Can't find option to install from USB Stick

#1

Dear all,

I have downloaded the latest (3.0.6) full Englsih image from here.

In this article it says that I “can select the option to Reformat with Endless OS” which is exaclty what I’d like to do. Alas, I cannot find such option - there is no boot menu and the USB stick boots straight into EndlessOS on the USB stick and asks me to create a user account (which is then stored on the USB stick).

Obviously I am missing something. It would be great if you could please help me.

Thanks a lot & best regards,
Andree

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#2

The problem seems to be…

Did you install on USB using USB option or did you install on USB using " INSTALL " option.

You must use USB option.

#3

Hi smileyyasha & thanks a lot for your response.

I am on Linux, so I followed the instructions here using the Gnome desktop option (which I understand pretty much does the same as using dd to transfer the image file to the raw USB stick device).

So, I am not quite sure I understand what you mean by “INSTALL” option versus USB option? Sorry!

To reiterate, the USB stick boots and works absolutely fine. It’s just that I cannot seem to find the “option to Reformat with Endless OS” that is mentioned here under the heading “2. Reformat your computer with Endless OS”.

Thanks again & best regards,
Andree

#4

Hi @Andree, the instructions from Linux don’t create the same live+installer USB stick as the one described in the FAQ, but more like a persistent install of Endless on a USB stick. It’s a little harder to create a combined live+installer USBs from under Linux at the moment because it uses a couple of different scripts and needs exfat-utils which isn’t always available on all Linux systems. If you want to try, you can fetch the relevant scripts from Git, and run them. This is known to work on Fedora 24 (with a caveat, see below); it should work on Debian and Ubuntu:

git clone https://github.com/endlessm/eos-meta
cd eos-meta/eos-tech-support
sudo eos-write-live-image --os-image /path/to/eos-eos3.0-....img.xz --latest /dev/sdd

You should replace /dev/sdd with the right device name for your USB key. You’ll need to have a number of standard Unix tools installed, plus support for creating and mounting exFAT partitions. The latter is likely to be the most problematic: Fedora, for example, does not distribute exfat-utils, so you need to install it from somewhere else, like rpmfusion.

#5

Hi ramcq,

Thanks a lot for your explanation & suggestion. I have tried to do this now, alas it didn’t work - here is the output:

—8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<—

root@aurich:/home/andree/Shed/git/eos-meta/eos-tech-support# ./eos-write-live-image --os-image /home/andree/Downloads/OperatingSystems/Linux/EndlessOS/eos-eos3.0-amd64-amd64.161109-081728.en.img.xz --latest /dev/sdg
Are you sure you want to overwrite all data on /dev/sdg? [y/N] y

Fetching Windows Installer

$ wget --timestamping https://d1anzknqnc1kmb.cloudfront.net/endless-installer/endless-installer.exe
–2016-11-22 11:21:30-- https://d1anzknqnc1kmb.cloudfront.net/endless-installer/endless-installer.exe
Resolving d1anzknqnc1kmb.cloudfront.net (d1anzknqnc1kmb.cloudfront.net)… 54.192.135.104, 54.192.135.211, 54.192.135.100, …
Connecting to d1anzknqnc1kmb.cloudfront.net (d1anzknqnc1kmb.cloudfront.net)|54.192.135.104|:443… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 304 Not Modified
File 'endless-installer.exe’ not modified on server. Omitting download.

uncompressed image signature /home/andree/Downloads/OperatingSystems/Linux/EndlessOS/eos-eos3.0-amd64-amd64.161109-081728.en.img.asc does not exist or is not a file

—8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<—

Please note that I only had the unxz’ed image file which I xz’ed again. The message feeding the unxz’ed image file to eos-write-live-image was the same as above, though - i.e. the signature file is missing.

What could be the problem you think?

Thanks again & best regards,
Andree

#6

It’s not enough just to have the .img.xz, you also need a number of other files to go along with it: .img.xz.asc, .img.asc, .boot.zip, .boot.zip.asc. The eos-download-image script in the same repo knows to fetch all these files; they are also all included in our torrents; or you can just change the extension on the download URL.

If you unxz’ed the image file, xz-ing it again may not produce exactly the same bits – but as it happens, we actually unxz the image while writing the live USB and only the signature for the uncompressed image (.img.asc) is used, so you should be okay!

#7

Hi, guys… It would actually be very helpful if we could know how to create a USB installer for Linux machines, to use the “Reformat” option, step by step. I am also really confused and believe many others are also. I really like the OS and what’s really getting on people’s nerves is that creating a USB installer for Linux machines (not the .exe for Windows) is not as easy as other Debian based distros. - I’m not complaining, I know it is hard to make such thing. Could you guys please describe with details how to create one? - I also searched for it everywhere.
Thanks and big hugs from Brazil

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#8

@Rodolfo_Giusti totally understood. The instructions are as @ramcq describes above, but we are planning to release ISO images which you can just write directly to the USB very soon. (We’re ironing out a few issues caused by the Endless OS image files being extremely large, due to all the delicious content inside.)

#9

I tried what @ramcq and @wjt instructed, but I had the same problem as @andree :cry:

#10

I somehow made it work. I used @ramcq instructions… My fault I did not pay attention to the right paths and names of files before. I only had a problem that the boot file was not easily found by the BIOS, but I managed to “teach” the BIOS where it was, now it’s working perfectly fine. :slight_smile: Dankeschön!!!

1 Like
#11