failed to boot from USB disk with error: gfxboot.c32: not a COM32R Image boot:

[shijing]

[Impact]
It is common to use usb-creator to write new USB devices with a version of Ubuntu which will then be used to upgrade or proceed with a new installation. In some cases, when using a specific match of versions of Ubuntu with an incompatible syslinux, the resulting USB device will show errors and not display the splash menu to use to select between Live and Install mode, or enabling extra options.
This patch fixes this incompatibility by always using the syslinux version provided on the ISO image being used to write the USB device; which would always be compatible with the system to install if it's available.

[Test Case]
1- Use usb-creator to write a new USB device with a version of Ubuntu with a different syslinux:
   Precise: use 13.10 or later.
   Trusty: use 13.04 or earlier.
   Utopic: use 13.04 or earlier.
2- Boot on the USB, verify that the splash screen is shown and that you can get into a live session.

[Regression Potential]
This may yield cases in which the written USB device may be unbootable, due to having written syslinux data to the boot sector incompatible with the version of Ubuntu to be installed. USB devices may also be bootable but not show the splash screen and menu.

--

系 统：UK 14.10 6-2 dailybuild 32 位
机器型号：ｄｅｌｌ　 Ｉｎｓｐｉｒｏｎ－５６０ｓ
现 象：用Ｕ盘制作启动盘，不能启动，提示信息：ｇfxboot.c32: not a COM32R Image boot: 见附件图片

this bug is similar with Bug #645818, but we cannot confirm whether they are the same.

WORKAROUND: One may enter the live environment by typing the following and hitting enter:
live

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1325801

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Also affects Kubuntu 64-bit

[jiaowen520li (jiaowen520li)]

Ubuntu 14.04 Daily-0610.1 & UK 14.04 Daily-0610，U盘制作的系统启动盘问题依然存在，但在“boot:”后输入“live”可进入live模式，通过live模式可进行系统安装(之前的版本点击“安装”无效)。

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

An update on the Kubuntu daily image - after typing live at the command prompt I do now enter a live session and am given the option of trying Kubuntu or installing Kubuntu.

[Walter Lapchynski (wxl)]

i would recommend first checking the md5 of the iso AND the usb against the published md5. if it fails, it is an error in either the download process (iso fails) or the usb creation (usb fails). try a re-download or a re-creation, depending on what's appropriate.

assuming that's no problem, i'd try it out on a different machine (or perhaps a different virtual machine).

failing that, and assuming everyone is using usb-creator-kde, it should be checked against usb-creator-gtk. i doubt there's any difference, but maybe. if that fails, too, then the next step would be to try unetbootin and dd.

if there's a consistent problem on all machines and all methods of creating the usb, i would file the bug against syslinux, since that suggests the issue is with the iso itself. i would do the same if it is specific to a particular machine, although we might want to dig deeper to find out what specifically is the issue (perhaps some driver or something).

if one usb creation method works where others don't, the bug should be filed against the ones that don't work. i have found in general the unetbootin provides pretty good results and dd never fails.

hope that helps!

[Walter Lapchynski (wxl)]

oh and if the problem is the usb creation method, and especially if it's usb-creator-kde, i wouldn't call it a bug against the lubuntu in the iso qa tracker for future tests.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

I've just tried to create USB images on two Kubuntu 14.04 PCs using USB Creator and the problem persists. This is using Lubuntu image 20140623.1 (64-bit).

I've also tried using UNetBootin and I find that I boot into a live desktop without any trouble.

The problem is clearly with the creation method and not the downloaded images themselves. I thought I was confirming someone else's bug report with findings of my own and I apologise for not using an alternative method. Kubuntu's USB Creator has always been reliable in the past so I had no reason to suspect that application has suddenly started to consistently fail.

I suggest that the focus of this bug report turns to the method of creating images rather than trying to find fault with the images themselves.

