I forgot to say that after I downloaded the ISO again, I used a different USB drive, and that USB failed to boot too.

I have used dd many times. It has always worked except with BackBox.

I researched this problem for 4 days before joining this forum and asking the question because I knew I would be greeted with arrogance and treated like an idiot simply because I am a new member. I must admit that I don't like playing forum games.

If you had read my original post a little more carefully it should be obvious that in addition to dd I redid the same USB with Unetbootin and Mint's Startup Disk Creator.

All three of those attempts appeared to work but produced a product that failed to boot.

And then I downloaded another BackBox ISO, by http instead of torrent like the first time, from another mirror, and then wrote the second ISO to a second USB drive, 3 times, once each with dd, Unetbootin and Startup Disk Creator.

All attempts to write the second ISO onto the second USB drive also appeared to work but also produced a USB that also failed to boot.

However, subsequent attempts to use dd to write other ISOs, such as BlackArch Linux, to the same USB drives worked just fine.

Only then did I decide to face up to the inevitable arrogant gatekeeper, and share this problem with others.

I should add that what I did leave out of both my original post and the update, was that I tried the resulting USBs on both of my laptops with the same result.

So I think I have been very thorough, and I am left with the nearly inescapable conclusion that I downloaded 2 defective ISOs from BackBox servers.

And the defensive gatekeeper simply reinforces that conclusion.

Thank you very much for the well thought out answer. I will try that as soon as I can and post the results here.

Also this morning I came across this quite by accident:

https://forum.backbox.org/general-support/can%27t-install-backbox-4-3-on-a-usb-stick-gives-loop0-error/

It does not give the first line of my error warning, so that is why I did not find it before.

Until I read your suggestion I was just about to try an earlier version of Backbox.

But now I will follow your suggestion first. Thank you very much.

Well, that certainly took a long time to write, 29246.8 seconds at 69.1 kB/s to be precise. That is a little over 8 hours.

But it did not work as well as my previous attempts to write BackBox 4.3 to USB. For all those earlier times I got a screen with a wiggly blue line that said BackBox and then I got the notice:

(initramfs) mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on //filesystem.squashfs failed: Invalid argument
Can not mount /dev/loop0 (cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs) on//filesystem.squashfs
 
What I got after this 8 hour write of BackBox was no sign of BackBox at all, just a brief pause and then my regular GRUB with entries for Debian and Mint.

I tried booting this USB from my other Lenovo laptop, which is basically the same, but a few years newer. I should probably say that both these laptops were made for the Chinese market and purchased while I lived in China.

I have used numerous Linux Distros on them. They usually work just fine but there have been driver issues i the past. Issues with the wireless drivers are very common, video drivers much less so. There have never been video driver issues with Ubuntu, Mint or Debian, just wireless driver issues with Debian.

I have made USBs before that will only boot on one of my laptops, so this time I tried both laptops with the same results. Gparted says the whole USB is unallocated, but Gparted often fails to read the Partition Tables of the USBs I make.

The command that I used this time:

sudo dd if=/home/gs/backbox-4.3-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdc oflag=direct

The earlier times:

sudo dd if=/home/gs/backbox-4.3-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdc

Both of these were written from Linux Mint 17.1

I have never had any problems writing USBs this way. Other than trying a previous version of BackBox, I am stumped about how to solve this problem.

Thanks for reading.

I have used dd many times. It has always worked except with BackBox.

I researched this problem for 4 days before joining this forum and asking the question because I knew I would be greeted with arrogance and treated like an idiot simply because I am a new member. I must admit that I don't like playing forum games.

If you had read my original post a little more carefully it should be obvious that in addition to dd I redid the same USB with Unetbootin and Mint's Startup Disk Creator.

All three of those attempts appeared to work but produced a product that failed to boot.

And then I downloaded another BackBox ISO, by http instead of torrent like the first time, from another mirror, and then wrote the second ISO to a second USB drive, 3 times, once each with dd, Unetbootin and Startup Disk Creator.

