2010 Poor Man install fails with SATA drive

[PcPrisoner]

I did a poor-man install to a WD Sata drive. During the (verbose) boot screen, I get the "can't find livecd image; dropping to shell" error messages.

But, interestingly, if I have another (PATA/IDE or USB) drive with the livecd.sqfs file on it, it finds it, mounts it, and boots.

I did a "dmesg" and found messages like "couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features (240)", "attempt to access beyond end of drive" and "can't find superblock".

I suppose its a driver or lib missing in the initrd image? I found that an install must be done from the drive interface you run it from; I can't put a sata drive in an external USB case and have it boot (even with the "fromusb" kernel code). But if I install from an external USB mounted drive, and copy the initrd out of that install, then I can make a grub option that uses that to boot the OS. Of course its slower.

Once (years back, I guess) I was so happy to find I could take an install and use it in any of my machines. But now between disk and video drivers, its getting to be a custom install is needed for each system.

[PcPrisoner]

FYI I installed in another Sata drive, which worked, so its no PCLOS or drivers or configuration. Its the particular drive, or its formatting.

[melodie]

FYI I installed in another Sata drive, which worked, so its no PCLOS or drivers or configuration. Its the particular drive, or its formatting.

Hi, I just started to try too, and as I was arrived also at limited ash shell I did a search on the forum and found your post.

Did you use the Grub text block as we can do in a pendrive ?

The isolinux directory is under / and the livecd.sqfs is also under / at /dev/sda1.

Would you say my entry in Grub seems ok to you ?

title PCLinuxOS 2010
kernel (hd0,0)/isolinux/vmlinuz livecd=livecd root=/dev/rd/3 keyb=us acpi=on vga=792 splash=noquiet fromhdd --
initrd (hd0,0)/isolinux/initrd.gz  

Thanks.

/EDIT: Here is my hard drive, seen from lshw

 

         *-disk:0
                description: ATA Disk
                product: MAXTOR STM316081
                vendor: Maxtor
                physical id: 0.0.0
                bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0
                logical name: /dev/sda
                version: MC1J
                serial: [REMOVED]
                size: 149GiB (160GB)
                capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
                configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=000c3e38

[Was_Just19]

I would first look to the BIOS and ensure it was set properly for larger drives and also that it does not have emulation mode for SATA/PATA or some other weird thing. 

If the problem is just one drive and others - similar drives - work then I would look to deleting the partition table and recreating it ........  after I checked if the manufacturer had released any info about a problem or maybe a utility to run on the drive.

[melodie]

I would first look to the BIOS and ensure it was set properly for larger drives and also that it does not have emulation mode for SATA/PATA or some other weird thing. 

Hi JohnBoy,

I checked the bios, all I found there for hard drives is normal mode or combined mode (allows the hard drive to be compatible with Operating Systems using older modes). So I tried combined mode, that didn't work better.

If the problem is just one drive and others - similar drives - work then I would look to deleting the partition table and recreating it ........  after I checked if the manufacturer had released any info about a problem or maybe a utility to run on the drive.

This was a fast test from within my usual distro, and no way I would touch the partition table !

Code: [Select]

Disque /dev/sda: 160.0 Go, 160041885696 octets
255 têtes, 63 secteurs/piste, 19457 cylindres
Unités = cylindres de 16065 * 512 = 8225280 octets
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Identifiant de disque : 0x000c3e38

Périphérique Amorce  Début        Fin      Blocs     Id  Système
/dev/sda1               1         829     6658911   83  Linux
/dev/sda2             830       18756   143998627+   5  Etendue
/dev/sda3           18757       19457     5630782+  83  Linux
/dev/sda5             830         925      771088+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6             926        9888    71995266   83  Linux
/dev/sda7            9889       10334     3582463+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8           10335       18756    67649683+  83  Linux
I just wanted to see if it's possible to use the poor man's method. (And install to /dev/sdb on which I have lot's of space available). Now I know it can be used, but not on all configurations. (Otherwise, is that a correct way to do it ? And what could be possibly re-used from this one old method ? → PCLinuxOS Poor Man Install)

Thanks !

[Was_Just19]

Melodie, I cannot access that page .......  probably in French anyway so I would be lost   

On an existing setup there is little to do ......

make a suitable entry in the menu.lst file
copy the OS files from an ISO to the location

It is the same procedure as doing it on a flash stick, except much simpler, because the drive is static in the PC, so the various things needed to allow booting on other PCs are not necessary.

There was an article in one of the old magazines ....... one of the first 6 I think that detailed the procedure back then. It has not changed substantially .....  maybe boot codes have changed a bit.

Maybe this would be best in a thread of its own?

regards.

[melodie]

Melodie, I cannot access that page .......  probably in French anyway so I would be lost   

I quoted the poor man's install (in english... )from the ancient wiki that has disappeared : I got the article at archive.org.
Maybe you can display more easily than my blog (it works, but the server is a bit slow theses days).

http://web.archive.org/web/20080323043809/http://oldwiki.mypclinuxos.com/PoorManInstall

On an existing setup there is little to do ......

make a suitable entry in the menu.lst file
copy the OS files from an ISO to the location

It is the same procedure as doing it on a flash stick, except much simpler, because the drive is static in the PC, so the various things needed to allow booting on other PCs are not necessary.

I have described in the 2 preceeding posts I did, how I prepared the boot. The boot starts fine, if I boot with bootsplash I have bootsplash, if I put it "noquiet" I have framebuffer, and messages going until it looks for the image to mount, on all drives, and does not find it. If you look at the menu.lst blocktext I copied up there, you can see I put isolinux directory just under / in /dev/sda1, which is my root system, and the file livecd.sqfs just there too, under / as well.

I had mounted the iso on loop on a directory to copy theses (sudo mount -o loop file.iso /media/cd and cp -R), as I usually do for pendrive boots too.

There was an article in one of the old magazines ....... one of the first 6 I think that detailed the procedure back then. It has not changed substantially .....  maybe boot codes have changed a bit.

I have tried to see in the initscripts if I could find any boot codes, I tried all sorts of keywords with grep, in a Initscripts directory where I had extracted the content of the initscripts package, but I didn't find anything.

Maybe this would be best in a thread of its own?

I am ok with that, but actually I don't know what more could be added... unless much more can be said ?

[Was_Just19]

Maybe this would be best in a thread of its own?


I am ok with that, but actually I don't know what more could be added... unless much more can be said ?

This thread was started by PcPrisoner to sort out their problem ......  is what I had in mind.

Your problem although it may be similar should have a thread of its own   

[melodie]

Maybe this would be best in a thread of its own?


I am ok with that, but actually I don't know what more could be added... unless much more can be said ?

This thread was started by PcPrisoner to sort out their problem ......  is what I had in mind.

Your problem although it may be similar should have a thread of its own   

I will open one next time I will try : is that ok for you ?

[Was_Just19]

Maybe this would be best in a thread of its own?


I am ok with that, but actually I don't know what more could be added... unless much more can be said ?

This thread was started by PcPrisoner to sort out their problem ......  is what I had in mind.

Your problem although it may be similar should have a thread of its own   

I will open one next time I will try : is that ok for you ?

Look forward to it