Hi Robert. I am quite busy at the moment to try it, but the general idea of it is:1. mount the disk image with mount -o loop2. cp -a source to usb3. Run syslinux to make bootable USB drive.Hope this helps,Dmitriy
-------- Original message --------From: "Robert P. J. Day via linux" <linux [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org> Date: 2025-08-22 16:00 (GMT-05:00) To: OCLUG mailing list <linux [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org> Subject: [linux] $100 bounty for resolving my issue for creating bootable USB drive i will recap the fight i am currently having in trying to create abootable USB drive from Ubuntu Server 24.04.3 ["24.04"], and i willinterac $100 to the first person who can solve the problem i am aboutto describe. (i will start writing this up in detail at mycrashcourse.ca wiki, but i'll supply enough here that you will haveenough information to take a crack at it.) previously, i described how i want to customize a 24.04 ISO image toadd some autoinstall configuration, but the problem here is waysimpler -- i just want to take that original ISO and turn it into abootable USB drive *as is*. but wait ... there's more. if i just want an equivalent bootable USB drive from the ISO image,well, that's trivial -- just "dd" from the ISO image to the USB drive.that works just fine and, when i do that, the USB drive is recognizedby two different appliances i'm playing with when i go into the BIOSon either appliance, go top the "Boot" menu, and i can see that bothBIOSes list the USB drive as a boot option. in short, those USB drivesare visible as bootable devices. and that's what i'm after. but i don't just want to use "dd" -- that's too easy. rather, i wantto take the 24.04 ISO image and *unpack* it ("mount -o loop","bsdtar", whatever) to get the directory structure, which is where iwould add the autoinstall stuff, but i want to keep it simple, andafter i unpack the ISO image, i'm happy to *immediately* pack it upagain (unchanged) to get the equivalent bootable ISO image. then i can"dd" that to a USB drive and boot from that. that's it -- i want to take canonical's 24.04 ISO image, unpack it(however you want), then recreate a bootable ISO image from that (mostlikely with "xorriso"), dd to USB drive and boot from that. and frommy poking around, it seems like the work involves invoking "xorriso"with all of the appropriate options, a good example seen here:https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1g0cq09/how_to_create_a_custom_ubuntu_24041_image_by/that makefile ostensibly does what i want, except we can ignore allthe cloud-init stuff since i don't want to make any changes, and thereal work is done by the "ubuntu" target, which runs "xorriso" with atruckload of options in order to recreate a bootable ISO image. i used something very much like that but, no matter how i tweak it,once i recreate an ISO image and copy to USB drive, neither appliancerecognizes that USB drive as a boot option, so i am clearlyoverlooking something critical. there's the $100 bounty -- figure out the magic incantation of"xorriso" that allows me to do the above: 1) start with canonical 24.04.3 ubuntu server image 2) unpack into directory structure 3) use xorriso to immediately repack into bootable ISO image 4) copy to USB drive, and boot from that USB drivei've played with those options all morning and haven't succeeded.thoughts?rdayTo unsubscribe send a blank message to linux+unsubscribe@linux-ottawa.orgTo get help send a blank message to linux+help@linux-ottawa.orgTo visit the archives: https://lists.linux-ottawa.org