This may very well possibly be a solution to all of my problems if I can just get it to work! I'm trying to put Linux Tails onto a USB stick and boot from it, but I've installed it several different ways, and no matter what I do, it won't boot or even display on the boot menu!

But I've booted plenty of other USB sticks from the same port, using the same exact kind of stick and version (3.1). Also, there's nothing wrong with the Tails ISO because it runs fine in VirtualBox within Mint 20.

I've tried:

- Copying an IMG file to a USB stick using dd (following instructons on their website)

- Copying an ISO file to a USB stick using dd (following the same instructions)

- Putting the ISO file onto the USB stick using Unetbootin running within Mint 20

- Putting the ISO file onto the USB stick using Universal USB Installer and specifically selecting Tails as the OS

But NONE of these things make it bootable! When using UUSBI I was using version 1.9.9.7 (the newest one, I think) in Windows, and I had formatted the drive to FAT32 (the other times I used EXT4).

What am I doing wrong? I even followed these instructions from a video I found:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y41TrJjIn0

And it worked great in the video but didn't work at all for me, so what should I do differently? Do I need to run in Legacy mode or with/without Secure Boot or Fast Boot? At the moment I'm using none of that and just booting in UEFI mode, but I'd think that should work, shouldn't it? I seem to be able to boot other stuff regardless of whether it has MBR or GPT (I'm not sure which this uses).

Why don't you just try?

COUGH

You are really extremely terrible at checking the official support sites before posting requests for help here.

Read this:
https://tails.boum.org/support/known_issues/index.en.html#problematic-usb-sticks
It starts with problematic USB sticks, then goes onto various boot option modificiations needed for TAILS to load succesffully on various prebuilt Dell/Mac/Acer/HP/Lenovo systems and hardware
PNY USB sticks usually bom

Why TAILS?

Why not something more mainstream like Fedora? This really just seems like Puppy Linux for the tinfoil enthusiast.

clarry, I didn't have time to do it at and still don't at the moment, but I'll try tomorrow.

morrowslant, I'll check that out - thanks. I don't always seem to be able to find all of the documentation because they put it all over the place and it doesn't always tell me what I need, or I have to look through tons of pages of junk trying to find the information I need, if it's even there at all, but I'll check your link. And I don't use PNY USB sticks or any of those brands of computers. Everything I have is made by various local brands that you've never heard of, except that a lot of my internal hardware is by brands like Nvidia, Asus (my motherboard), and I'm not sure what else off hand.

EDIT: I just checked the link and I think I saw that stuff before, but I looked through it again to be sure. In any case, none of that hardware matches mine, and in mots cases it said the problem was some kind of error that displays when booting. I don't get any specific error, but Tails simply doesn't appear on the boot menu. All I see is Windows and Ubuntu (Mint), and nothing else! You know, it's weird that they're so good at making it secure, but so completely incompetent at making it boot!

Darvond, well I don't really care for Fedora's interface, but that's not much of an issue. The main thing is that I'm trying to get something that can avoid writing onto the USB stick to prevent wear and tear, but it can't be live, because it needs to be customized to a point, and then become read-only after that (which Tails can do, supposedly), and because I can never get live mode to have a secure login for some reason. And as for Puppy Linux, I can't even get to their website. Firefox says it's insecure and won't let me go there, so I have no way to download it even if I wanted it (I've downloaded like 30 distributions and I'm going to test them all just in case one of them might accomplish what I want).

From the other thread I kinda got the impression that your motherboard vendor is completely incompetent at making things boot.

Hmm. I've heard that a few MOBOs are real MOFOs to boot with Linux, I wonder if we can get a name & shame going.

It's an Asus ROG TRIX H470-I/8460-F&H.

I'll try booting Tails in BIOS mode in a couple of hours but I have some chores to do first. I'm also going to try to get Linux Live Kit working in VirtualBox with Slax, because I tried it with Mint and got this error:

cp: cannot stat '/vmlinuz': No such file or directory

Then I edited the config file to point to where the vmlinuz file (or at least its alias/symbolic whatever is), and got this error:

cp: cannot stat '/boot/vmlinuz': No such file or directory

And that was after running:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install squashfs-tools
sudo apt-get install genisoimage
sudo apt-get install mkisofs

I hadn't tried this yet:

sudo apt-get install aufs-tools

Because I didn't realize that i would need that command, but I'll try that as well. But Linux Live Kit sort of advertises itself as being compatible with Slax so it damn well better be! I've also downloaded about 45 different distributions totaling over 60 GB, so I have back-up plans in case that one falls through.

Well I've set the mode to CSM and Tails still won't boot. The PMAP appears on the boot menu now (though I think it might be the generic one that appears for any USB stick that's plugged in, rather than the partition-specific one that appears for bootable partitions), but when I select it, it says it couldn't find an OS and I should reboot or put in a stick with an OS and press any key.

I may have gotten Mint to be able to run Live Kit successfully, or at least it seemed like it was doing so until I ran out of disk space. I'm going to try it again next week with a larger drive, once I get the chance, probably on Tuesday or Wednesday.