pbatard
commented
6 years ago I could not create an "extended" Volume Tag
That's because the USB will use a FAT32 file system (as opposed to an ISO9660 file system), which severely limits how a drive can be labelled. As opposed to ISO9660, a FAT label can only be 11 characters long and uppercase. That's a limitation of the file system, and there is nothing Rufus can do about that.
but maybe there is a way that rufus can "understand" when that option is not "available" (for not-tech-savvy users)
From my experience, non tech-savvy users are very confused by limitations that only occur in one file system (as far as they are concerned, all file systems "can" do the same thing, and I already have all the trouble in the world making them understand that conversion from bootable ISO to bootable USB is way more tricky than they imagine), so, unless these limitations have a direct effect on their ability to boot the device (which is why Rufus has to present users with terms like BIOS, UEFI and CSM, which already cause a lot of gried to non tech-savy users), Rufus will do its best not to involve the user with what is going on behind the scenes.
Furthermore, even as the file system itself has label limitations, in Windows, there is a mechanism (extended labels in autorun.inf) to make it look like longer, mixed case labels are possible. So Rufus tries to use that by default, to keep users mostly oblivious to something they should not concern themselves with. But of course, the "extended" label thing only works when using Windows.
Oh, and before you mention that some distros do use the volume label to locate the installation drive, bear in mind that, as a result of the FAT label limitation, Rufus does look for config files that reference a volume label, and edit them behind the scenes so that they reference the FAT label. Again, this is a process that is designed to be transparent to the user, as we really want to hide the complexity that goes into the ISO → USB conversion process so as not to confuse regular users. From what I can see from the log above (and from what I remember), this volume label conversion is not needed for Ubuntu.
So, in summary:
- You will never be able to use an extended volume label on FAT32. If you want to, then you will need to complain to Microsoft themselves so that they create a new version of the FAT file system and wait until everyone adopts that new version, as this is a pure file system limitation.
- If you are accessing your drive from Windows, the
autorun.inftrick used by Rufus should make it look as if you can actually use extended labels. Won't work in Linux though. - If you really, really want your extended label, you can try using NTFS instead of FAT32 for your file system. NTFS does have some label limitations, but they are not as drastic as the FAT32 ones, and, from what I could see (when testing Debian and Arch), modern Linux distros may also support booting from NTFS. Note however that the use of NTFS is completely unsupported as far as I'm concerned, so if that doesn't work, you're 100% on your own.
As I believe I answered your question, I will close this issue.
PS: When you see multiple instances of write errors in your log, as you do, you REALLY want to run a bad blocks check against your drive (which can be done without using an ISO), as it really looks to me like your drive is becoming defective and is bound to cause you trouble.
stdedos
lock[bot]
Checklist
Logbutton in Rufus and copy/pasted the log into the line that says<FULL LOG>below.Rufus version: x.y.z- I have NOT removed any part of it.Additionally (if applicable):
#button (at the bottom of the Rufus interface), to compute the MD5, SHA1 and SHA256 checksums, which are therefore present in the log I copied. I confirmed, by performing an internet search, that these values match the ones from the official image.Issue description
For the following image
ubuntu-16.04.3-desktop-i386.isoI could not create an "extended" Volume Tag.Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS i386is not accepted (passing asUBUNTU 16_0), plainUbuntuworks (asUBUNTU)."I don't care to fix this so as it is working in the end", but maybe there is a way that rufus can "understand" when that option is not "available" (for not-tech-savvy users)
I would like to run
but, I have now created my image, which I don't want to redo, unless 100% necessary (since creating "working" bootable USBs has always been a "real" challenge for me
Log