[SOLVED] Problem installing Slackware 14.2, elusive /etc/fstab not found

loic1489 · 01-03-2017, 11:07 AM

Uh, first of all thanks for reading this.
Two days ago I've been trying to move to Slackware 14.2 with no success. I set up 2 partitions of my disk (swap and root) for the installation previously, there was some trouble to pass the SOURCE step (since it did not recognize the USB flash drive i'm installing from; had to mount in a directory) but, after this, everything goes wrong, or it seems so.
The root partition was almost empty (only boot, var and lost+found dir's were found). After some tries, I noticed that after the installation the console would show a message "/mnt/etc/fstab: no file or directory" or something like that. I searched around some 2005 topics and found a workaround, creating the etc folder previously, but after this one (error), many others came. The last one I had to tape so I could see the message cause it was too elusive and showed something like "/mnt/etc/rc.d/somefilehere: no file or directory".
I really don't know what to do anymore. I'm using GPT partition scheme (maybe that's the problem?), booting from a USB and installing with the setup script. I've tried almost every option on the setup, changed the filesystem type, etc. Maybe I should install Slackware with another method?
Again, thanks for reading all this :^) !

Didier Spaier · 01-03-2017, 12:29 PM

Hi loic489, welcome to this forum.

First are you installing Slackware-14.2 (32-bit x86) or Slacwkare64 14.2 (64 bit x86_64)?

If you use GPT, it is preferable to install slackware64-14.2

Anyway, I assume that for some reason the packages' installation failed.

I understand that you have the whole ISO copied to the USB flash drive with a "dd" command, is that right?

Did you check the integrity of the ISO you downloaded with md5sum?

Did you issue a "sync" command after "dd"?

Please plug it in and type:

Code:

lsblk -o model,name,size,fstype

If the output looks wrong or weird, post the output here.

Else, please try again to install and when you are at the SOURCE step, before answering, launch another virtual terminal (Alt+F2 then press [Enter]; Alt+F1 to go back to the installer) and type the same command as above. Is your USB flash drive showing in the output? If not, then there is really a problem with the device.

loic1489 · 01-03-2017, 12:53 PM

Thanks Didier!

Quote:

First are you installing Slackware-14.2 (32-bit x86) or Slacwkare64 14.2 (64 bit x86_64)?

Slacwkare64

Quote:

I understand that you have the whole ISO copied to the USB flash drive with a "dd" command, is that right?

First I used rufus through Windows but then I used dd with sync on my Arch, same result.

Quote:

Did you check the integrity of the ISO you downloaded with md5sum?

No, I did not, although I should have.

Quote:

Did you issue a "sync" command after "dd"?

Yes!

Quote:

Please plug it in and type:

Code:

lsblk -o model,name,size,fstype

Else, please try again to install and when you are at the SOURCE step, before answering, launch another virtual terminal (Alt+F2 then press [Enter]; Alt+F1 to go back to the installer) and type the same command as above. Is your USB flash drive showing in the output? If not, then there is really a problem with the device.

I'm gonna do this in a sec then post again here.

loic1489 · 01-03-2017, 01:32 PM

Ok, the output for:

Code:

lsblk -o model,name,size,fstype

is:

Code:

MODEL            NAME     SIZE FSTYPE
KINGSTON SV300S3 sda    111.8G 
                 |-sda1   450M ntfs
                 |-sda2   100M vfat
                 |-sda3    16M 
                 |-sda4   525M vfat
                 |-sda5  92.3G ntfs
                 |-sda6   9.2G ext4
                 |-sda7   3.7G swap
                 `-sda8   5.6G ext4
WDC WD10EZEX-00B sdb    931.5G 
                 |-sdb1 736.2G ntfs
                 |-sdb2  97.7G ext4
                 `-sdb3   3.4G swap
Cruzer Blade     sdc      7.5G iso9660
                 |-sdc1   2.6G iso9660
                 `-sdc2   1.4M vfat

Everything seems to be in place. /dev/sda is my SSD that currently has Arch Linux. Before anyone say anthing, I tried first to use only 1 swap for both distributions (since I don't see why there should be more than one) but something in my head was telling me the swap was the problem, so I made another swap partition on /dev/sdb. /dev/sdb2 is supposed to be the root partition of slackware and /dev/sdc is the flash drive.

