rondackcpu
July 30th, 2010, 09:57 PM
Can we do something to introduce some sanity into the USB stick world in Linux?
Specifically, when using a USB stick as a replacement for a recordable CD or DVD in (name-your-distribution).iso testing, the stick gets "trapped" in some condition which Ubuntu doesn't like to deal with. "Mkfs" (in all its variations) refuses to erase or reformat the stick. "Gparted" refuses to reformat the stick or delete the offending partitions. Unetbootin and "Startup Disk Creator" are anxious about the presence of contents on the stick and refuse to run again to create a new instance. Nautilus pretends there is no Trash folder to move the files to and no Delete option available.
Perhaps, the worst offenders are the distributions which ask you to put their iso on the stick by some "sudo dd if=XXX.iso of=/dev/sdYN" command, but Unetbootin and "Startup Disk Creator" can trap the stick, too. So you end up playing around with "mkfs" and/or "Gparted" until one of them accidentally breaks the trap. Oops. Is there a race going on in there somewhere with a different winner occasionally?
Windows doesn't seem to care. Just plug the stick in and click format. Shazam. The problem there is that I don't have a machine running Windows these days.
A second issue is the unpredictable action of "Startup Disk Creator." Sometimes it will allow you to put a persistence file on the stick, but other times the option is grayed out and unavailable. When you do get the persistence file, sometimes when booting a second or subsequent time, there is a complaint flashed by on boot-up saying some essential file is "mounted as read-only". So much for continuing persistence.
Thank you for reading my "rant". Please accept that is offered not as just a bunch of derogatory complaints, but as suggestions for improvements in Linux and Ubuntu that I don't know how to implement myself.
CRS
Specifically, when using a USB stick as a replacement for a recordable CD or DVD in (name-your-distribution).iso testing, the stick gets "trapped" in some condition which Ubuntu doesn't like to deal with. "Mkfs" (in all its variations) refuses to erase or reformat the stick. "Gparted" refuses to reformat the stick or delete the offending partitions. Unetbootin and "Startup Disk Creator" are anxious about the presence of contents on the stick and refuse to run again to create a new instance. Nautilus pretends there is no Trash folder to move the files to and no Delete option available.
Perhaps, the worst offenders are the distributions which ask you to put their iso on the stick by some "sudo dd if=XXX.iso of=/dev/sdYN" command, but Unetbootin and "Startup Disk Creator" can trap the stick, too. So you end up playing around with "mkfs" and/or "Gparted" until one of them accidentally breaks the trap. Oops. Is there a race going on in there somewhere with a different winner occasionally?
Windows doesn't seem to care. Just plug the stick in and click format. Shazam. The problem there is that I don't have a machine running Windows these days.
A second issue is the unpredictable action of "Startup Disk Creator." Sometimes it will allow you to put a persistence file on the stick, but other times the option is grayed out and unavailable. When you do get the persistence file, sometimes when booting a second or subsequent time, there is a complaint flashed by on boot-up saying some essential file is "mounted as read-only". So much for continuing persistence.
Thank you for reading my "rant". Please accept that is offered not as just a bunch of derogatory complaints, but as suggestions for improvements in Linux and Ubuntu that I don't know how to implement myself.
CRS