Hello,
I have installed the Workstation 42 live system on an USB Stick, then booted the live system and then within live system I installed fedora Workstation 42 on an other USB stick.
But I can not boot from the second USB stick. If bios is in UEFi the stick is not shown in the boot menu. If bios is in legacy mode I get the message no bootable item.
Can I make the second stick bootable in someway?
FYI always use UEFI BIOS - no need to use legacy boot
The steps I use to create a USB stick system are
- Boot live USB
- Plug in target USB stick
- Start the software install
- select the target USB stick
- Complete the install on target USB stick
- Shutdown
- Unplug the live USB
- Power on and select the USB stick using the UEFI BIOS option.
There is usually a key you can press while booting to bring up the UEFI boot menu.
The details of which keys your BIOS supports are specific to each vendors BIOS.
What is the make of motherboard, or laptop, and BIOS you are using?
2 Likes
Thank you for your quick answer.
I have done your points 1 to 8. But the usb stick is not shown in the boot menu. When I plug in the usb stick with the live system it is shown in the boot menu.
I am using an laptop acer aspire R5 with a system bios v1.03 and a Windows 10.
My target usb stick is a sanDisk Extrem Pro USB 3.2
I wonder if the boot files are not written to the target usb stick.
Boot the live usb and plug in the target usb stick.
Then start a terminal and see what lsblk -f reports.
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /run/rootfsbase
sda
└─sda1 ntfs DATA 2E6078CA60789A73
sdb
├─sdb1 vfat FAT32 ESP F470-5280
├─sdb2
├─sdb3 ntfs Acer A06071AF60718D32
└─sdb4 ntfs 10DC999FDC998020
sdc iso9660 Joliet Extension Fedora-WS-Live-41-1-4 2024-10-24-15-04-27-00
├─sdc1 iso9660 Joliet Extension Fedora-WS-Live-41-1-4 2024-10-24-15-04-27-00 0 100% /run/initramfs/live
├─sdc2 vfat FAT16 ANACONDA 1F44-A258
└─sdc3
sdd
├─sdd1 vfat FAT32 31B0-F7E0
├─sdd2 ext4 1.0 b73809a9-a175-4306-9ce6-d5e1974cec17
└─sdd3 btrfs fedora e8498c78-557b-4f86-9340-f029a764f369 108.5G 3% /run/media/liveuser/fedora
zram0 [SWAP]
I am new to linux. I guess sdc is the live system and sdd is the installed fedora.
Please do not wonder that sdc shows live system version 41. I just wrote live system 41 to usb stick because I read that I could try to install version 41 to the second usb stick and then upgrade to 42. Or is it possible to make sdd bootable?
Vendors differ wildly in how booting from USB devices works. Some of my systems have a separate “boot from USB” entry that has to selected at boot time from the UEFI menus.
My laptop does not auto-boot from USB, I have to go on the “bios settings” and select the OS I want to boot from a menu list, each time.
I suspect this is the list you would get from running efibootmgr in a terminal. I’m not sure if it is installed in the Live USB – if not you can install it (but it won’t survive a reboot). After Windows updates corrupt the Fedora entry I’ve been able to recreate it with efibootmgr by copying another entry and changing the PARTUID (use lsblk -o +PARTUUID /dev/sdd. The following is for an old iMac that is booting Fedora 42 from /dev/sdc (USB SSD) and has old macOS and Fedora versions on the internal drive.
% lsblk -o +PARTUUID /dev/sdc
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS PARTUUID
sdc 8:32 0 119.2G 0 disk
├─sdc1 8:33 0 600M 0 part /boot/efi 4c32c1f9-2a80-445f-aa6d-e061b5104957
├─sdc2 8:34 0 1G 0 part /boot 5f02ee43-0d3a-4ed2-af17-e066ef528903
└─sdc3 8:35 0 117.7G 0 part /home 2e33db9b-c0ec-40ec-8c42-7faf722d5e83
/
(base) [gnw3]~% efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 5 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0003,0002,0000,0080
Boot0000* Fedora USB HD(1,GPT,2f3f86c5-2cae-45d5-80cc-238f69d2eb5b,0x28,0x64000)/\EFI\fedora\grub.efi
Boot0001* Fedora HD(1,GPT,4c32c1f9-2a80-445f-aa6d-e061b5104957,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi
Boot0002* Fedora HD(1,GPT,c68cffea-b8fd-489f-ac31-0f1aa5ce958c,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi
Boot0003* Fedora HD(1,GPT,e86a53a0-d796-4a0d-94de-e1f7d44a3379,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi
Boot0080* Mac OS X PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1f,0x2)/Sata(0,0,0)/HD(2,GPT,873170ad-c30a-4e29-adce-0f7044f3c4fb,0x64800,0x2e90ec18)/VenMedia(be74fcf7-0b7c-49f3-9147-01f4042e6842,977119db53f1e646af6463a85524246a)/\8FF21A9A-7F4A-4A12-88CA-250AE7E3E4D1\System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
BootFFFF* PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1f,0x2)/Sata(0,0,0)/HD(2,GPT,873170ad-c30a-4e29-adce-0f7044f3c4fb,0x64800,0x2e90ec18)/VenMedia(be74fcf7-0b7c-49f3-9147-01f4042e6842,977119db53f1e646af6463a85524246a)/\8FF21A9A-7F4A-4A12-88CA-250AE7E3E4D1\System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
1 Like
Thank you for your detailed answer.
I am really new to this. So I don’t know how to create the boot partions on the sdd.
As far as I can see, I don’t have a source to copy from on an other disk.