UNetBootin will be used for future testing. Thanks for your interjection Walter.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Not reproducible in Vbox or CDROM

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

@ Paul White
Hi, I just tried with unetbooting reproducing this same issue.
I reassign to Casper and Ubuntu CD Images

[Søren Holm (sgh)]

Ok .... basically the quick fix for me was to copy /usr/lib/syslinux/gfxboot.c32 onto the USB-disk to match the version of syslinux mbr actually installed on the USB-flash.

I guess a plausible fix would be to just copy over all syslinux files and not used those present in the iso-file from the beginning.

[Daryl Hughes (zorw2016)]

This issue also continues in Unetbootin as default boot download Ubuntu 14.04

[Simplehuman (simplehuman)]

I'm also affected in Utopic and Trusty on different configurations, using usb-creator-gtk. With Trusty and Utopic (daily, and Unity-Next daily images). Images are not corrupt.
Using Unetbootin in Utopic shows the same result

[Simplehuman (simplehuman)]

This issue seems to be random. After formatting\creating USB disk by usb-creator-gtk for over 7 times - it is working.

Workaround in comment #11 didn't work for me.

[Alex_ander (ks-alexandr)]

confirm this problem

[kyt (952456204-6)]

系 统：UK 14.10 beta1 64bit
机器型号：Lenovo YangtianM6600N
现 象：用Ｕ盘制作启动盘，不能启动，提示信息：ｇfxboot.c32: not a COM32R Image boot，输入live也不可进入live模式

[Elfy (elfy)]

seeing the same xubuntu beta

[Arthur Schiwon (blizzz)]

Same issue with Kubuntu 14.10 Beta 1 (Plasma 5 Preview), created using usb-creator-kde. I checked the MD5, which is correct.

[Arthur Schiwon (blizzz)]

Workaround as suggested in #11 works for me by copying the file from Kubuntu 14.04 to the right spot on the USB disk.

[shijing (shijing)]

I created using usb-creator-gtk for the latest iso 2014/9/3(ubuntu & ubuntukylin ), still have the problem.

[shijing (shijing)]

I've just tried to create USB images on ubuntukylin 14.10 PCs using dd and without any trouble. This is using ubuntukyin image 20140911 (64-bit).

 Using Unetbootin the problem persists.

[Joey Zheng (jzheng)]

@shijing and @jackyu, I have tried unetbootin with image 20140914. There is no any problems. Can you have a try again? And also can you try again with usb-creator again?

[Joey Zheng (jzheng)]

BTW, the image I am using is Ubuntu utopic 64bits but not Ubuntu Kylin. Here is the link http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-desktop-next/daily-live/20140914/utopic-desktop-amd64.iso.

[shijing (shijing)]

@joey
I created using usb-creator-gtk for the latest iso 2014/9/14(ubuntu & ubuntukylin 32&64bit ), very strange.

I installed ubuntu& UK 64bit on lattop HP-Pavilion-Sleekbook-15-PC , it works.
but on the other mache for example thinkpad-201i, dell inspiron, lenovo,it did not work.

for ubuntu & uk 32bit no matter what machine ,it did not work . it wierd.

I also used unetbootin for latest iso 2014/9/14 ubuntukylin 64bit , only works on HP-Pavilion-Sleekbook-15-PC, other machine
did not work.

[Joey Zheng (jzheng)]

@shijin
Thank you. The information is very helpful and useful!
Can you help have a further check in BIOS if the machine are in UEFI mode or legacy mode? And run "find ./ -name gfxboot.c32 -exec md5sum {} \;" on your usb stick, past the result here. Thanks in advance.

[shijing (shijing)]

@Joey, I tested dailybuild iso (915), using usb-creator-gtk on dailybuild system, no matter what machine (ubuntukylin 32bit or 64bit) it works.
but using usb-creator-gtk on 1404.1 system, part of machines was not.

