Howto make USB boot drives

[P-I H]

I downloaded OpenMandriva and openSUSE Tumbleweed and used Mkusb to create the usb boot device. The usb was created OK, but I got this crash " _user_bin_udevadm.0-crash".
This is on Ubuntu 20.10 with mkusb 12.6.6-1ubuntu2.

[sudodus]

I downloaded OpenMandriva and openSUSE Tumbleweed and used Mkusb to create the usb boot device. The usb was created OK, but I got this crash " _user_bin_udevadm.0-crash".
This is on Ubuntu 20.10 with mkusb 12.6.6-1ubuntu2.

Thanks for the heads up.

Please give me more details: Is this an installed and fully updated & upgraded system? Can you think of any particular unusual settings or things installed, or should I troubleshoot this bug in a standard Ubuntu 20.10 system?

I will look into this bug, but I cannot do it at once ...

[P-I H]

No hurry.
This is on a standard Ubuntu 20.10 installation

p-i@pi-Asus-B450:~$ inxi -Fz
System:
  Kernel: 5.8.0-33-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: N/A 
  Distro: Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING v: Rev 1.xx 
  serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 2704 date: 08/23/2019 
CPU:
  Info: 8-Core model: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  L2 cache: 4096 KiB 
  Speed: 1378 MHz min/max: 1550/3750 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1378 2: 1381 
  3: 1636 4: 1381 5: 1497 6: 1497 7: 3736 8: 1497 9: 1372 10: 1427 11: 1485 
  12: 1496 13: 2894 14: 1485 15: 1388 16: 1398 
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590] 
  driver: amdgpu v: kernel 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: amdgpu,ati 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 2560x1440~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: Radeon RX 580 Series (POLARIS10 DRM 3.38.0 
  5.8.0-33-generic LLVM 11.0.0) 
  v: 4.6 Mesa 20.2.1 
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Ellesmere HDMI Audio [Radeon RX 470/480 / 570/580/590] 
  driver: snd_hda_intel 
  Device-2: AMD Family 17h HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.8.0-33-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Intel I211 Gigabit Network driver: igb 
  IF: enp4s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 912.90 GiB used: 96.15 GiB (10.5%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Kingston model: SA1000M8480G size: 447.13 GiB 
  ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 960 EVO 250GB 
  size: 232.89 GiB 
  ID-3: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 227.74 GiB used: 96.13 GiB (42.2%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/nvme1n1p2 
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) file: /swapfile 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 37.9 C mobo: 32.0 C gpu: amdgpu temp: 26.0 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 420 case-1: 872 case-2: 817 case-3: 827 gpu: amdgpu 
  fan: 1147 
Info:
  Processes: 382 Uptime: 5m Memory: 15.56 GiB used: 1.61 GiB (10.3%) 
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.1.07 
p-i@pi-Asus-B450:~$

There is as far as I know nothing special.
I thought it might be related to make usb installation media for other distributions, but I tested with a groovy iso and got the crash.
This is a picture of the mkusb console print out.

[sudodus]

@P-I H,

Thanks for those details

More questions:

1. Where and when is the message about the crash printed? (I can't see it in your screenshot of the mkusb console.)

2. Is your Ubuntu 20.10 system booted in UEFI mode or BIOS mode?

3. Which locale (language) are you using in this Ubuntu 20.10 system?

[P-I H]

1. usr_bin_udevadm crashes just before the mkusb script is ready. The crash info is in /var/crash
2. It's booted inn UEFI. BIOS is set to only boot in UEFI mode
3 it's English(United States), but formats is Sverige and keyboard is swedish.

[P-I H]

Used mkusb on another computer with Hirsute and kernet 10.4 and didn't get any crash.
I suppose the crash depends on the installation
This is a picture of parts of the crash report. I didn't get the dialouge to report a bug in launchpad.

[sudodus]

@P-I H,

Thanks for those details.

I made a quick test with Ubuntu 20.10 installed in my test computer, a Toshiba with Intel i5 (generation 3), in UEFI mode and with US English. I did not see any sign of a crash, neither in a terminal window nor in /var/crash.

So it is difficult for me to troubleshoot the problem. Maybe it depends on some combination of your hardware and the drivers for it and mkusb. It would be interesting if you can find some more details of what can cause the crash and what can make the system avoid the crash (for example by running various versions of Ubuntu live in the Asus-B450 and some other computer).

