Tails - Replacing balenaEtcher with Rufus as installer for Windows
tails.net

I am shocked by this - the quote in below is very concerning:

“However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”

Can’t see myself using this software anymore…

  • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 days ago

    I just tried this the other day and was unable to boot from the USB. any chance you could shed some light on what i might have screwed up?

    The command was:

    dd if=fedora.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M status=progress

    The USB stick was not mounted and the fedora image was verified. The command completed successfully but I couldn’t boot from it. When I used fedora writer to burn the same image to the same USB stick it booted no problem.

    Edit: spelling

    • Maiq@lemy.lol
      0·
      2 days ago

      Did you make sure that the of is correct? lsblk to make sure.

      If your sure it wrote to the right drive i would make sure that you have a good download. Did you run your checksums?

      I think fedora works with secureboot but you might want to disable it just to see if that is the issue. I believe you can reenable it after install.

      Make sure to go into the bios and boot from external drive/usb.

      Out of 15 years of using dd i have never had a problem.

      • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
        0·
        2 days ago

        I did verify with lsblk, with a listing before and after plugging in the stick to be absolutely sure.

        I also did verify the checksum of the ISO.

        I’ll double check SecureBoot, but as I mentioned, the same ISO written to the same stick with Fedora writer did boot in the same machine it wouldn’t boot from with the dd version.

        I know it’s something I did or didn’t do to make it work correctly, so this is not me trying to dunk on dd, just trying to understand what I did wrong.

      • gnuhaut@lemmy.ml
        0·
        1 day ago

        I don’t think oflags=direct has any influence on the result. Apparently that’s about disabling the page cache in the kernel, which can avoid a situation in which the system slows down due to buildup yet-to-write pages.

        • massacre@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 day ago

          Perhaps not. But the flag allows for direct I/O for data, bypassing buffers which can be overrun with certain size blocks, potentially causing dirty buffer depending on the machine being used. My understanding is that it’s “more reliable” for writing (especially on shitty USB Flash drives) and getting the exact ISO properly written.

          But it could be useless all the same - I’m just pointing out that OPs command is not the one recommended by Fedora when writing their ISO. Also OP is less likely to pull the drive before buffers have flushed this way.

        • Rogue@feddit.uk
          0·
          2 days ago

          You didn’t screw up, you beautifully proved why the CLI is never a simple solution.

          • Abnorc@lemm.ee
            0·
            1 day ago

            This is why people trying to pass this as a primary option baffle me a bit. dd is not that bad in isolation, but all of these little commands add up.

            If we want Linux to be mainstream, we need to accept that most users aren’t going to be linux enthusiasts. They just want a PC that works normally.