[SOLVED] install stopped on magic number

[Yankee]

Hello,

I was so happy KDE 2010 installed on my 16gb flash drive I decided to
install it to a 32gb flash drive.   Well trying to make it do three partitions,
primary, swap, and extended, like it's supposed to do it says the partition
table is corrupt and the problem is with the extended drive and the reason
for that is a bad magic number there.  I couldn't even get it to install on one
partition.  It always says that it cannot mount drive to mnt\install and it
failed due to that error.   After two or three tries on both I give up.

I hope I don't have to read a 800 page LINUX book to figure this one out.
That darn 16gb flash drive installs right up every time.  

Is that 32gb drive with the bad magic number hopeless ?   Any suggestions ?


Thanks,

Patrick

[Old-Polack]

Hello,

I was so happy KDE 2010 installed on my 16gb flash drive I decided to
install it to a 32gb flash drive.   Well trying to make it do three partitions,
primary, swap, and extended, like it's supposed to do it says the partition
table is corrupt and the problem is with the extended drive and the reason
for that is a bad magic number there.  I couldn't even get it to install on one
partition.  It always says that it cannot mount drive to mnt\install and it
failed due to that error.   After two or three tries on both I give up.

I hope I don't have to read a 800 page LINUX book to figure this one out.
That darn 16gb flash drive installs right up every time. 

Is that 32gb drive with the bad magic number hopeless ?   Any suggestions ?


Thanks,

Patrick

Partitioning a flash drive is no different than partitioning a conventional hard drive. If it has a bad partition table, zero the drive and create a new partition table; ie create proper partitions.

[Yankee]

[/quote]

Partitioning a flash drive is no different than partitioning a conventional hard drive. If it has a bad partition table, zero the drive and create a new partition table; ie create proper partitions.

[/quote]



I did that two or three times already.  I will try once more, but unless someone knows
a secret command I think this flash is finished.   One more try is worth it.


Thx.

Patrick013

[uncleV]

but unless someone knows a secret command I think this flash is finished.

Just for checking try different kind of partitioning - w/o swap, w/o extended partition, different size, different partition program, delete all partitions and than try with the three default procedures of the installing process?
Installation of PCLOS takes too little time so this wouldn't be much of a pain may be.

May be run disk checking program.

[Was_Just19]

Partitioning a flash drive is no different than partitioning a conventional hard drive. If it has a bad partition table, zero the drive and create a new partition table; ie create proper partitions.

I did that two or three times already.  I will try once more, but unless someone knows
a secret command I think this flash is finished.   One more try is worth it.

Thx.

Patrick013

What did you use to create the new partition table?
Did you check it after creating it?

[uncleV]

Did you do md5sum check the .iso installation file and do a "Media check" prior to installing?

[Yankee]

(all responses)


Hello,

I followed the same procedure installing it to the 16gb flash drive.  The partition table
for the 32gb flash drive was created by either PCC or thru Draklive during install and it said afterward it was corrupt...due to the bad magic number.  Someday I have to find out what a bad magic number is.
Dolphin file manager also said it couldn't read or mount it due to errors regarding the "superblock",
whatever that is.   I don't really know how to verify or correct these.

Yesterday I had the 32gb in WindowsXP and replaced the MBR with a standard MBR with a program
I have but it didn't make anything better when trying the PCLinux install program afterward.  Same errors.

The .iso was checked and installed by Lilo so that should be OK as that program checks
and verifies the file before installing on the usb key and is generally very reliable.

The magic number on the superblock needs fixing and I don't have a utility program to do that.
I think this flashdrive is going back to eBay unless we have some new ideas.   I have a hex editor
program but absolutely no idea how to use it.


Thanks for the responses.

Patrick



 

[Was_Just19]

What is the output pertaining to the flash drive when this command is run?

fdisk -l    (lower case L)

That should give information about the partition table.

The partition table for the 32gb flash drive was created by either PCC or thru Draklive during install and it said afterward it was corrupt

I would seriously question that. It is more likely that the partitioner tried to use the existing partition table and then reported it corrupt.

We should know when you post the results of running the above command. You may need to run it as root, depending on your users group memberships.

regards.

[Yankee]

What is the output pertaining to the flash drive when this command is run?

fdisk -l    (lower case L)

That should give information about the partition table.

Here is the info.

Disk /dev/sdd: 33.6 GB, 33554432000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4079 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00413a8c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1   *           1        4079    32764536    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)



This  goes into the install program and gets the magic number, and cannot mount to mnt\install
errors. 

