RUFUS iso burner tips

[PDP-8]

Right - so I'm lazy when burning iso's and thought I'd throw out some tips when using Rufus for TC (and other stuff).

This is not meant to be a comprehensive tutorial, but is for the "wing it" crowd.  Very unofficial.

Because Rufus burns the entire usb stick, there is no fancy partitioning with it.  Thus for me, I only use it to boot and have persistence elsewhere, like on an HD, SSD, or even a second stick - usually formatted with a Linux filesystem like ext2,3,4.   Do what you like.

Why I like it:  Unlike most other burners with perhaps a fixed algo for burning iso's, Rufus will let you try a whole number of options until you find on that works.  My success rate is about 99% on TC and other projects because of this.

Please, use the latest version if you already have it from years past.

1) Download your favorite iso and stash it somewhere.

The default option is to select your downloaded iso, and it will burn it with the cd type iso method and the legacy mbr.

If that doesn't work, try again, but this time when the window pops up, try using the "dd" method.

If you have modern hardware with UEFI (probably want to disable "secure-boot" in your bios first),  and don't want/can't turn off UEFI, try burning again, but this time, use the "GPT" format.

If you've chosen GPT (which means uefi only), you may still get the pop-up to try either the iso or dd method when you actually burn.  Try them both.

In my case for TinycorePure64, I used GPT and the dd method.

UPDATES - if you are online, Rufus will notify you of program updates, but in some circumstances, it may offer to "update" cmenu, syslinux and so forth that are part of the downloaded iso itself.  I normally decline to do that at first - I don't want to mess with the iso-author's own work.

So there you go - the total "wing it" guide.  Kinda' hurts to write it, but maybe it will save someone some gray-hairs if all else fails.

[NewUser]

I use a Windows PC to burn TC isos on USB sticks. core2USB-1.6.exe is the best, I think.  Get it from sourceforge.

[Strine]

What's the best Linux alternative to that? If there aren't any good ones, I guess I'm going to have to use that Windows one too.

[Juanito]

To burn a cd:

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$ tce-load -i cdrtools
$ cdrecord --scanbus [locate cd drive, in this case 6,0,0]
$ sudo cdrecord -v -pad speed=1 dev=6,0,0 Core-10.0.isoYou could also use the flburn or brasero extensions

Something like this should work for a usb stick:

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$ sudo dd bs=4M if=Core-10.0.iso of=/dev/sdb..be sure you choose the correct target device

You could also use the gnome-disk-utility extension (with gnome-session).

[PDP-8]

Juanito's got the scoop on burning of course ...  I've used those tools too.

Tip about Rufus - what it burns is similar to a CD environment - that is a "read only" boot usb stick.  That may be good enough to kick some tires, or if you know how to deal with that environment.

The second step of course is to use TC's own burning tools - the installer in either shell or gui version.  The installer comes standard with CorePlus.  With the others, you have to download tc-install of your cli or gui flavor.

Using *that*, and a secondary stick, you can do a true proper job of making a TC disk that isn't emulating a cd.

So not a fault of Rufus - it only has a single mission. AND it won't let a newbie accidentally burn an existing boot disk.   The TC installer itself has many more features to what most people probably want from a daily-driver stick.

Etcher is noted for it's ability to *verify* a burn - handy for dealing with tired / dead / or counterfeit sticks.

[PDP-8]

If Rufus seems to fail to boot TinyCorePure64 ..

The main reason seems to be that Rufus does *exactly* what it's told, and the grub.cfg file in the iso itself lacks any filesystem support.

Hence when you land at the grub prompt and try to ls each filesystem, they are unknown.

The entire grub.cfg file from tcpure64 iso itself:

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if loadfont unicode ; then
    set gfxmode=auto
    set gfxpayload=keep
    set gfxterm_font=unicode
    terminal_output gfxterm
fi

menuentry "tc" {
  linux /boot/vmlinuz64 loglevel=3 cde vga=791 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr:3
  initrd /boot/corepure64.gz
}

menuentry "tcw" {
  linux /boot/vmlinuz64 loglevel=3 cde waitusb=5 vga=791 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr:3
  initrd /boot/corepure64.gz
}

menuentry "core" {
  linux /boot/vmlinuz64 loglevel=3 vga=791
  initrd /boot/corepure64.gz
}

menuentry "corew" {
  linux /boot/vmlinuz64 loglevel=3 waitusb=5 vga=791
  initrd /boot/corepure64.gz
}

What is up to the user is to modify this file, and insmod a number of filesystem requirements, such as

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insmod part_gp
insmod part_msdos
insmod fat
insmod ext2
loadfont unicode
insmod efi_gop
insmod efi_uga
insmod font
at the beginning of the file.

No joy, but I'm still working on it.  Somewhere the light bulb will go off!