I'm trying to make an .iso out of an .img. The Armbian project is about
providing .img/s to write to SDs to boot on lots of different ARM
boards, *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD. But I
don't want a big fat .img to boot; I would rather have an .iso,
preferably one that I can boot on a Ventoy USB stick.

The problem is that I haven't been successful in converting yet. At
first I had trouble trying unarc their .img.xz dl w/ Archiver but then I
used unxz and solved that problem. The result was a 9G .img. I didn't
really want that.

I tried to use various converters: ccd2iso, acetoneiso (w/ poweriso) and
iat. ccd2iso got stuck on unrecognized structure; I believe iat got
stuck on something like a series of 'detect signature at' and the
graphical acetoneiso 'obstructed' me because its file manager wouldn't
let me access a different device where the .img file was and I didn't
know how to solve that.

I most recently acquired a gcdemu suite w/ cdemu and other pieces, but I
don't know how to use it yet. I'm studying man cdemu.

The initial file I started w/ is
https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/dl/uefi-x86/archive/Armbian_23.8.1_Uefi-x86_bookworm_current_6.1.50_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz

.... but since then I've found smaller ones for x86 in that archive. The
above xz is 2.1G and unarc/s to 9.1G. I want one w/ at least a DE or WM
as opposed to just command line. I could use an .img if I give it a
whole stick instead of using Ventoy, but even then I would like for the
..img to be less than 8G because of USB stick availability.

--
Mike Easter

On 2023-09-04, Mike Easter wrote:
> I'm trying to make an .iso out of an .img. The Armbian project is about
> providing .img/s to write to SDs to boot on lots of different ARM
> boards, *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD. But I
> don't want a big fat .img to boot; I would rather have an .iso,
> preferably one that I can boot on a Ventoy USB stick.
>
> The problem is that I haven't been successful in converting yet. At
> first I had trouble trying unarc their .img.xz dl w/ Archiver but then I
> used unxz and solved that problem. The result was a 9G .img. I didn't
> really want that.

Raspbian/Armbian/etc-ian being "fully installed(tm)" systems, since
their usual target device (a Raspberry Pi) cannot boot off anything
except the SD Card (so no point in making a "bootable image" that you
then use as "an installer" when the target can't work from it)

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860

Dan Purgert wrote:
> On 2023-09-04, Mike Easter wrote:
>> I'm trying to make an .iso out of an .img. The Armbian project is about
>> providing .img/s to write to SDs to boot on lots of different ARM
>> boards, *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD. But I
>> don't want a big fat .img to boot; I would rather have an .iso,
>> preferably one that I can boot on a Ventoy USB stick.
>>
>> The problem is that I haven't been successful in converting yet. At
>> first I had trouble trying unarc their .img.xz dl w/ Archiver but then I
>> used unxz and solved that problem. The result was a 9G .img. I didn't
>> really want that.
>
> Raspbian/Armbian/etc-ian being "fully installed(tm)" systems, since
> their usual target device (a Raspberry Pi) cannot boot off anything
> except the SD Card (so no point in making a "bootable image" that you
> then use as "an installer" when the target can't work from it)
>
Not many 'Intel/AMD generic' x86 boot from an SD. Well, I shouldn't say
that; I suppose there are some that have such a slot. I suppose I could
write the .img to a SD and use that in a USB gizmo I have that accepts
various types of SDs and boot from that.

--
Mike Easter

Mike Easter wrote:
> I could use an .img if I give it a whole stick instead of using Ventoy,
> but even then I would like for the .img to be less than 8G because of
> USB stick availability.

I dl/ed a smaller .img.xz and unarc/ed it to a 3.5G .img and wrote that
to a USB w/ Balena Etcher, but it wasn't recognized as bootable.

--
Mike Easter

On 04/09/2023 19:18, Mike Easter wrote:
> *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD.

Can you provide a URL for this, please?

--

Chris Elvidge, England
THE CAFETERIA DEEP FRYER IS NOT A TOY

Chris Elvidge wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:
>> *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD.
>
> Can you provide a URL for this, please?
>
Yes; I did in my first post; that I 'derived' by finding the path for
the sha. I'll repeat that and also provide the armbian page to dl the
Cinn version.

https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/dl/uefi-x86/archive/Armbian_23.8.1_Uefi-x86_bookworm_current_6.1.50_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz

At: https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/dl/uefi-x86/archive/

.... which also contains numerous other .img.xz for x86.