I contrast the version of usb-creator-gtk on the two systems.
1410 usb-creator-gtk version is 0.2.62, 1404.1 the application version is 0.2.56.2
It is perhaps for this reason。

[Joey Zheng (jzheng)]

@shijing, Good to know that you figure out a workable way. We may be able to close this issue, but before we can close this issue, can you still help compare the two USB sticks and show the differences? My assumption is that something else is root cause maybe.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

I performed three tests this AM. In all cases I used my stable fully updated Trusty to create the live USB's and the versions of 'usb-creator-gtk' and 'unetbootin' used are the standard versions available in the Trusty repos. Tests were performed on bare metal:

Intel Atom CPU 230 @ 1.60GHz
Intel 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
Intel N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
2GB DDR2 RAM

In test #1 I created an Ubuntu Utopic 20140922 i386 live USB using 'usb-creator-gtk' (aka: Startup Disk Creator) and attempting to boot the live USB produced this bug.

In test #2 I created an Ubuntu Utopic 20140922 i386 live USB using 'unetbootin' and the live USB boots as it should.

In test #3 I created an Ubuntu 14.04.1 live USB using 'usb-creator-gtk' (aka: Startup Disk Creator) and the live USB boots as it should.

Hope that's helpful. It seems that whatever is borked in the Utopic iso's does not effect UNetbootin but does effect Startup Disk Creator.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

I performed another test, this time using the Ubuntu Utopic version of 'usb-creator-gtk' to create an Ubuntu Utopic 20140922 i386 live USB and it boots as it should. So right now I'd have to say, "Utopic live USB's created with the Trusty version of 'usb-creator-gtk' fail to boot and display the text reported in this bug".

I'll try and test using the Precise version of 'usb-creator-gtk' as soon as possible.

I pulled up the Utopic changelog for 'usb-creator-gtk' which I'll include but it's too technical for me.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

An Ubuntu Utopic 20140922 i386 live USB created in Precise using Startup Disk Creator also fails with the error reported here, so I'd have to amend that last statement to say, "Utopic live USB's created with the Trusty or Precise versions of 'usb-creator-gtk' fail to boot and display the error reported in this bug".

Sort of leaves me wondering if we need to fix the image or if we should do separate SRU's for both Precise and Trusty 'usb-creator-gtk'???

It would be nice if someone could try creating a Utopic live USB in Windows (probably both Win 7 and Win 8) following the official USB creation methods linked to on the main download page. I have no Windows machines to test with.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

I did not realize that we were now recommending UUI for creating live USB's in all versions of Windows but that is the case:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

So I dusted off a seldom used Win XP and created an Ubuntu Utopic 20140922 i386 live USB using UUI and it boots fine.

So I'm fairly confident saying, "Utopic live USB's created with the Trusty or Precise versions of 'usb-creator-gtk' fail to boot and display the error reported in this bug".

It would be nice if someone could verify that though.

[Joey Zheng (jzheng)]

@Erick, Thank you very much for the information. Those are really very useful and helpful. Can you please download http://launchpadlibrarian.net/183886438/usb-creator-common_0.2.62_amd64.deb and http://launchpadlibrarian.net/183886439/usb-creator-gtk_0.2.62_amd64.deb, and use "sudo dpk -i" to force install them on your 14.04 system to see if this issue still exists or not?

[Joey Zheng (jzheng)]

Those package are the ones from utopic. As far as I tried, I still can reproduce this issue. So just from my point of view, this is not just an issue from "usb-creator".

[shijing (shijing)]

@Joey
I did live usb using usb-creator-gtk ( 9.23 Ubuntukylin i386 dailybuild iso ) In two different systems（1404.1 and 1410）,
the usb-creator-gtk version in 1404.1 is 0.2.56.2 and in 1410 is 0.2.62.
I used "diff -Nur dir1 dir2 >diff.patch " order output diff file in attachment.
at the same time I paste the picture of two usb dirs.

