Can someone detail how to create an Endless USB stick with the raw files? There are several recent posts stating, “we hope to fix it in the coming months.” How about now?
I spent the hours downloading the 14GB GZ file. Combined with the 11MB ZIP, 7-Zip and maybe some other utilities if not a VM install of a different distro, I should be able to use this gargantuan download to create the media. Please detail that process. Your assistance is appreciated. Thank you.
Do you have a Linux system? You can download and run eos-write-live-image to create a USB stick from these files.
As the lone developer on the installer at the moment, I can answer “How about now?”: it’s finally at the top of my queue and I’m working on USB creation bugs at the moment. Perhaps I can ask you to test a pre-release version in the next few days.
wjt,
For the sake of clarity, when I wrote, “how about now,” I meant, “how about an alternate solution, such as an answer to the question of manually creating the media, be answered now, instead of asking people to wait for the premade installer or using Linux.”
If you can provide basic instructions for using the downloaded files to write a USB drive with alternate software, e. g.
That would be a great way to keep people happy and installing until someone has more time to work on a longer term solution. Can you please describe the process of the prebuilt installer if you are unable to reference other software to complete the task? It should be something the community can piece together with a little direction. Your assistance is appreciated.
Corhsin
Something like this, from eleven months ago: https://chubbable.com/endless-os-installation
You can write the 14GB GZ file to USB stick using Rufus as described on that article, and it’ll be bootable, but you won’t be able to install from it. That’s why we don’t suggest that method.
If you download download an ISO image from https://endlessos.com/download/ (on the Linux/Mac tab), you can use Rufus to write that to USB in DD mode, and you’ll be able to install from it – but you said you wanted to use the existing download. The only way to create a live + installer USB stick on Windows using the img.gz file really is the Endless Installer. The plan is to move to only distributing ISO images, which are the most flexible, but that’s not done yet.
If you are feeling adventurous I can send you a link to a pre-release version which should fix USB creation…
Please do. I have multiple copies of the original download to attempt a fix without having to redownload. Thank you.
Okay! Download this file (link removed) and save it to the same folder as the existing image files (there should be 5: .img.gz .img.gz.asc .img.asc .boot.zip .boot.zip.asc). When you run it it should offer to use the existing files. Windows will give you a scary warning about the publisher being unknown: this is because it’s an unsigned build from this pull request.
Update: I’ve released a new version which includes these fixes, available from the usual page on our website.
I hope that you will enjoy more success with this branch. There’s one case where I’ve found it still fails to write the USB stick, but in my testing if I retry with the same USB stick, it works reliably the second time if not the first.
If you have any problems (including if it fails once and works a second time) please attach logs here! Thanks in advance.
Only a month later 
The debug build reported success. It took hours, likely due to the eBay flash media. I have not tested it, that will come Friday. Thank you for your work on this issue. \
W. D.
Corhsin
EndlessInstaller20171128_22_21_47.log (64.7 KB)
Great news – thanks for letting me know! Some other users have reported new problems with this new code but it’s nice to know that it did at least address this old problem for you…!