The upper dir is at https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/dl/ for the big 'gang'
of ARM boards.

Armbian's webserver route to is dl/ing is here https://www.armbian.com/
where you can go off in whichever architecture you want.

https://www.armbian.com/uefi-x86/

Now I've noticed that there are others there besides Cinn.

--
Mike Easter

Mike Easter wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:
>> I could use an .img if I give it a whole stick instead of using
>> Ventoy, but even then I would like for the .img to be less than 8G
>> because of USB stick availability.
>
> I dl/ed a smaller .img.xz and unarc/ed it to a 3.5G .img and wrote that
> to a USB w/ Balena Etcher, but it wasn't recognized as bootable.
>
Some progress and non-progress:

After Etcher, I wrote that 3.5 img to USB w/ Rufus. It also wasn't
recognized as bootable.

Then I copied the .img to the Ventoy stick and it booted to show me that
it was a CLI. Rather than experiment down that road, I decided to go
back to the Cinn .img.

Pending.

--
Mike Easter

In article <slrnufcb9k.f45.dan@djph.net>, Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:
>On 2023-09-04, Mike Easter wrote:
>> I'm trying to make an .iso out of an .img. The Armbian project is about
>> providing .img/s to write to SDs to boot on lots of different ARM
>> boards, *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD. But I
>> don't want a big fat .img to boot; I would rather have an .iso,
>> preferably one that I can boot on a Ventoy USB stick.
....
>Raspbian/Armbian/etc-ian being "fully installed(tm)" systems, since
>their usual target device (a Raspberry Pi) cannot boot off anything
>except the SD Card (so no point in making a "bootable image" that you
>then use as "an installer" when the target can't work from it)

This isn't strictly true. The Pi establishment *could* have set it up
where they give you a bootable SD card and a CD. The workflow would then
be that you plug in your CD drive, put the CD in the drive, boot the SD card
and go. Much like the early days of Linux, where you'd open the box and
see a CD and a boot floppy.

Note: I may have elided a few steps in the above narrative, but please do
not bother to nitpick it. It's all there; I just didn't bother to type it
all in.

And, if they had, a fair number of people would have been happier. This
was a frequent complaint in the early days of the Pi. But time has gone
by, and we've all gotten used to the image way, so nobody grumbles about it
anymore.

--
Alice was something of a handful to her father, Theodore Roosevelt. He was
once asked by a visiting dignitary about parenting his spitfire of a daughter
and he replied, "I can be President of the United States, or I can control
Alice. I cannot possibly do both."

Mike Easter wrote:
> Then I copied the .img to the Ventoy stick and it booted to show me that
> it was a CLI.  Rather than experiment down that road, I decided to go
> back to the Cinn .img.
>
> Pending.

Somehow my existing Ventoy stick which has been used /over and over/
seemed to have 'shrinking' space available. Somehow it doesn't get
'cleaned up' when one .iso is removed and replaced w/ another.
Sometimes 'discarded' .iso/s still show in the Ventoy boot mgr even tho'
they are apparently 'gone' when looking at the device. In any case, I
reformatted a Ventoy 16G and made it a 'fresh' Ventoy using the linux
web method. Then there was plenty of space for the fat Cinnamon which
turned out to be 8.6 not 9.1.

Somehow the Cinn .img didn't boot as well as the CLI .img booted and got
stuck at a BusyBox prompt of initramfs. I think I'll try the XFCE.

--
Mike Easter

Mike Easter wrote:
> Somehow the Cinn .img didn't boot as well as the CLI .img booted and got
> stuck at a BusyBox prompt of initramfs.  I think I'll try the XFCE.

Same problem w/ the xfce. Ventoy says that .img comes in various types,
some of which don't work for it.

--
Mike Easter

On 2023-09-04, Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:
> On 2023-09-04, Mike Easter wrote:
>> I'm trying to make an .iso out of an .img. The Armbian project is about
>> providing .img/s to write to SDs to boot on lots of different ARM
>> boards, *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD. But I
>> don't want a big fat .img to boot; I would rather have an .iso,
>> preferably one that I can boot on a Ventoy USB stick.

Trying to guess the properties of a file by looking at the filename
may not always work.

