USB Stick Install Solved

I can confirm this is still an issue in v9.503-4.1. A friend of mine setting up his home firewall ran into this issue.

Just thought I'd make a suggestion to those who frequently install from USB. Here are two products that emulate USB optical drives. Then both mount .ISOs from internal storage and present them to the OS a optical media loaded into the emulated drives. As they emulate optical drives they are OS independent, with no software needed on the system you are booting. They are of course useful beyond installing UTM, and are a very handy tool for anyone who works on computers.

isostick   http://isostick.com

This is the first piece of kit I purchased that emulates optical drives, and have used it since 2012. It has a microSD slot onto which you store .ISOs. At boot it loads a small program that lets you choose which ISO to load. Unfortunately it's USB 2.0, but I still use it when I come across USB 2.0 hardware that doesn't play nice with USB 3.0, which the next solution offers.

Zalman ZM-VE350    http://www.zalman.com/na/contents/products/view.html?no=20

This is a bus-powered 2.5" USB 3.0 drive to SATA III enclosure that can emulate an optical drive. It has three modes: optical only, hard drive only, and simultaneous optical and hard drive. The enclosure has an LCD display that displays the mode of the enclosure, if the hard drive is write protected. The display is also used in conjunction with a small rocker/jog switch to interact with the enclosure: Set mode, select ISO to mount, and a couple of others. While I haven't used this specific device, I use it's predecessor, the ZM-VE300, which is SATA II. I put an SSD I had laying around into it, and it is very fast. The only issue I've had with it is with a couple of USB 2.0 systems that didn't seem to like it, which I attributed to it being USB 3.0. In such cases I fall back to the isostick above.

I hope you guys find these interesting/useful.

Hello from October 2018! This is still an issue.. the fact that this is still an issue is unsettling since I haven't even had the opportunity to use the software yet. 

CDs are dying if not already dead. Why is a USB installation broken like this for years? Not a good first impression to someone with the ability to recommend this software in a corporate environment. 

Add your vote to this feature suggestion.

https://ideas.sophos.com/forums/17359-sg-utm/suggestions/10624644-create-bootable-usb-version-of-utm-software-instal

Might take a few more votes to get it noticed however!

Still an issue, but thank you for the post. Worked exactly as you wrote it other than my USB mounted in a different spot. Wouldn't hurt to update the post to suggest looking for where your USB mounted first by running `dmesg | grep sdb` and looking for your USB in case it's not sdb2.

Hello,

for all windows users I can confirm that this method doesn't work 1:1

To help all other users / admins / tech / nerds who try to install from USB the following will help:

1. DO NOT USE Universal USB Installer" it will scramble up filenames

2. USE Rufus https://rufus.ie/

3. Create Stick by hitting "SELECT" or in german "auswählen" in Rufus

4. After creating the freakin stick of hell put it into your hardware of choice. (for me it was a SG135Wrev1)

5. make shure to boot from stick in BIOS (hit DEL or ESC to enter BIOS on this appliance)

6. when "warning: blah blah blah" appears on screen. your on the right way. Press enter to boot the installer

7. you CAN NOT abort the freakin START Countdown. Just let it happen.

8. be prepared to switch to console by hitting ALT + F2 AFTER the Hardware-Detection displays "detecting Storage Hardware"

9. be quick and enter the following on bash:

bash1234# mount /dev/sdb1 /install

(if this doesn't work or an error is displayed, read the other comments in this post to get the right partition of your USB stick(while crying like a baby like i did)

10. Switch back to Installer with ALT + F1

11. wait for the installer to complete and reboot

So far at UTM 9.603-1.iso

Cheers Chris

BAlfson, can you make the one sticky to the thread ? would have helped me to save like ~2 hours. Cheers 

thefred said:

I have been reading the forums here for awhile, and decided to figure it out.

Steps:
[LIST=1]

• Download and install 'Universal USB Installer' - Universal USB Installer – Easy as 1 2 3 | USB Pen Drive Linux
• Download Astaro ASG v8 iso - ftp://ftp.astaro.de/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v8/software_appliance/iso/
•  Open the Universal USB Installer,  for Step 1: Select the last option, 'Try Unlisted Linux ISO (New Syslinux)'
•  For Step 2: Select the Astaro ISO
•  For Step 3: Select your USB Key. I used a 512MB U3 Kingston
•  Click 'Create', Eject the USB Key and Boot your soon-to-be Astaro Box
•  Press  to Start the Installer 
•  On the First Screen, hit Alt-F2.
•  Follow this sequence:
  [LIST=1]
•  bash-3.2# mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt
•  bash-3.2# cd /install
•  bash-3.2# mkdir install
•  bash-3.2# cd install
•  bash-3.2# cp -a /mnt/install/* .
•  Hit Alt-F1

[/LIST]

•  Finish the Installation, Reboot and Enjoy.

[/LIST]

Please post questions, experiences etc. This has worked for me, but it's my first experience with Astaro, so I thought I'd share in hopes others can benefit.

Cheers,
-fred

 

Hi Community,

I just installed the image ssi-9.605-1.1.iso and the "workaround" is still working fine. Instead of using the "Universal USB Installer" I used "Rufus" to create the bootable USB Stick. And on my hardware appliance it was sdb1 instead of sdb2. But as already mentioned in some comments here, you can find out the name easily with the command "dmesg | grep sdb".

So great information. Thanks.

Thanks for sharing.

After about 2 hours of trial and error, this part did it for me:

Once the hardware was identified and the disk format began I switched to the console by pressing ALT + F2 

Then I remounted the installation media by typing mount /dev/sdb1 /install 

Now I am a noob with no linux exposure and was having an issue with this command mount /dev/sdb1 /install

And the reason was that I was not putting the space before the /install and was getting an error message it could not find the directory. [face palm]

So the way I did it was after the last step to format the drive and start the install. As soon as I hit <Yes>, I switch to the console by pressing ALT+F2

then run the below command really fast

•  bash-3.2# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
•  bash-3.2# cd /install
•  bash-3.2# mkdir install
•  bash-3.2# cd install
•  bash-3.2# cp -a /mnt/install/* .

***NOTE THAT THE LAST COMMAND HAS A SPACE AND A PERIOD IN IT AT THE END***  (that was the main reason I spent 2 hours figuring this out)

I don't think it matters how the usb was created, as long as you are able to get to the install page. I used Yumi which is a multiboot usb installer.

In my case it was .dev/sdb1
Fred, you are the man !
BootUSB-stick -> Rufus3.9

After struggling with the .tar issue for over an hour, your 5 lines of code did the job within 3 minutes. 

SG135 runnig on 9.702 now