to change the boot order in the BIOS.

I guess BIOS coders might make any number of assumptions and/or errors.

16

It seems that the media check of USB is fixed in Factory…

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?GoAheadAndLogIn=1&id=848020