>> The problem is that I haven't been successful in converting yet. At
>> first I had trouble trying unarc their .img.xz dl w/ Archiver but then I
>> used unxz and solved that problem. The result was a 9G .img. I didn't
>> really want that.
>
> Raspbian/Armbian/etc-ian being "fully installed(tm)" systems, since
> their usual target device (a Raspberry Pi) cannot boot off anything
> except the SD Card (so no point in making a "bootable image" that you
> then use as "an installer" when the target can't work from it)

Raspberry Pi can boot off USB

--
Jasen.
🇺🇦 Слава Україні

On 2023-09-04, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:
> Dan Purgert wrote:
>> On 2023-09-04, Mike Easter wrote:
>>> I'm trying to make an .iso out of an .img. The Armbian project is about
>>> providing .img/s to write to SDs to boot on lots of different ARM
>>> boards, *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD. But I
>>> don't want a big fat .img to boot; I would rather have an .iso,
>>> preferably one that I can boot on a Ventoy USB stick.
>>>
>>> The problem is that I haven't been successful in converting yet. At
>>> first I had trouble trying unarc their .img.xz dl w/ Archiver but then I
>>> used unxz and solved that problem. The result was a 9G .img. I didn't
>>> really want that.
>>
>> Raspbian/Armbian/etc-ian being "fully installed(tm)" systems, since
>> their usual target device (a Raspberry Pi) cannot boot off anything
>> except the SD Card (so no point in making a "bootable image" that you
>> then use as "an installer" when the target can't work from it)
>>
> Not many 'Intel/AMD generic' x86 boot from an SD. Well, I shouldn't say
> that; I suppose there are some that have such a slot.

Many portable devices and some desktops, some servers too.

> I suppose I could
> write the .img to a SD and use that in a USB gizmo I have that accepts
> various types of SDs and boot from that.

I think my laptop identifes the internal SD card reader as /dev/mmcblk0
external ones come under usb-storage as /dev/sd* but otherwise
compatible

--
Jasen.
🇺🇦 Слава Україні

On 9/4/23 23:47, Mike Easter wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:
>> Then I copied the .img to the Ventoy stick and it booted to show me
>> that it was a CLI.  Rather than experiment down that road, I decided
>> to go back to the Cinn .img.
>>
>> Pending.
>
> Somehow my existing Ventoy stick which has been used /over and over/
> seemed to have 'shrinking' space available.  Somehow it doesn't get
> 'cleaned up' when one .iso is removed and replaced w/ another.

tried wipefs before you dd the new image?

--
//Aho

On 2023-09-04, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <slrnufcb9k.f45.dan@djph.net>, Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:
>>On 2023-09-04, Mike Easter wrote:
>>> I'm trying to make an .iso out of an .img. The Armbian project is about
>>> providing .img/s to write to SDs to boot on lots of different ARM
>>> boards, *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD. But I
>>> don't want a big fat .img to boot; I would rather have an .iso,
>>> preferably one that I can boot on a Ventoy USB stick.
> ...
>>Raspbian/Armbian/etc-ian being "fully installed(tm)" systems, since
>>their usual target device (a Raspberry Pi) cannot boot off anything
>>except the SD Card (so no point in making a "bootable image" that you
>>then use as "an installer" when the target can't work from it)
>
> This isn't strictly true. The Pi establishment *could* have set it up
> where they give you a bootable SD card and a CD. The workflow would then
> be that you plug in your CD drive, put the CD in the drive, boot the
> SD card and go. Much like the early days of Linux, where you'd open
> the box and see a CD and a boot floppy.

They certainly "could" have -- but it makes zero sense to do so.

"Hey you have this credit-card sized SBC, but you need a bootable SD
card [linkhere] a non-bootable CD installer [linkhere], AND a spare USB
HDD as installation target to make it work. Oh, and you can't ever
remove the boot SD Card, or it'll stop working."

vs.

"Burn this OS image to that SD Card, and have fun"

> And, if they had, a fair number of people would have been happier. This
> was a frequent complaint in the early days of the Pi. But time has gone
> by, and we've all gotten used to the image way, so nobody grumbles
> about it anymore.

Only complaints I remember were that Windows users had a fair bit of
pain, due to severe shortcomings with native tools.

Well, that and their great capacity for trashing SD Cards :D

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860

On 2023-09-05, Jasen Betts wrote:
> On 2023-09-04, Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:
>> [...]
>> Raspbian/Armbian/etc-ian being "fully installed(tm)" systems, since
>> their usual target device (a Raspberry Pi) cannot boot off anything
>> except the SD Card (so no point in making a "bootable image" that you
>> then use as "an installer" when the target can't work from it)
>
> Raspberry Pi can boot off USB

"now".

