Fedora Media writer app won't launch (in Fedora)

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1

I run Fedora WS 34, Kernel version : 5.11.20-300.fc34.x86_64

I wanted to burn a Fedora WS 34 ISO into an USB. So, I installed Fedora Media Writer from Software Centre GUI.
After installation when I try to launch the app, it won’t come up.

So, I unistalled and installed the Fedora Media writer from command line using

$ sudo dnf install mediawriter

The installation went fine. But, again, when I try to launch the app, it won’t come up.
It looks like it’s going to launch/start the app, but nothing happens.
Is this a bug ? The Windows version of Fedora Media Writer does launch but I did not use it.

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2

Try launching it from a terminal and see if an error shows up there.

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3

In situations like this, you can try to start the app in terminal, so that more status message will be visible.

You can also monitor journal while starting an app by
sudo journalctl -f

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4

Thanks guys.
The app did launch when I invoked it from the command line !
So, I did the following (I hope I am right)

$ mediawriter &

Related question on using Fedora Media Writer in Fedora :

  1. For tools like Rufus, I have to specify
    a) Fileystem type (FAT32 or NTFS and I always chose FAT32)
    b) Something called ‘Cluster size’ in KB. Don’t know what it is

https://rufus.ie/en_US/

But, I didn’t have to provide any of the above in Fedora Media writer.
So, what Filesystem will be used by the Fedora Media writer to format the USB Stick ?
And what block size will be used ? Although I don’t really care as long I get a bootable USB :grinning:

After attaching the USB drive, following are the 2 things I have done in Fedora Media writer

Step1. In the following screen, I chose ‘Custom Image’ as I already downloaded the iso image file from Fedora’s website.

3ad27eaa38ba9cd13f1d8a9c8eef62284651d149.png
3ad27eaa38ba9cd13f1d8a9c8eef62284651d149.png809×515 40 KB

Step2. In the next screen, I chose ‘Write to Disk’
Sorry, I couldn’t upload the screenshots as I could upload only 1 picture being new user

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5

There is a fundamental difference between different kinds of ISO files.

For example, with a standard Windows ISO, you have to format the media and manually make it bootable. That is what those settings in rufus are for.

With most(all?) Linux ISO files everything is in the ISO. You are literally just taking the contents of the ISO and writing it to the media.

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When using FedoraMediaWriter to write a Fedora ISO to USB:

  1. The USB drive will contain read-only filesystem. Any remaining space spaces are hidden and not used.

  2. To return the USB drive for normal use, FedoraMediaWriter can be used to restore the drive. Or using fdisk / format as usual.

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7

With fedora media writer it is similar to using any other utility to write an image to a disk.
Simply select the file and tell it to write. What it does is write the image to the USB so now what is on the USB is a copy of the iso.

You can achieve the same thing with dd by using a command like this (assuming the usb is seen by the system as /dev/sdb).
dd if=/path/to/iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1m

The reason for using the bs (block size) option is that by default dd uses a block size of 512 and since that is much less than the current default sector size on a drive it would mean a lot of extra reads & writes (and time) when copying any file if you did not use that option

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8

Yeah, this is exactly why Fedora Media Writer is designed like it is – it does the right things to get you a bootable system and nothing else, with as few options as possible.

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