I only just saw this comment and I don’t have one of the machines sitting in front of me, so this is from memory, but it should be pretty close.

First as you did, you’ll have to grab the latest version via git and get the live image. And then the big key is that you have to explicitly specify that you’re using livecd-iso-to-disk in the GPT mode by running
./livecd-iso-to-disk –mactel –reset-mbr /path/to/iso /my/partition

–mactel tells it that we’re setting up for the EFI based booting and –reset-mbr makes it so that the key will be completely set up. So this should work with any key that you have.

And just as the added caveat: this *WILL* remove all data currently on the key

Aloha Jeremy,

first, thank you for all of your hard work. I have an Apple MacBook Pro and I’m trying to make a USB memory stick bootable with Fedora 9. I wonder if you could write up a bit more on how this can be done. I tried to follow your blue print by fetching the latest version of livecd via “git clone git://git.fedorahosted.org/livecd && cd livecd && make install” Then I grabbed a copy of Fedora-9-x86_64-Live.iso from a mirror. I used Apple’s Disk Utility to partition the USB memory stick with no partitions, but having a GUID. I used parted to create a new partition of type ext3 and set it to bootable.

Things deviated at this point from what I expected. I ran livecd-iso-to-disk ./Fedora-9-x86_64-Live.iso /dev/sdc1 only to have an error return stating that the device wasn’t bootable and that I should ‘toogle 1 boot’. I did that already. I mucked about a bit longer, created an ext3 filesystem across the entire device, e.g. mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdc, and reran the livecd-iso-to-disk. Things looked promising because I was asked about my MBR and I proceeded. As far as I know everything transferred properly, but I was never returned to the command-prompt. My memory is fading, but I recall a line returning to the console which said something about usb and syslinux with a rather long string of hex. No error messages struck me.

Anyway, I gave it my best shot. I would love to boot my Apple MacBook Pro from a Fedora 9 LiveUSB. Can you help?

Thanks,
John

Or is formatted as a “superfloppy” with no partition table, but the same point still applies.

The other direction might actually be easier, but they’re both a nasty chunk of work.

2. Creating the USB key is currently a destructive process. One of the things about EFI is that it mandates the use of GPT for your partition table. And your USB key certainly came with an msdos partition table. I want to try to see if there’s anything clever I can do, but I suspect this is just the way it rolls.

Pretty sure we’re just plain stuck with this. That being said, we could probably still do the gptsync trick…

Also, I expect that using a partition for persistent home (rather than a loopback file) will give some better failure modes also, but that’s purely a hunch.

Sadly, though, I bet that some of the problems come down to the flash in the USB disk doing silly nutters on a power “surge” during the reboot. But again, that’s just a hunch.