[Ma Jun (maclin.jun)]

On the one created on 1404.1 the file ldlinux.c32 gets lost. Does it show the relation with UEFI config?

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

@Joey, sorry for the delay. You're right, just upgrading 'usb-creator*' does NOT do the trick. I even tried changing the Trusty sources to Utopic, then updating the cache, then installing 'usb-creator-gtk' in case some other dependency needed upgrading. It was still not good.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "diff.patch" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

[Joey Zheng (jzheng)]

remove tag "patch" as "diff.patch" is not a patch for fixing this issue, but it is for us to help see what the root cause is.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

It may be helpful to add the log file for usb-creator, which is located in ~/.cache/usb-creator.log, to the the bug report to help track down if it is a problem with usb-creator.

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

The poor Startup Disk Creator has been suffering from many bugs for many years now, and in spite of great efforts, our developers have not managed to make it work properly. There are still several bugs and strange features.

At the Ubuntu Forums we started a discussion about replacing the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator with another tool. See these links,

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2289225

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2291946

I suggest that we look for a tool that is

- reliable

- easy to use for a beginner

- easy to maintain, for example more likely to work without tweaks (or with few and simple tweaks) between Ubuntu versions.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

How about instead we just fix the bugs, given that it mostly works for people? We however can't do this unless the individual bugs are reported, and it helps a lot like people like Yu Ning provide patches too when it's very specific corner cases. There is no other tool which satisfies all of the "reliable", "easy to use" and "easy to maintain" requirements -- it's not like usb-creator is very hard to maintain, we're just dealing here with corner cases.

This particular issue here we've been at for a while, and this is simply because while I'm happy to test things and to sponsor things, usb-creator isn't the only thing I look after. Given that this isn't my top priority, I was relying on Yu Ning to complete the fixes. I did not see there was a new branch. Thankfully, we have Timo who also chimed in to help with the SRU.

As it's been mentioned previously, there are other issues which may affect behavior and make a SRU fail verification, something that we might not have thought of -- the answer to this is to iterate over these fixes, just as we've been doing now.

Can we please summarize the current state of this?

- Verification fails on Trusty and Precise.
- Does it work properly on Vivid? Presumably not because of the requirement for the architecture to be the same?

Given the same issue, it will also need to be fixed in Wily before the fix can make it to the stable releases. I'm still happy to review and sponsor proposed fixes.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Yu Ning, please confirm that this works properly as it is in Wily and Vivid -- it seems to me like it mostly should, and we can deal with other issues in separate bugs so as not to confuse the matters worse than it already is.

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

'Opinion' from the Ubuntu Forums:

S-D-C is borked - it's useless to create live USB's of either older or newer versions of Ubuntu than the version you're running S-D-C on. And the proposed fix that made it into Vivid and got backported into Utopic resulted in S-D-C being able to only produce live USB's of the same architecture.

My comment:

This is not only a corner case, it is a severe bug. But the main problem is not a few single bugs, red or grey (at the iso qa tracker), but the never ending stream of bugs that is affecting this poor piece of software.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

sudodus:
That's simply false. Sure, there are some gotchas, but it largely works modulo this bug report. You're not answering the question I asked.

As you may have noticed I've reset the statuses for this bug to something I think is closer to reality, and we'll close things as appropriate. We also have to consider architecture matching issues separately -- those are in bug 1446646.

Architecture matching is unfortunately an unavoidable issue. Either we run the syslinux from the system, and then you'll get the COM32R error when you boot an >utopic image written from a Trusty system, or we run the syslinux from the image about to be written and we have to match architecture or pick in-between and run the system syslinux if an i386 system tries to write a 64-bit image, and the image syslinux otherwise. Some careful application of syslinux parameters or copying additional files on the image may help too.

So I got these results from Marc Deslauriers:
- Vivid amd64 can write images from Precise and up, amd64 or i386.

