Ubuntu
usb-creator package

Why just for Ubuntu ISO images?

Asked by Leo

Hello,

I really like this tool!

I would be very happy to be able to use it to burn any other ISO to a USB partition and boot from it (Super Grub, Gparted, etc... actually it does not refuse Gparted, but the PC halts when booting).

Why is the tool limited to Ubuntu?

Is it technically complicated to improve it so that it will also allow other ISO files?

Thank you,
Leo

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Ubuntu usb-creator Edit question
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Revision history for this message
marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

As alternative please try unetbootin http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Hope this helps

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Leo (leorolla) said : 		#2

Thank you!

I saw unetbootin, it is indeed handy, but scrambles menu etc...

As an alternative I could try another distro, but I like gnome :-)

That's why I ask if there is something that particular of Ubuntu ISO's that prevents the implementation of USB-Creator to "burn" whatever the iso.

Cheers.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#3

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

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Leo (leorolla) said : 		#4

I still wait for somebody to explain what are the difficulties to let usb-creater work with any ISO the user choose.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#5

You could use this:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/create-a-ubuntu-9-10-live-usb-in-windows/

With a different ISO. Should work ok. Its free to try (even if it fails)

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Leo (leorolla) said : 		#6

Sorry if I'm insisting too much, but the question is:

What is the reason why usb-creator has been designed so that it refuses some ISO files but accepts some others?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#7

usb-creator seems to be coded by canonical, since the first line in main.py is "Copyright (C) 2009 Canonical Ltd."

This is why it only accepts the Canonical ISOS

Big thanks to trism for this
=D

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Leo (leorolla) said : 		#8

It is scaring to think that anti-features now are also present at free software.

I still believe there may be a technical reason why some usb-creator can handle ISO files but not others.

I will file a bug instead.

Thank you very much.

:-)

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Leo (leorolla) said : 		#9

There is already a confirmed bug about this: #321937

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skierpage (skierpage) said : 		#10

The technical issue is that usb-creator-* checks for the file /.disk/info in the ISO image, and rejects the .iso *WITH NO USER WARNING OR LOG MESSAGE (in ~/.cache/usb-creator.log) if it doesn't find this. The live ISO for other distributions don't use the "casper" approach of Debian and Ubuntu, don't have this file, and thus fail.

Bug 500526, bug 705353, bug 457734, etc. filed, and there is much confusion among users. It would be nice if usb-creator and Fedora's liveusb-creator shared code, but meanwhile it is terribly unfortunate that usb-creator fails silently.