Live-USB GRUB trouble (SOLVED)

[Linuzoid]

I just made a Live-USB of my machine and I tried installing it on my other machine, to no avail. It seems to stop installing right after the Installing Grub screen and it stays on a blank white box and doesn't install the grub right. I've had this problem a couple of times now, Before, it installed wonderfully, and was my favorite way to install the system on the other machine. I made a Live-CD from the same iso and it installed perfect on the other machine. I can't seem to figure it out. I'm running the most current Live-USB program. There is no problem on bootup and running the USB drive, the system runs beautiful, always faster than a CD, only on the last part of GRUB install is when it stops.

[AS]

I just made a Live-USB of my machine and I tried installing it on my other machine, to no avail. It seems to stop installing right after the Installing Grub screen and it stays on a blank white box and doesn't install the grub right.

Despite the description (installing grub boot loader) that phase of installation include rebuilding the initrd image ... which is a process longer than a simple grub installation ...

I've had this problem a couple of times now, Before, it installed wonderfully, and was my favorite way to install the system on the other machine. I made a Live-CD from the same iso and it installed perfect on the other machine. I can't seem to figure it out. I'm running the most current Live-USB program. There is no problem on bootup and running the USB drive, the system runs beautiful, always faster than a CD, only on the last part of GRUB install is when it stops.

May I suggest to start the installation from a terminal ?   Some output on the terminal should provide an hint about what is going on.

AS

[AS]

Forgot: the command from terminal will be draklive-install 

[Neal ManBear]

Which version / DE are you using, Linuzoid?     

[Linuzoid]

Which version / DE are you using, Linuzoid?     

I'm using KDE 4.6.5 fully updated. Kernel 2.6.38.8-pclos1.pae.bfs.

I just made a Live-USB of my machine and I tried installing it on my other machine, to no avail. It seems to stop installing right after the Installing Grub screen and it stays on a blank white box and doesn't install the grub right.

Despite the description (installing grub boot loader) that phase of installation include rebuilding the initrd image ... which is a process longer than a simple grub installation ...

Yes, AS, might be the initrd image, because I have to force drakelive-install to terminate and when I reboot, grub comes up. but the boot freezes right away.

[AS]

Which version / DE are you using, Linuzoid?     

I'm using KDE 4.6.5 fully updated. Kernel 2.6.38.8-pclos1.pae.bfs.

I just made a Live-USB of my machine and I tried installing it on my other machine, to no avail. It seems to stop installing right after the Installing Grub screen and it stays on a blank white box and doesn't install the grub right.

Despite the description (installing grub boot loader) that phase of installation include rebuilding the initrd image ... which is a process longer than a simple grub installation ...

Yes, AS, might be the initrd image, because I have to force drakelive-install to terminate and when I reboot, grub comes up. but the boot freezes right away.

What are the specs of the target machine ? Cpu, Ram, graphics adapter and Hard disk controller ?
(you can obtain most of the info, from LiveCD, running the command lspci)

Exactly, which command do you used to build your own ISO image ? (could be part of the problem ...)

[Linuzoid]

Which version / DE are you using, Linuzoid?    

I'm using KDE 4.6.5 fully updated. Kernel 2.6.38.8-pclos1.pae.bfs.

I just made a Live-USB of my machine and I tried installing it on my other machine, to no avail. It seems to stop installing right after the Installing Grub screen and it stays on a blank white box and doesn't install the grub right.

Despite the description (installing grub boot loader) that phase of installation include rebuilding the initrd image ... which is a process longer than a simple grub installation ...

Yes, AS, might be the initrd image, because I have to force drakelive-install to terminate and when I reboot, grub comes up. but the boot freezes right away.

What are the specs of the target machine ? Cpu, Ram, graphics adapter and Hard disk controller ?
(you can obtain most of the info, from LiveCD, running the command lspci)

Exactly, which command do you used to build your own ISO image ? (could be part of the problem ...)

The deal is I didn't have this problem before, until recently. And the Live-CD installs perfectly. I use the same commands to create the iso and it always worked.

I use /usr/sbin/mylivecd --gzip to create my iso.