All attempts to write the second ISO onto the second USB drive also appeared to work but also produced a USB that also failed to boot.

However, subsequent attempts to use dd to write other ISOs, such as BlackArch Linux, to the same USB drives worked just fine.

Only then did I decide to face up to the inevitable arrogant gatekeeper, and share this problem with others.

I should add that what I did leave out of both my original post and the update, was that I tried the resulting USBs on both of my laptops with the same result.

So I think I have been very thorough, and I am left with the nearly inescapable conclusion that I downloaded 2 defective ISOs from BackBox servers.

And the defensive gatekeeper simply reinforces that conclusion.

I think you are simply incapable of simply burning iso image onto usb stick, simply because if you look in the entire forum you will better realize that you are the only one who experienced this issue. You post was pretty clear enough to understand that you have no experience, and again, jumping over the hills, this is what you do.

So there is no arrogance here around hence such behavior is not allowed. So behave yourself, this is a community where we support people who have some experience in linux, the question you posted on forum requires no experience and we are not here to do the primary school.

said that, RTFM for such easy tasks and come back when you have some proper question.

But I am not the only one who had trouble with this, and if you read more of the forum, you would probably know this.

For example:
https://forum.backbox.org/general-support/cant-install-backbox-4-3-on-a-usb-stick-gives-loop0-error/

And:
https://forum.backbox.org/howtos/build-bootable-installation-usb-with-dd/

But you are correct about my level of technical expertise. I have no formal training in computer science whatsoever. I have learned everything I know from doing things and searching posts on forums when what I tried to do did not work.

But I am a psychologist, and another thing I have learned from all the forum reading that I have done is that there are basically 2 types of people when it comes to posting on forums.

One type genuinely wants to be helpful and puts a significant amount of effort into that. The other type is not particularly focused on helping people with problems, but rather is focused on making themselves feel good and overcoming their low self-esteem by talking down to others.

Often, especially when irritated, this second type spouts inaccurate information, like saying this problem has not happened to anyone else when a simple search shows otherwise. Sometimes this second type of person becomes a moderator and uses their power to intimidate others.

In a case like this, the effectiveness of the forum suffers and some people begin to lose interest in participating. I sincerely hope that does not happen here.

first of all I don't like shrinks
second, use your psychologist expertise and read between the sentences, not that just the information you are interested into it. I said it is a basic exercise and we are not here to raise primary school students, and your issue is not related to backbox but to the lack of knowledge in setting it up.

So, coming to issue about the power and abusing of power etc. I think you have psychological issues on your own. This is a simple community and nobody exercise any power here or abuses using the position it has. Perhaps they haven't thought you during your studies what is a community looks like, of course, why would they...

Let me spend a few words to introduce you what exactly a community made of. It is made of group of people who shares freely their idea and putting together their expertise to create something useful and not only for themselves but for the entire collectivity. And they are doing this based on volunteering activity with a free spirit. There is no space for shrinks in such environment because it is based on free spirit and the free spirits doesn't need or like the shrinks.

We do this for free, nobody pay us to do this and I am not sure with what entitlement you are here to claim what you are after. Have some reading here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software in order to understand what is a free community in first place.

Another proof of concept that nobody exercises any power here is, that you are still here, on this forum, able to talk and post your thoughts by given the right to reply.

According to our Disclaimer, here if you haven't read yet:
https://forum.backbox.org/announcements/general-forum-conditions/
we actually are entitled to wipe your post because it does not comply with the rule where we require the basic knowledge on Linux systems which appears you don't have.

But because we are free spirits and luckily we like to live in democracy, we let you post and do some exception.

And I think you missed this part of my previous post:
 "said that, RTFM for such easy tasks and come back when you have some proper question."

RTFM=read the fucking manual.

You are always and still welcome to this community but pls, only appropriate and reasonable questions.

We will try to help wherever we can.

Good luck!

HI usersomething,

Did you check what i posted before: http://forum.backbox.org/general-discussions/unable-to-boot-live-session-of-backbox-4-3/msg9311/#msg9311

Just asking.