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860

Mike Easter wrote:
> I suppose I could write the .img to a SD and use that in a USB gizmo I
> have that accepts various types of SDs and boot from that.

That didn't work either. I wrote to an SD card in a USB adapter using
the RPi imager; that didn't work, nor w/ Balena Etcher. That is, the
writing 'worked' -- what didn't work was that the result wasn't
recognized as a bootable device.

The BIOS boot manager gives the options for hdd, optical, or USB; w/ USB
selected that manager recognizes the SD as 'SD/MMC' but doesn't find
anything bootable on it.

I've written an OS to the SD in that adapter before that booted on the
RPi in a SD slot.

--
Mike Easter

Mike Easter wrote:
> I've written an OS to the SD in that adapter before that booted on the
> RPi in a SD slot.

Nothing is working; I used an RPi imager to write to the SD in the USB
adapter; then I found a laptop w/ a SD card slot. That system did not
recognize the device as bootable.

--
Mike Easter

On Tue, 05 Sep 2023 10:46:35 -0400, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

> Mike Easter wrote:
>> I suppose I could write the .img to a SD and use that in a USB gizmo I
>> have that accepts various types of SDs and boot from that.
>
> That didn't work either. I wrote to an SD card in a USB adapter using
> the RPi imager; that didn't work, nor w/ Balena Etcher. That is, the
> writing 'worked' -- what didn't work was that the result wasn't
> recognized as a bootable device.
>
> The BIOS boot manager gives the options for hdd, optical, or USB; w/ USB
> selected that manager recognizes the SD as 'SD/MMC' but doesn't find
> anything bootable on it.
>
> I've written an OS to the SD in that adapter before that booted on the
> RPi in a SD slot.

Use "dd if=/path/to/the.img" of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M" to copy the image to
the sd card.

If using a usb adapter use the of=/dev/sdz or whatever the correct device
is.

Make sure it's being copied to the device, not to a partition within an
already partitioned sd card.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

In article <op.2as238bha3w0dxdave@hodgins.homeip.net>,
David W. Hodgins <dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
....
>> I've written an OS to the SD in that adapter before that booted on the
>> RPi in a SD slot.
>
>Use "dd if=/path/to/the.img" of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M" to copy the image to
>the sd card.
>
>If using a usb adapter use the of=/dev/sdz or whatever the correct device
>is.

Does anyone (of those trying to help this guy) have any idea what the
actual goal is? It sounds like not just an XY problem, but a QRSTUVWXYZ
problem...

It sounds to me like he's made a bootable SD card, that boots fine on the
Pi, but then he tries to boot it on x86/x64 platform and is surprised it
doesn't work. Over on the RPi forum, we periodically have to explain to
people about different architectures, and how the Pi is (unfortunately) not
binary compatible with Intel/AMD platforms.

On the Pi forum, it is understandable the need to explain this every so
often, but you'd hope for better here on Usenet.

--
"We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk
about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth."

- Greta Thunberg -

Kenny McCormack wrote:
> It sounds to me like he's made a bootable SD card, that boots fine on the
> Pi,

Nonono. There is no Pi involved here. The only thing 'related' to ARM
is that the main thrust of the Armbian project is to create .img/s for a
LOT of different ARM boards besides the Pi.

BUT...

.... they also create an Armbian for another architecture, namely
'generic Intel/AMD 64'.

I do have a Pi3B, but that isn't involved. I'm working w/ what they
created for x86. I have several desktops that do not have a SD slot,
and one laptop that does.

My original target was to try to put the .img on a USB; but that hasn't
worked out. Now that I've gotten it onto a SD, it still doesn't boot
from SD in USB adapter nor from SD in the one x86 device I have w a SD slot.

I suppose I should try my most recent effort in the Pi slot, but it has
only 1G ram and the one I wrote is a Deb Cinnamon, which might be a
little fat for my ram.

--
Mike Easter

Mike Easter wrote:
> I suppose I should try my most recent effort in the Pi slot, but it has
> only 1G ram and the one I wrote is a Deb Cinnamon, which might be a
> little fat for my ram.

Oops. Wrong. What I wrote is for the x86, not the Pi. They do have
other .img/s for theh Pi.

--
Mike Easter

Mike Easter wrote:
> Nothing is working;

I've given up on trying to boot the Armbian for x86, but I'm still
interested in learning something about two different specific kinds of
..img. I would like to compare the .img provided by EasyOS w/ that of
Armbian's.