Thanks for your response.


patrick013

[Yankee]

Just for checking try different kind of partitioning - w/o swap, w/o extended partition, different size, different partition program, delete all partitions and than try with the three default procedures of the installing process?
Installation of PCLOS takes too little time so this wouldn't be much of a pain may be.

Great idea.  If I use one xfs partition (31.2GB) it actually tries to install.  It gets past the magic number and cannot mount to mnt\install errors.   It goes all the way thru to the end and then it says "cannot copy files to new root" and stops, not fully installed.   I saw a post somewhere about this and need to search for it.


Thanks for the response.


Patrick013

 

[Was_Just19]

Here is the info.

Disk /dev/sdd: 33.6 GB, 33554432000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4079 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00413a8c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1   *           1        4079    32764536    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)


This  goes into the install program and gets the magic number, and cannot mount to mnt\install
errors. 

Thanks for your response.

patrick013

I think you need to create a new partition table. You could use fdisk again -- the ' v ' option to verify the existing partition table, but I believe the only solution is likely to be replacing the partition table.

Backup anything you have on that FAT partition and use fdisk to create a new partition table (called DOS Label I think) --- it is the ' o ' option. Use the ' w ' option to write the new structure. Safely remove and reinsert the device. (ignore anything that tells you to reboot -- that is for non-removable devices)

When done use the ' v ' option to verify the partition table.
When that is done, you can create whatever partitions you wish on the device --- the ' n ' option.

I suspect the reported structure will be considerably different to what is above.
Hopefully that will allow you to install Linux to it.

regards.

[BJF]

I am going to add something un-helpful here and say that in my own layman's experience, despite some heavyweight help from members, LXDE 2009 could not be installed to a 8Gb SD although it works perfectly on 4Gb. The paper trail pointed to superblock errors. However, LXDE 2010 installs and works on the same 8Gb SD. That layman's experience suggested to me that one possible reason might be that as kernels evolved the relationship to media size changed. It might well be that my experience with my 8Gb SD and your 32Gb Flash represent the edge of the world for the OS's involved. Sorry.

John.

[Yankee]

I think you need to create a new partition table. You could use fdisk again -- the ' v ' option to verify the existing partition table, but I believe the only solution is likely to be replacing the partition table.

Backup anything you have on that FAT partition and use fdisk to create a new partition table (called DOS Label I think) --- it is the ' o ' option. Use the ' w ' option to write the new structure. Safely remove and reinsert the device. (ignore anything that tells you to reboot -- that is for non-removable devices)

When done use the ' v ' option to verify the partition table.
When that is done, you can create whatever partitions you wish on the device --- the ' n ' option.

I suspect the reported structure will be considerably different to what is above.
Hopefully that will allow you to install Linux to it.

regards.

Hello  JohnBoy,

The fdisk program ran thru o, and w, and n commands twice.  The o command indicates I have an
"invalid flag in partition 4 at 0x0000".  This was not corrected when w command did the write, it appeared
again as an error the second time, after the n command was run and so forth.   The n command was to
create 1 partition.

Tried an install with one xfs partition only after the above, the whole 32gb, and at the end it said again
"unable to copy files to new root" and stopped dead.

I wonder if partition 4 is the extended partition, if one, and if I installed on just partitions 1 thru 3 the
circuits would be readable and writeable.  There was only 1 partition when it said "invalid flag at 0x0000
in partition 4".  

Anyway, that's what fdisk said and did.


thanks,

patrick



 





  

[Was_Just19]

Start again with fdisk.
Replace the partition table.
Write the changes.
Copy and paste the output to your next post.

Safely remove and reinsert the device.

Create a single partition -  use ext2 or ext3 filesystem.
Write it to the device
Copy and paste the output of what happens so we can see it.

Safely remove and reinsert the device.

Run fdisk -l on the device and copy and paste the output.

With the actual output of fdisk there may be some hope of understanding what is actually happening.

regards.

[Was_Just19]

Are you sure it is a real 32 GB flash drive?
There is an invasion of fake flash drives recently...you mentioned E-bay, just google "ebay fake flash" and you'll see what I mean.
They come from China, they are cheap and falsely report  higher capacities than the real ones.
I bought one (16 GB supposedly)  but the real value was 8 GB.
Not only that, but after trying to write more than 8 GB it get corrupted and I had to return it.

Ex: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2009/08/26/test-and-detect-fake-or-counterfeit-usb-flash-drives-bought-from-ebay-with-h2testw/

Is not necessarily your case, but just an idea to have in mind.

I had not thought of that, but in this case you might be right

Disk /dev/sdd: 33.6 GB, 33554432000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4079 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk iDisk /dev/sdd: 33.6 GB, 33554432000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4079 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00413a8cdentifier: 0x00413a8c