Arch Linux

leniviy

Member

Registered: 2009-05-23

Posts: 177

Create extra partition on USB stick with install image

Hi.
archlinux-2016.06.01-dual.iso occupies only 800Mb on my 8GB USB stick. How to safely add more partitons without corrupting the installer?

When plugged on a running Linux, I see:

sdb      8:16   1   7.6G  0 disk
├─sdb1   8:17   1   744M  0 part
└─sdb2   8:18   1    40M  0 part

parted and gdisk only see the 40Mb EFI partition. cfdisk sees both, but can't create new: "Start sector 83968 out of range.".

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Arch 64, xfce4

dockland

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2015-06-06

Posts: 861

Re: Create extra partition on USB stick with install image

Hi.
archlinux-2016.06.01-dual.iso occupies only 800Mb on my 8GB USB stick. How to safely add more partitons without corrupting the installer?

When plugged on a running Linux, I see:

sdb      8:16   1   7.6G  0 disk
├─sdb1   8:17   1   744M  0 part
└─sdb2   8:18   1    40M  0 part

parted and gdisk only see the 40Mb EFI partition. cfdisk sees both, but can't create new: "Start sector 83968 out of range.".

Flashdrives only shows the first partition, in your case ~800MB It creates an partition based on the size of the image. Is it FAT32

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I use it to look at funny pictures of cats and to argue with strangers.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,333

Website

Re: Create extra partition on USB stick with install image

I'm not sure if there is a way to create additional (useable) partitions, the iso creates the partition table, and changing that will impact the iso.  There might be some intricate procedure that could work, but I suspect it's ability to then boot the iso on varied hardware would be spotty.

However, you can just do a persistent usb installation and install arch-install-scripts, then it's easy to have any additional partitions, and as an added bonus you don't need to worry about the iso being out of date.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

leniviy

Member

Registered: 2009-05-23

Posts: 177

Re: Create extra partition on USB stick with install image

I wonder why they need a partition that starts with sector 0.

# sfdisk -d /dev/sdb
label: dos
label-id: 0x0e6dcb17
device: /dev/sdb
unit: sectors

/dev/sdb1 : start=           0, size=     1523712, type=0, bootable
/dev/sdb2 : start=         172, size=       81920, type=ef

sfdisk refuses to write this even with the --force option

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Arch 64, xfce4

alive4ever

Member

Registered: 2016-07-10

Posts: 65

Re: Create extra partition on USB stick with install image

You may refer to multiboot USB drive.