I burn an image on a pendrive with dd, but it doesn't boot

[joancatala]

Hi all,
I want to have a Linux distribution (Raspbian Desktop) on a USB Pendrive.

I downloaded Raspbian Desktop.
I inserted the USB pendrive.
I did:

x201$ doas dd if=raspbian-buster-full.img of=/dev/rsd1c bs=32M                                                                                                                                        
191+1 records in
191+1 records out
6434062336 bytes transferred in 1379.547 secs (4663895 bytes/sec)

And after 15 minutes, I tried the USB booting my computer, but I doesn't boot.
(I tried on a Windows with win32imager and works. so the file .img works fine. )

Why I can't boot from the USB when I do 'dd' on OpenBSD? I am doing something wrong?

[jggimi]

The command looks correct. What is reported when you inspect the drive with # fdisk sd1?

[joancatala]

This:

x201$ doas fdisk sd1
Disk: sd1       geometry: 15077/255/63 [242221055 Sectors]
Offset: 0       Signature: 0xAA55
            Starting         Ending         LBA Info:
 #: id      C   H   S -      C   H   S [       start:        size ]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 0: 0C      0 130   3 -     33  37   5 [        8192:      524289 ] FAT32L      
 1: 83     33 167   7 -    782  58  44 [      540672:    12025856 ] Linux files*
 2: 00      0   0   0 -      0   0   0 [           0:           0 ] unused      
 3: 00      0   0   0 -      0   0   0 [           0:           0 ] unused

[jggimi]

Interesting. This appears to be a valid MBR in the first sector, but neither of the two defined MBR partitions are flagged as the active, bootable partition.

This is why it does not boot.

Compare the "on disk" MBR with the image's first sector.

# dd if=/dev/rsd1c count=1 of=on.disk.mbr
$ dd if=raspbian-buster-full.img count=1 of=image.mbr
$ diff image.mbr on.disk.mbr

[jggimi]

If the USB device's MBR differs from the downloaded image file's MBR, you know the problem is in the transfer to the USB device.

If they are the same, then you know the download was likely to be at fault, and can compare a hash of the image with one provided by the distribution.

[joancatala]

@jggimi thanks for your answer and your time. Finally I just downloaded a different image (a Ubuntu 19.04) and it worked perfectly. I don't know why the Raspbian-image wasn't working. Mistery.

Thanks and regards.

[stealintv]

Raspbian is a Linux distrobution made specifically for the Raspberry Pi device which uses the ARM architecture, and boots off of an SD card. It may be incompatible with the system you are attempting to boot it with. You already mentioned Ubuntu works for you, but if you really want to use/test Raspbian, a Raspberry Pi can be had for $35 USD. The older models even cheaper. Cheers!

[joancatala]

Hi, thanks for your answer.

I know what is the Raspberry Pi universe (I have the zero, the 1, the 2, the 3 B+ and also the 4), hehe.

But what I was trying to burn is not a ARM-image for Raspberry Pi, but a Debian GNU/Linux but using the Raspbian Desktop: https://www.raspberrypi.org/download...ry-pi-desktop/

Anyway, I don't need anymore Raspbian Desktop.
Thanks for your reply.

[CiotBSD]

Hi,
many times, I have this problem with distribution Linux.
To resolve, I use this tips:

# dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/rsd1c bs=1m count=1

and after, reuse dd to rewrite your img file.