The installer should have creates the required partitions, but, given the diversity of how UEFI/BIOS manages booting USB drives, can’t be expected to configure UEFI/BIOS for USB drives. I’m hoping that you only need to correct errors or add an entry using efibootmgr or UEFI/BIOS options.
Is it possible to create the missing entries now and could you please tell me how?
Or is there no chance to make the usb stick bootable?
Just use Ventoy, no hassle required 
I understand ventoy as tool to make ISO bootable. But I already have fedora Workstation 42 installed on the usb stick but is not booting.
Can I make the USB stick bootable afterwards and if so, how?
Now I have used fedora Workstation 41 live system and used the Installer in the live system to install fedora on the other usb stick. The result is the same. I still can not boot the second stick. In the installtion I used “storage configuration” “custom” and in the partioning screen I clicked “create them automatically”.
Can I make the usb stick bootable with the existing installation? And can you tell me how? I am new to linux.
This would best be answered by someone using the same model, but you should try to get the output from efibootmgr and also check the UEFI/BIOS menus for options to boot USB drives.
Start by reading Use Linux efibootmgr Command to Manage UEFI Boot Menu.
We need to see the output from running efibootmgr in a terminal (post the output as pre-formatted text using the </> button from the top line of the text entry panel). You should be able to boot a USB Installer, log onto the GUI, and use a terminal. Just enter efibootmgr. I’m not sure it is included in the USB installer. If not, just do sudo dnf install efibootmgr (note: it will not survive a reboot in the Live environment).
If I may extend the instructions:
Please plug-in both USB sticks, reset the laptop and boot the live system. Open a terminal and enter the commands:
efibootmgr
lsblk -o +PARTUUID
Looking at this, I would think this article is more confusing than usable. For example, on Fedora you don’t run grub-install or grub2-install on UEFI systems.
An example of creating a UEFI boot entry is
efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 --loader /EFI/fedora/shimx64.efi --label Fedora
Replace /dev/nvme0n1 by your actual disk device name, for example /dev/sda or /dev/sdb. The --part is the partition number of the Efi System Partition (ESP), and is often 1.
But first, run efibootmgr to check what entries have already been created.
this is the output for efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0005,0004,0001,2001,2002,2003
Boot0000* Fedora HD(1,GPT,202cdaae-636f-4f82-9b07-fa093c669cea,0xffff,0x11ffee)/\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi
Boot0001* Linpus lite HD(2,GPT,edacc107-c81d-406a-bca5-f5d9b433a478,0x468b08,0xf000)/\EFI\Boot\grubx64.efiRC
Boot0002* Unknown Device: HD(2,GPT,edacc107-c81d-406a-bca5-f5d9b433a478,0x468b08,0xf000)/\EFI\fedora\shim.efiRC
Boot0003* Unknown Device: HD(1,GPT,202cdaae-636f-4f82-9b07-fa093c669cea,0xffff,0x11ffee)/\EFI\fedora\shim.efiRC
Boot0004* Windows Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,237130b4-83a4-4519-b4d1-75ebe4232f1f,0x800,0x32000)/\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d00000000000100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0005* Fedora HD(2,GPT,edacc107-c81d-406a-bca5-f5d9b433a478,0x468b08,0xf000)/\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi
Boot2001* EFI USB Device RC
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM RC
Boot2003* EFI Network RC
and this for lsblk -o +PARTUUID
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS PARTUUID
loop0 7:0 0 2G 1 loop /run/rootfsbase
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
└─sda1 8:1 0 931.5G 0 part 79c10fe0-fe8f-4e1e-ac95-cc311d217d08
sdb 8:16 0 238.5G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 100M 0 part 237130b4-83a4-4519-b4d1-75ebe4232f1f
├─sdb2 8:18 0 16M 0 part 408210ec-c30c-4522-bf8b-9826900ff6b3
├─sdb3 8:19 0 237.9G 0 part 4dedbb3b-bf27-40f5-a839-5d94be6ba7bd
└─sdb4 8:20 0 500M 0 part 18b16928-cb13-47cf-9479-384a2a5e13bb
sdc 8:32 0 115.1G 0 disk
├─sdc1 8:33 0 576M 0 part 202cdaae-636f-4f82-9b07-fa093c669cea
├─sdc2 8:34 0 1G 0 part bc9efb60-6a63-499a-b826-0f53d647db1b
└─sdc3 8:35 0 113.4G 0 part /run/media/liveuser/fedora 2f01fade-0f36-4d6f-bfe6-d9d4726d4bde
sdd 8:48 1 29.3G 0 disk
├─sdd1 8:49 1 2.2G 0 part /run/initramfs/live edacc107-c81d-406a-bca6-f5d9b433a478
└─sdd2 8:50 1 30M 0 part edacc107-c81d-406a-bca5-f5d9b433a478
zram0 251:0 0 7.6G 0 disk [SWAP]
I guess Boot0000 is the Fedora which I want to boot. And the disk is sdc. Is it possible to make it boot? Do you have any ideas?
Correct. And Boot0003 is a duplicate entry. Boot0005 and Boot0002 will boot the live system. Due to a mistake in mastering the Live ISO at Fedora, booting this image creates these boot entries by mistake.
By entering the UEFI configuration, there is usually a way to select which entry to boot next. How to do this depends on the hardware, but usually involves hitting one of the keys ESC F2 F12 DEL or something else.
When I enter the boot menu by hitting f12 on laptop startup, then only the windows bootmanager and the linpus lite appears in the boot menu. The fedora entry is not shown.