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ISOHYBRID solves DD woes!

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PDP-8:
Apparently, I didn't get the memo on this.  It's in here somewhere .. :)

If you are trying to burn the release iso's, and they don't work on modern machines with simple DD or other gui burners, typically ending up at the grub prompt, try this:

Add some ISOHYBRID spice to the iso before you burn.  In my case, on a very modern machine, I did this:

sudo isohybrid <path/to/your/iso>

In my case, on an ultra modern little hockey-puck mini-pc, added the --uefi component


--- Code: ---sudo isohybrid --uefi TinyCorePure64-11.1.iso
--- End code ---

Now a bootable stick can be made from either DD, or other 3rd party burning utilities, that mostly do dd internally anyway.  They are just following directions to the letter, but if the iso doesn't have the isohybrid spice on it, then tears follow.

Note that when burned to stick, this of course results in what appears to be the "CD" read-only type of operation, so you'll want to resort to other measures to build a stick on a different writable /bootable filesystem.

OR, use as is, and enter kernel cheatcodes manually all the time if needed.  Like a cd-environment, you can at least set up persistence by using things like tce-setdrive and following the rest of the usual stuff for TC to go further.

This explains the chicken-and-egg phenomena if you only have a windows box, or even chromebook (using the restoration trick), you don't have any way to ISOHYBRID the iso before burning.  The obvious thing to do is get another distro bootable, download the tinycore iso, and isohybrid it from there.

When that dd'ed  stick came up on my uefi-only box after doing the isohybrid --uefi trick on it, I suddenly knew what a cheshire-cat grin was all about. :)

hiro:
imo would be useful to have that by default in our releases

PDP-8:
You'd think so, but I understand why not - and leaving it up to us to determine if we need it or not.

The whole thing about making a cd-type "iso" work on a usb stick, and fool the systems into thinking they are booting hd drives, is like fitting a round peg into a square hole. :)

Not my words, but I think the author of Rufus explains it very well here - and the dangers of over-relying on isohybrid:

https://www.howtogeek.com/291484/why-is-creating-a-bootable-usb-drive-more-complex-than-creating-bootable-cds/

Although the article goes a little bit into the rufus settings, the description about iso-hybrid finally sunk in with me, and why that util offers you 2 ways (iso and dd) and actually now 3 (iso / iso efi / dd).

The issue is that you don't know if the iso authors have left their iso's unmolested, iso-hybrid'ed or what.  You can run the risk of trying to isohybrid an iso that is already isohybrid'ed.

I can kind of even see where over the years when usb sticks became popular to boot from, and the many ways to burn an iso, some of those used to the simpler good-old-days of just burning a cd and getting on with it, could just call it quits and buy a mac.  Or chromebook, or something else.

Kind of like if when Linux became popular, that cd's had to be burned to emulate 9-track mag tapes to boot. :)

Not a super big deal, but we're hanging in there.  Nothing insurmountable.

curaga:
The isohybrid docs say that some Gigabyte uefi bioses are buggy, and fail to boot uefi isos. That makes it not so easy a choice.

hiro:
just ignore EFI, this way i don't see the downside, you can just document that it's isohybrid and can be dd'ed to disk and loaded by a compatible BIOS. how exactly the user has to set up their EFI to support legacy disk boot is not part of the scope i think :D

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