I think we also should strongly suggest that users run usb-creator on a recent enough system if they don't want this bug here to happen. I'll see how release notes can be updated accordingly.

In light of all this, this bug should be Triaged/Critical for all supported releases -- we'll do another upload to -proposed to re-do the changes from Yu Ning (which appear to be fine), along with a fix for bug 1446646.

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

"That's simply false. Sure, there are some gotchas, but it largely works modulo this bug report. You're not answering the question I asked."

Well, there are shades of grey between white and black. Sure, there are several cases, where it works well to use the Startup Disk Creator ;-)

I will try to answer your questions, but it will take some time (to test what works and what does not work in and between the currently supported versions of Ubuntu). Let us hope that the SDC is much better now than we think at the Ubuntu Forums :-)

"Architecture matching is unfortunately an unavoidable issue."

Yes, for the SDC.

But it does not create any problems at all for tools which use cloning with dd or cp under the hood (like mkusb and Disks). And I think the other tools in our poll can manage this issue. At least Unetbootin from the developer's PPA can manage it, and I recently added 'making persistent live drives' to mkusb, and I have tested that it works for all the current Ubuntu versions, flavours and also several re-spins based on Ubuntu.

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

@ Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre

Does the attached spreadsheet answer some of your questions?

And I have filed a bug report about old versions of Unetbootin in the Ubuntu repos:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unetbootin/+bug/1497604

If I missed a question, please ask again :-)

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

@ Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre

"How about instead we just fix the bugs, given that it mostly works for people?"

It is very obvious that this is what you want. Maybe the suggestion from Marc Deslauriers at Canonical is the way to go. (You have probably read his post in the ubuntu-quality mailing list)

"... I believe a simple way to eliminate every one of these issues at once in UDC would be to get rid of the persistence functionality. All of the currently supported images can now be written directly to a usb device as-is ... Perhaps in the future persistence
could be added back by creating a partition in the free space left over after copying over the image."

This is pretty much what I do with mkusb. I would be very happy with such things under the hood of the SDC. It will be easy for you to implement cloning. If you want to implement my method to make persistent live drives, I am willing to help and explain.

[jiaowen520li (jiaowen520li)]

This bug still exists in UK15.10-0924.1-Daily-amd64&i386.

[Christopher M. Penalver (penalvch)]

jiaowen520li, please do not adjust the Status. For more on this, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status .

[jiaowen520li (jiaowen520li)]

This bug still exists in UK15.10-1019-Daily-amd64&i386.

[Коренберг Марк (socketpair)]

Yes, isolinux does not work. Moreover when booting it don't even ry to read isolinux.cfg complainig with error shown earlier.

I'm use my own scripts to make bootable WinPE images. And after upgrade ir FAIL.

just try to create bootable fat32 image without any files. Syslinux will be installed succeesfully (like in previous ubuntu) but unlike previous ubuntu it will show boot error innstead of complainig about missing syslinux.cfg

Also, syslinux-legacy does not work too, it shows boot menu, but with generate invalid opcode when tried to boot os.

[Brian Scott Carpenter (brianscottcarpenter)]

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and used usb-disk creator to install ubuntu mate on a 8gig pny usb drive, I would like this to be fixed as I am going to create a lot of usb boot drives

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

You can use another tool until the usb disk creator is debugged and works again. See this link and links from it,

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

[Alexander Bejarano (alexbh)]

I tried with usb-creator-gtk version 0.3.2 and it is fixed.

[lotuspsychje (lotuspsychje)]

Got same errors on 16.04 daily & beta2

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

@lotuspsychje,

If you run the Startup Disk Creator in a 16.04 host system, you are running a new version, that should not be affected by this bug, whatever version of the target system you select.

But if you run the Startup Disk Creator in a previous version of Ubuntu (host), and try to install a newer version of Ubuntu (target), for example 16.04, you can still be affected, because you are running an old version of the Startup Disk Creator.

