Re: USB Install Fails, Complains about CD-ROM

On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 3:38 PM, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net> wrote:

Hi,

Kent West wrote:
> > I learned that EFI boot drives need to have a GPT partition table.

No. They do not. An MBR partition of type 0xEF is well ok, too.

> > discovered that the flash drive had a "mac" partition table.
> > Wha-a-ah-h-h??

It has an MBR partition table with partition 2 having type 0xEF,
an invalid GPT, and a useless Apple Partition Map.

Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> It also has Apple and GPT partition tables, but they are bogus

The GPT is not valid because there is a non-"protective" MBR partition
table. The APM is valid, but should be of no interest for any firmware
that does not expect a HFS or HFS+ filesystem. (And there is no such
filesystem in the ISO image.)

Kent West wrote:
> > So I ran gparted, selected the drive, and created a new "GPT"
> > partition table, then repeated all my former steps, and bang! Success!

Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> Copying the image again overwrote the GPT partition table and anything else
> you may have written to the stick. So it does not explain the success. You
> may have done something wrong the first time.

I agree that repeating
https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#write-usb
overwrites the main GPT and the protective MBR partition table.
It does not overwrite the backup GPT at the end of the storage medium.

Does the usable USB stick report again the Apple Partition Map ?

Yes:

westk@westkent:~/Downloads$ sudo parted --list

Model: ATA CT960BX200SSD1 (scsi)

Disk /dev/sda: 960GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B

Partition Table: msdos

Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags

1 1049kB 15.0GB 15.0GB primary ext4 boot

2 15.0GB 960GB 945GB extended

5 15.0GB 35.0GB 20.0GB logical ext4

6 35.0GB 45.0GB 9999MB logical ext4

7 45.0GB 65.0GB 20.0GB logical ext4

8 65.0GB 70.0GB 4999MB logical ext4

9 70.0GB 928GB 858GB logical ext4

10 928GB 960GB 32.0GB logical linux-swap(v1)

Model: ATA ST1000DM003-1CH1 (scsi)

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B

Partition Table: msdos

Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags

1 1049kB 1000GB 1000GB primary ext4

Warning: The driver descriptor says the physical block size is 2048 bytes, but

Linux says it is 512 bytes.

Ignore/Cancel? i

Model: USB Flash Drive (scsi)

Disk /dev/sdc: 62.7GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 2048B/512B

Partition Table: mac

Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags

1 2048B 6143B 4096B Apple

2 3693kB 4119kB 426kB EFI

Kent West wrote:
> With my first attempt, the "cp" happened very quickly. [...]
> With the second attempt, the "cp" took minutes

Well, copying a CD sized image at 10 MB/s should take a bit more than a
minute. "Very quickly" sounds suspicicious.

But if only a few MB were copied (for what strange reason ever) there
remains the riddle why it booted and probably loaded the initrd.
Why does it fail when it looks for the ISO filesystem ?

It would be helpful to know where exactly the installation startup
failed with what message exactly.

I no longer have a failing setup, but this Ubuntu user was seeing the exact same thing I was seeing, except in Debian words/colors:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/127398/usb-drive-install-of-ubuntu-12-04-server-fails-cant-find-components-from-cd-r

In case of link-rot, here's what he writes:

The computer boots up the installation process ok.
It gets through the Ubuntu language, locale and keyboard selection.
Then starts loading additional components. At this point it gets about a quarter of the way through then throws big error message saying:

[!!] Load installer components from CD

There was a problem reading data from the CD-ROM. Please make sure it is in the drive. If retrying does not work., you should check the integrity of your CD-ROM.

Failed to copy file from CD-ROM. Retry?

Have a nice day :)

Thanks! You, too!

Thomas

Kent West <")))><
Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com