Current EasyOS:
https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.4.10/

Barry Kauler's opinion of why .iso should die:
https://easyos.org/about/why-the-iso-format-has-to-die.html

The Armbian team doesn't discuss the structure of their .img, but the
latest release for x86 is here:
https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/dl/uefi-x86/archive/

The functional difference is that I can write/copy an Easy OS .img to a
Ventoy stick and boot it (now, previously I've had problems) and so far
I haven't been able to do anything w/ an Armbian .img for x86, altho' I
suspect that I might be able to use one for ARM in my RPi SD slot. But
I'm not currently interested in that. I'm happy w/ its existing OS for
its 1G ram and I haven't had trouble writing and booting other .img to
SD for it.

I've heard that one can use iat (ISO 9660 Analyzer Tool) to examine
..img, but maybe that is for some other kind of .img than Armbian's.

--
Mike Easter

On Wed, 06 Sep 2023 12:44:52 -0400, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

> Mike Easter wrote:
>> Nothing is working;
>
> I've given up on trying to boot the Armbian for x86, but I'm still
> interested in learning something about two different specific kinds of
> .img. I would like to compare the .img provided by EasyOS w/ that of
> Armbian's.
>
> Current EasyOS:
> https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.4.10/
>
> Barry Kauler's opinion of why .iso should die:
> https://easyos.org/about/why-the-iso-format-has-to-die.html
>
> The Armbian team doesn't discuss the structure of their .img, but the
> latest release for x86 is here:
> https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/dl/uefi-x86/archive/
>
> The functional difference is that I can write/copy an Easy OS .img to a
> Ventoy stick and boot it (now, previously I've had problems) and so far
> I haven't been able to do anything w/ an Armbian .img for x86, altho' I
> suspect that I might be able to use one for ARM in my RPi SD slot. But
> I'm not currently interested in that. I'm happy w/ its existing OS for
> its 1G ram and I haven't had trouble writing and booting other .img to
> SD for it.
>
> I've heard that one can use iat (ISO 9660 Analyzer Tool) to examine
> .img, but maybe that is for some other kind of .img than Armbian's.

With img files, they are meant to be copied to a device such as a usb
drive or an sd card, where they work the same as a sata or pcie drive.

With iso files they are set up to be bootable from an optical drive such
as a cd/dvd they use iso 9660 formats. Images that can be booted from
either an optical drive or emulate a hard drive for use on a usb drive use
a hybrid format. https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Isohybrid

With iso files that are only set up to use iso 9660 format, a tool such
as rufus can be used to make it bootable from a usb or sd card. With
iso files that are already in hybrid format, they should be copied to the
usb drive/sd card as is (raw mode). Modifying them during the writing will
usually leave them un-bootable.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> writes:

> I'm trying to make an .iso out of an .img. The Armbian project is
> about providing .img/s to write to SDs to boot on lots of different
> ARM boards, *BUT* they also provide an image for 'generic' Intel/AMD.
> But I don't want a big fat .img to boot; I would rather have an .iso,
> preferably one that I can boot on a Ventoy USB stick.

I took a quick look at their minimal image, fdisk lists three partitions
in it. One of them is an ext4 which looks like a normal Linux partition
with kernel and initrd and userspace.

So you could just mount that and point your iso making tool to it.
Although I have no idea what this Ventoy requires from an iso image to
be able to boot it.

Mike Easter wrote:
> I've given up on trying to boot the Armbian for x86, but I'm still
> interested in learning something about two different specific kinds of
> .img.  I would like to compare the .img provided by EasyOS w/ that of
> Armbian's.

I've found a couple of ways to look; command fdisk -l and the graphical
Disk Mounter function that comes w/ gnome-disk-utility..

Armbian comes w/ 3 parts, 1 each little bios & efi and mostly a linux
which are seen w/ fdisk; but the graphical disk mounter result is pretty
weird and 'complicated' to me.

EasyOS is more 'sensible'; 2 parts, 1 little EFI and one Linux, and they
are also id/ed (Id column ef & 83) 'correctly' in fdisk, which doesn't
happen in fdisk for Armbian's. For Easy, the graphical disk mounter is
more normal looking, one easyos dir which contains 3 items, a mostly
easy.sfs which squashed file system image is the way Puppy and Easy like
to do things, a 5.5meg initrd archive and a 6.6meg vmlinuz.

--
Mike Easter