-o-

If my description is wrong, please describe with as much detail as possible how to reproduce the bug in 16.04!

[Jaap Woldringh (jjhwoldringh)]

I can confirm that I experience this same problem, after trying to boot Ubuntu 16.04 from a usb-stick, which I created on an Ubuntu 14.04 system. Pressing TAB and selecting live from the menu doesn't help.

So I think that sudodus is right.

I guess I have to wait for an update for my 14.04 system, before I can use it to create a working usb stick.

Installing from a DVD doesn't help either.

The newest usb-creator-gtk in the repositories is 0.2.56.3, which was probably used when creating my usb stick.

[Jaap Woldringh (jjhwoldringh)]

I have to withdraw my comment in my previous post, that installing from a DVD doesn't help either.
I think that this is another bug, not related to the one we are talking about here.
On another computer the computer boots nicely from this DVD.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

The version of usb-creator in the proposed pocket of Precise that was purported to fix this bug report has been removed because the bugs that were to be fixed by the upload were not verified in a timely (105 days) fashion.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

The version of usb-creator in the proposed pocket of Trusty that was purported to fix this bug report has been removed because the bugs that were to be fixed by the upload were not verified in a timely (105 days) fashion.

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

In order to make usb-creator work not only in UEFI mode but also in BIOS mode, please replace the version in precise, trusty and wily with the *cloning* version in xenial, version 0.3.2.

That version, usb-creator version 0.3.2, should be tested enough by now, to be reliable.

[Manuel López-Ibáñez (manuellopezibanez)]

This also affects Kubuntu 16.04 64bits when creating a bootable USB from Kubuntu 14.04.

[Manuel López-Ibáñez (manuellopezibanez)]

I meant to say: This also affects Kubuntu Xenial 16.04 64bits when creating a bootable USB from Kubuntu 14.04 32bits.

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

Please take the opportunity to SRU usb-creator-gtk: to replace the current version in Trusty and Wily with version 0.3.2 (which comes with Xenial and should be tested enough to be considered stable now).

I think it is a good time to do it now, well in time before making the 'final point release' 14.04.5 LTS and before the Wily end of life, when we can expect many people to try to install the new version(s).

The problems with the current version in Trusty and Wily affect booting in BIOS mode, where syslinux is used.

[Nathan Dorfman (ndorf)]

I had this problem with the 16.04.1 desktop amd64 stick I made on my 14.04 system, but I just had to enter "live" at the prompt to boot into the live desktop and install as normal.

After doing that and booting into the new live system, it was also easy to "fix" the USB stick permanently with the new syslinux available therein, as detailed here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/486602/ubuntu-14-04-lts-live-usb-boot-error-gfxboot-c32not-a-valid-com32r-image/746412#746412

As for the newer version of creator included with 16.04, its behavior was rather unexpected. Instead of copying files into the existing filesystem and installing syslinux nondestructively, it seems to simply write a raw binary image over the first 1.5GB of the disk. It warned me and all, but I didn't see any other option.

It didn't have the COM32R error at boot, but I personally feel the destructive copying is much worse. Did I mess something up, or is that the intended behavior now?

[sudodus (nio-wiklund)]

Yes ndorf, this is the intended behaviour now. The Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator is *cloning* the iso file, which is a much more robust process that the previous method.

The easiest method to restore the pendrive to a 'normal' data drive (for storage and transfer of files) is to create a new partition table and file system, for example with mkusb according to the following link

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/wipe

or with gparted according to the following link

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Win32DiskImager/iso2usb/FormatHelp

[Neal McBurnett (nealmcb)]

I just encountered the same issue after creating a Bionic Beaver 18.04 USB boot disk, using usb-creator-kde in Trusty. It is a little hard to understand the current status from this long bug page, but is this something that would seem to start cropping up more as people do the 14.04-to-18.04 LTS updates.
It is an ugly enough experience that some people may just bail in disgust.
Can it be fixed?