When the Live-USB didn't install, I though right away it was a bum iso, so I made a live-CD and installed it, no problems, So I figured it was something to do with the Live-USB, so I formated the USB drive and remade the Live-USB and had the Live-USB creator install GRUB to the USB Drive. No go. Maybe I'm the only one having this problem, no big deal, I'll just use the Live-CD. I thought maybe someone else might have the same problem and knew of a work around or something.

I will take your advice and install from a terminal and see if I get any errors and I'll report them if any here. But it will have to wait till tomorrow.

[Just17]

I just made a Live-USB of my machine and I tried installing it on my other machine, to no avail. It seems to stop installing right after the Installing Grub screen and it stays on a blank white box and doesn't install the grub right. I've had this problem a couple of times now, Before, it installed wonderfully, and was my favorite way to install the system on the other machine. I made a Live-CD from the same iso and it installed perfect on the other machine. I can't seem to figure it out. I'm running the most current Live-USB program. There is no problem on bootup and running the USB drive, the system runs beautiful, always faster than a CD, only on the last part of GRUB install is when it stops.

I have had a similar problem a couple of times .......  solved by letting it sit there for a long time, after which it decided it was finished .....  and it was finished properly.

I can only guess that something in the building of the initrd gets hung up for some reason in some circumstances.

On one occasion I recall getting impatient, stopped the installer, installed grub by hand, and apparently the initrd was properly built because that installation booted properly. I was probably lucky!

I never bothered to investigate further .....  and the install from the same media was OK on other PCs.

I don't remember the details of the ISO or the PC .....  which I guess makes this post rather useless  .......  except to note that this is not an isolated incident.

[Linuzoid]

Thank you for the reply Just18, I thought it was only me. I let it sit there for a long time to see if it would complete, but it didn't. I'm going to install from a terminal for any feed back, as AS suggested and post any errors here.

[Linuzoid]

Yes, yes, yes,  it worked! I'm so happy now. I installed from a terminal, all went good, report was GRUB installed right. Then I let it sit for about ten minutes, I noticed there was a little hard drive activity during this time and finally it installed. I rebooted and I'm good to go. The Live-USB never took this long to finish, but I don't care as long as it did and it's done right.

Thank you AS, for your invaluable suggestions and help, installing from the terminal was just what the doctor ordered. Also your insight to how the system works in truly invaluable.

Just18, you were right, my impatience was my undoing. I let it sit there until it finished. Thank you so much!!!

[Just17]

Great news Linuxoid! 

I would like to see a comment from someone about why - apparently - the building of the initrd image might take a long time in some cases and get done quickly in other cases.

That is if it is really the creation of the initrd that is delaying things of course ...... 

[AS]

Linuzoid,

 

I would like to see a comment from someone about why - apparently - the building of the initrd image might take a long time in some cases and get done quickly in other cases.

That is if it is really the creation of the initrd that is delaying things of course ...... 

I "think" it is the creation of the initrd, I remember posts about old machine where that phase took more than half an hour, I remember also (from other posts) that sometimes the initrd size were at least double than the usual 5 or 6 MB ...

What's the initrd ? It is small filesystem, containing approx. 200 files: basic command, basic libs, basic drivers needed to start the the kernel and including at least the drivers to correctly mount a root filesystems (therefore hw drivers and filesystem modules, like ext3, ext4 ...). The format of initrd is a cpio archive, gzip compressed, if you want to check the initrd content this command should do:

Code: [Select]

zcat /boot/initrd.img | cpio -itvalternatively the following will provide the complete listing and additionally the code of the init script:

Code: [Select]

lsinitrd /boot/initrd.img
On system with less powerful CPU the compression may take longer ...
From another point of view, the included modules depends from the detected hardware and from modules specified in /etc/modprobe* ... I guess there is a some variable depending on the running system ...

Does explain such long times ?    ... probably not completely ...

[Linuzoid]

On system with less powerful CPU the compression may take longer ...
From another point of view, the included modules depends from the detected hardware and from modules specified in /etc/modprobe* ... I guess there is a some variable depending on the running system ...

Does explain such long times ?    ... probably not completely ...

Still for us dummies it explains a lot. The machine I made my Live-USB is a Phenom II and the one I was installing on is a Sempron. Also the memory and hard drive are slower on the Sempron.