problems with installation onto usb

[macrobbair]

Everything seems to work until the last step. Then there is an error message along the lines that cannot find space for the boot file. I have tried everything that I can think of installing onto the usb several times, trying gparted and chmod all to no avail.....

[Ed_P]

How big is the USB drive? Are you following the steps in the ISO's /USB_INSTALLATION.txt file?

[macrobbair]

16Gb brand new. I have tried both from a cd with porteus on it and directly using a usb writer then bash or sh the .com file, many times. Kali and tails both work usb boot, slax and porteus do not. I have also tried using gparted which does not seem to be able to do anything. I have also tried chmod +x makes no difference. I am stuck...
The error message says something along the lines of 0kb free space nowhere to put the boot file. I could try again to get the exact wording.

[Ed_P]

You're working this too hard.

What format is the USB drive?
Does the machine use EFI booting?

After you have copied the contents of the ISO to the USB post a listing of the USB folders. ls -s /mnt/slb?/

[macrobbair]

The error message is Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing Porteus Installer
Not enough space left in . (0 KB) to decompress Porteus-installer-for-Linux.com (188 KB)
which I read as . (dot) is the same directory and it is looking for 188kb of space and cannot find any....
I think that initial file system was fat32 I did not change anything and i think that that is the default.
EFI caused lots of problems when I initially tried to install linux on this machines hd so I guess that it has got that.
slb?
I think
mark@markhost:/mnt/usb-Generic_Mass-Storage-0:0$ ls -s
total 8
2 boot 2 EFI 2 porteus 2 USB_INSTALLATION.txt

[Ed_P]

You don't have the Porteus files on the USB drive. When they have been copied the USB drive should look similar to this.

Code: Select all

guest@porteus:~$ ls -s /mnt/sdb1/
total 80
16 EFI/          
16 changes/
16 porteus/
16 USB_INSTALLATION.txt*         
16 boot/
guest@porteus:~$ 

Be sure the machine has the EFI Secure Boot setting off.

[macrobbair]

F2 key shows on legacy not uefi. uefi has caused problems before on acer one has to set passwords in F2 to disable. I tried 1)resetting things in F2, 2)using porteus cd image writer which has efi option. To no avail, completely stuck.

[Ed_P]

"porteus cd writer" what exactly is that. Also what operating system are you running when you try to write to the USB drive?

Also rather than use Legacy mode use EFI mode and disable the Secure Boot option.

[macrobbair]

I tried changing EFI to Legacy with secure boot both on and off I got no bootable device.

using the porteus cd there is a porteus installer and also a usb writer, the usb writer has a efi on/off dot, all combinations do not work.

[Ed_P]

I guess Porteus is not for you and your ACER macrobbair. Sorry.

[macrobbair]

should be legacy to efi in the above.
looks as if it will have to wait until I get a new machine which might be soon as the graphics card is going on this one.
meanwhile tails, the problem there is it takes ages to start and aps are difficult because of too much security.