On 2014-10-02, Neil Bothwick <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 2 Oct 2014 21:11:03 +0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote: > >> What I'm wondering is why all the blog posts, wiki pages, and HOWTOs >> showing either the complicated command-line procedures or >> dependency-heavy "USB creator" apps? (Many of them quite recent.) > > There is no need for them.
>> Did this work because the Xubuntu people do something special when >> creating the ISO image? (If so, then they have my thanks!) > > They did something, but it's not particularly special. All they did was > run isohybrid (from syslinux) on the ISO image. It uses unused space at > the start of the DVD ISO specification that is normally left blank to > hold a partition table so the image can be copied to a USB drive and > appear as a partitioned disk. There must be a little more to it than that. Does it also install along with a parition table some bootloader code that knows where/how to boot the ISO boot image? [After a little googling] It also installs MBR bootloader code that knows how to find/load isolinux.bin: http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Isohybrid Interestingly, it also created a second EFI boot partition which exists inside the main parition. $ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdd Disk /dev/sdd: 7.3 GiB, 7864320000 bytes, 15360000 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x19fabbe1 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdd1 * 0 1904639 952320 0 Empty /dev/sdd2 14296 18967 2336 ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32) I can mount the sdd2 VFAT partition, and there are a couple files in there: sdd2 └── efi └── boot ├── bootx64.efi └── grubx64.efi -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! SHHHH!! I hear SIX at TATTOOED TRUCK-DRIVERS gmail.com tossing ENGINE BLOCKS into empty OIL DRUMS ...
