booting trouble

[Shador]

What about the devices listed at boot except hd0* devices?

[mimosa]

@Shador

There are none. And the CD drive should appear, right?

That would suggest that though the drive is available to BIOS (otherwise the process wouldn't get that far) it is not available very shortly after. And that does looks like a local problem - except that I saw the exact same behaviour on three different machines with different hardware; and Ubuntu boots fine from CD, as did Slitaz.

I will try burning the CD again (though I still don't understand why copying from the burnt CD back to an image and comparing the md5sum with the original download is an insufficient check to rule out a bad burn) and try it in different machines, just to be really sure.

I guess most people don't boot from CD very often, given the possibility of using a memory stick. Has anyone actually tried booting Maté live from CD?

[JRD]

Just to be sure : is your CD drive connected using ATA or using USB ?

[Shador]

There are none. And the CD drive should appear, right?

I'm talking about USB and this:

Code: Select all

error: "prefix" is not set
Searching the device to boot from
*Checking:(memdisk)
                (hd0)
                (hd0, msdos 8)
... 7,6,5,1 
Error: Could not find the root device!
We've been searching for:
identfile salix-mate-13.37-32.live
identcontent: [looks like an md5sum]
Available devices are (as above)
--> Rescue shell

[gapan]

Has anyone actually tried booting Maté live from CD?

Yes. It works fine.

[mimosa]

@Shador

That output is from booting the CD. The USB doesn't get that far. It just says something like "Linux cannot be found" and goes to a boot prompt. Next time I get the opportunity I will buy a shiny new memory stick.

However I've also seen the same behaviour from another stick so I'm not too optimistic. But just as with the CD, it seems worth being thorough. I'll post again when I have tried a fresh burn on different hardware.

For now I suggest the thread concentrates on the CD problem, and when I get a new stick, I'll open a new thread for that problem if it is not solved.

[Adys]

I will try burning the CD again (though I still don't understand why copying from the burnt CD back to an image and comparing the md5sum with the original download is an insufficient check to rule out a bad burn) and try it in different machines, just to be really sure.

@mimosa,

The md5 checksum you posted before is indeed the same as the official Salix LIVE 13.37 x32 MATE, but then immediately in the same post you went back to mention USB, dd and Xfce . And you also mentioned MATE finally working correctly from USB, with the data being taken from the CD (or at least, that's how I understood it).

Try booting with the same CD media in other systems, and look for BIOS settings. I must confess it is not 100% clear to me what exactly was tested in other systems, what worked successfully and what exactly failed (still not clear error messages info). As asked by others, specific hardware info would be useful too.

[mimosa]

@ Adys

As I posted some way above, there are two problems, though as you rightly point out it's conceivable they will ultimately turn out to be the same problem - as I initially thought they were.

To avoid confusion I suggest the thread concentrates on the CD problem, also because the next step with the USB is for me to buy a new one which may take a couple of days. If need be I'll then open a new thread for the USB.

You're right that the CD boots fine if the USB is present. My impression is that the CD can't find the .live file from the CD itself, but is seeing the USB and successfully searching for the file there.

In any case when I have a moment I'll test again with a fresh burn. In particular, I want to make quite sure the problem can be reproduced on different hardware.

[Shador]

CDROM issue

That output is from booting the CD.

So with XFCE it is working when booting from cdrom and for Mate not? Then that must be caused by the introduction of isolinux as intermediate bootloader which just loads grub. This change is necessary to support isohybrid.
Is there absolutely no other device like hd0 listed which seems to be your internal hd? It can also happen that a cdrom drive is listed as hd1 or hd*.

USB issue

The USB doesn't get that far. It just says something like "Linux cannot be found" and goes to a boot prompt.

Can you paste the log file generated by:

Code: Select all

# bash -x install-on-USB.sh 2>&1 | tee log

For some reason the syslinux.cfg file in the root with this content is missing:

Code: Select all

DEFAULT grub2
PROMPT 0
NOESCAPE 1
TOTALTIMEOUT 1
ONTIMEOUT grub2
LABEL grub2
  SAY Chainloading to grub2...
  LINUX boot/g2l.img
EOF

Luckily that name has been changed with Mate so it could as well be boot/grub2-linux.img for anything pre-Mate.

Next time I get the opportunity I will buy a shiny new memory stick.

Forget about that stick. If it were the stick we could find that out but that the stick automagically solves this is extremely unlikely. Thus waiting for a stick is just a big waste.

[mimosa]

@Shador

I think I need to burn an xfce cd too just to make sure. However I do know for sure that it has worked *in the past* on the same hardware. I should mention that I also initially tried using Slackel - same problems. All this makes me think, as you suggest, the problem may have something to do with the isohybrid modifications.

Or else (by far the most likely) I am making some stupid error

Regarding the USB, since I created it with dd, although it works, I cannot now recreate the partition table to make a new FAT partition. The other stick I have isn't clean in the sense that I never reformatted it (it has a lot of data I didn't want to move and the investigation focused on the other stick anyway) but the behaviour is identical. So I can post the results you ask for based on that stick. I will do so in a fresh thread.