[sudodus]

mkusb version 12.6.7, 12.6.8, 12.6.9

- mkusb 12.6.7 . guidus: skip parameter if %f is '%f' (for hippo hirsute) - mkusb 12.6.8 . dus-live: mkcmd_runcmd: ... wait for the buffered data to get flushed ... - mkusb 12.6.9 . dus-persistent: .. grub_n_iso & probe_source: identifying 20.04.2 & 21.04 .. probe_source: usb-pack_efi auto-set for 21.04 & 20.04.2

Improvement in version 12.6.7

- guidus.desktop, when initiated from the menu in pcmanfm-qt, did not start correctly, complained:

%f is neither an iso file nor an img.{gz,xz} file

fixed by editing the shellscript guidus: if statement to skip parameter if %f is '%f' makes it work also in hippo hirsute

Improvement in version 12.6.8

- Better information about flushing the buffers:

"Please wait for sync until 'Done' is written.
If there is a progress window,
wait for the buffered data to get flushed
so that all data are transferred to the target device."

Improvement in version 12.6.9

Modified structure of the iso files of 20.04.2 & 21.04 makes it necessary to add a new way to identify these versions of Ubuntu. At the same time using usb-pack_efi is selected automatically for these new versions. The modifications were made in dus-persistent (and mkusb-plug may need some corresponding modification).

---

Unstable: You get/update this new version of mkusb from the unstable PPA via the following commands

sudo add-apt-repository universe     # this line only for standard Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/unstable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mkusb           # to install
# sudo apt full-upgrade          # upgrade to current version (with all other upgrades), only for installed systems

sudo apt install mkusb guidus dus mkusb-common  # to upgrade all mkusb basic components including dus

sudo apt install usb-pack-efi    # for persistent live drives that work in UEFI and BIOS mode with 32-bit iso files

You get only the version dus (alone or with guidus) via one of the following commands (if you don't care about mkusb-11, mkusb-nox, mkusb-bas)

sudo apt install dus
sudo apt install guidus

You get only the version mkusb-plug via [the update command and] the following command,

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mkusb-plug

Alternative way to get mkusb: There are tarballs at

- help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/gui/tarball with only dus and guidus (mkusb version 12),

- help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/plug with only mkusb-plug.

---

Stable: mkusb version 12.6.9 is in the stable PPA. The policy is to test mkusb for a long time and in several environments before it is uploaded to the stable PPA (unless there are minor tweaks or bug-fixes).

You get/update this version via the following commands

sudo add-apt-repository universe      # this line only for standard Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mkusb            # to install
# sudo apt full-upgrade           # upgrade to current version (with all other upgrades), only for installed systems

sudo apt install usb-pack-efi     # for persistent live drives that work in UEFI and BIOS mode with 32-bit iso files

You get only the version dus (alone or with guidus) via one of the following commands (if you don't care about mkusb-11, mkusb-nox, mkusb-bas)

sudo apt install dus
sudo apt install guidus

You get only the version mkusb-plug via [the update command and] the following command,

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mkusb-plug

Usually there is drive space enough to install all the following mkusb packages explicitly:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mkusb guidus mkusb-plug usb-pack-efi

Please notice that if you have already installed mkusb-plug or dus/guidus from a tarball, you had better remove that version when you install via PPA. The advantage with the PPA version is that it gets updated/upgraded automatically along with other program packages that are installed from the Ubuntu repositories.

[P-I H]

I have played with Opensuse Tumbleweed. This iso is 4.3 GB and perhaps this is the cause of the problem with the udev crash. Mkusb's terminal window shows that the copy is ready, but in the other window tthe copy goes on, but very slow. At first in 0 Mb/s. After a while the the copy will finish and the terminal window shows that you have to hit enter to finish. In case you are interested I can provide some screenshots.

[sudodus]

I have played with Opensuse Tumbleweed. This iso is 4.3 GB and perhaps this is the cause of the problem with the udev crash. Mkusb's terminal window shows that the copy is ready, but in the other window tthe copy goes on, but very slow. At first in 0 Mb/s. After a while the the copy will finish and the terminal window shows that you have to hit enter to finish. In case you are interested I can provide some screenshots.

Yes please