BigSmoke

Smokes your problems, coughs fresh air.

Tag: boot

Writing bootable disk images (.iso, .img, etc.) to a USB stick from Windows

December 17, 2017 /

Because Windows doesn’t have dd, and I want to write the latest Mint LTS release to a USB task, I had to face the unpleasant task of finding a Windows tool to perform what’s a basic Unix operation. The good news is that I found one, and it’s open source: Win32 Disk Imager. It even has a version ≥ 1, titled: “Holy cow, we made a 1.0 Release”.

A screenshot of Win32 Disk Imager at work, writing Linux Mint 18.3 MATE 64bit to my SanDisk USB stick.

Win32 Disk Imager at work, writing Linux Mint 18.3 MATE 64bit to my SanDisk USB stick.

I found another open source tool, UNetbootin, but that tool didn’t recognize my non-MS-format formatted USB stick (which already tauted the installer for a previous Mint release).

In the end, Win32 Disk Imager also choked on the funky partition table left by the previous boot image, so I had to find out how reset the USB disk’s partition table in Windows:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.16299.15

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: YTHINK

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          238 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 1    Online           29 GB    28 GB

DISKPART> select disk 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary           1706 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    Primary           2368 KB  1707 MB

DISKPART> select partition 2

Partition 2 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> delete partition

DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

DISKPART> select partition 0

The specified partition is not valid.
Please select a valid partition.

There is no partition selected.

DISKPART> select partition 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> delete partition

DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

DISKPART> create partition primary

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

Making a Compaq Deskpro sff boot without keyboard

December 14, 2010 /

To boot a compaq Deskpro sff without keyboard, you need to configure the BIOS in a special way.

I found this:

– Run BIOS setup by pressing F10
– Goto ‘Security’ and ‘Set Power On Password’
– Type in a password and F10 to accept the change
– As soon as password is set, ‘Password Options’ will appear under ‘Security’ tab
– Enable ‘Network Server’ mode in there
– F10 to save changes and exit

When booting up it won’t ask you for F1 anymore. However, if you or
someone else plugs in a keyboard it will ask for a power-on password.

Quickly removing and adding bootscripts in Debian

December 21, 2009 /

Debian still uses the System V init scripts, which are very clumsy to use. Here are two Debian commands you might need often: 

update-rc.d -f service remove

That will remove all the links in the runlevels to the script in init.d. 

update-rc.d service defaults

That will make default start and stop links in all the runlevels.

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