Didier Spaier · 01-03-2017, 02:00 PM

The size of /dev/sdc2 looks weird to my eyes. It hosts the /EFI partition of the ISO, whose size is around 47M. Could you please check the integrity of the ISO?

loic1489 · 01-03-2017, 02:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Didier Spaier

The size of /dev/sdc2 looks weird to my eyes. It hosts the /EFI partition of the ISO, whose size is around 47M. Could you please check the integrity of the ISO?

For some reason I did erase the iso from my disk. I just downloaded again, checked and it seems the md5sum alright (downloaded and checked from here: http://mirrors.slackware.com/slackwa...re64-14.2-iso/)

I'm going to try again just to see if that was the problem and gonna edit this post with the results.

@edit

Well, first of all, it worked. Thanks Didier Spaier for the support :^) !
I'm gonna list here the possible causes of it so someone might not fall for it:

I did download the ISO 3 times at total. First on Windows, I used Rufus for copying the files into the USB flash drive. Second time I used the dd command from my Arch Linux. Both times I had previously copied into a NTFS partition all the ISO files so I could mount the partition then point the SOURCE there. I've been doing this perhaps because I wasn't using the custom CD path that SOURCE provides to link my flash drive or not correctly. The third time I used, also, dd to copy files and correctly the path to the flash drive (/dev/sdc not /dev/sdc1) and it worked!

So, perhaps the 2 first ISOs were damaged/corrupt and the third wasn't. Or perhaps you just can't point the SOURCE path that way I was doing. Just to note, both ways did show all application series in the INSTALL step so, I guess, both ways could see the files, but only the later did work. Also one time I was trying to move some files to that NTFS partition and it said Read-Only, although I didn't specficy it on the mount.

Anyway, I hope to enjoy a systemd-free environment now :^) thanks again!

Didier Spaier · 01-03-2017, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loic1489

Just to note, both ways did show all application series in the INSTALL step so, I guess, both ways could see the files, but only the later did work.

Not really. When displaying the packages series, the installer doesn't check that the packages in these series be available.

One of the reasons is that the packages to be installed can be distributed on several media, not all accessible at the same time. At the beginning, more than twenty years ago or so, floppy disks were used and a single package series could require several ones

laprjns · 01-03-2017, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Didier Spaier

The size of /dev/sdc2 looks weird to my eyes. It hosts the /EFI partition of the ISO, whose size is around 47M. Could you please check the integrity of the ISO?

No, that's the size I always get when I dd a slackware iso to a usb drive.

Code:

rich[Desktop]$ lsblk /dev/sdb
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sdb      8:16   1 14.4G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   1  2.6G  0 part 
└─sdb2   8:18   1  1.4M  0 part

sdb2 is the ESP boot partition. Here's a dictory tree of the sdb2 partition mounted on /mnt/iso:

Code:

rich[Desktop]$ tree /mnt/iso
/mnt/iso
└── EFI
    └── BOOT
        └── bootx64.efi

The bootx64.efi is 1.2M in size.

My ASUS Laptop has a problem UEFI booting Slackware /Salix iso dd'e to a flash drive, usually hanging at the grub prompt (boot around 1 out of 5 attempts), yet my desktop computer has no problems booting from the same flash drive. I always wonder if that floppy disk sized partition was the reason my laptop has problems booting from it.

Didier Spaier · 01-04-2017, 06:00 AM

Rich, thanks for your input. You are right of course.

My confusion comes from the fact that I am used to ISOs including an elilo EFI image, not a grub one (and that I looked at the content of EFI in the ISO image instead of the mounted partition of the USB stick).

To elaborate a bit, in Slackware bootx64.efi includes grub modules that allow grub to use various filesystems, see the grub-mkimage command in make-grub.sh. This allows grub to access stuff like the kernel and intrd outside the FAT formatted EFI partition, thus to put only the EFI image itself there.

But elilo (used instead of grub in Slint and Salix in the installation media) is unable to access files outside the EFI directory, that's why it has to include the kernel and initrd, resulting in a way bigger size.

PS

Quote:

My ASUS Laptop has a problem UEFI booting Slackware /Salix iso dd'e to a flash drive, usually hanging at the grub prompt (boot around 1 out of 5 attempts), yet my desktop computer has no problems booting from the same flash drive. I always wonder if that floppy disk sized partition was the reason my laptop has problems booting from it.

IIRC your ASUS laptop's issue does not occur with Salix64-14.2 nor with Slint64-pre14.2 ISOs. If that is right (please confirm or infirm) this issue could be due to a post-processing of the ISO image with isohybrid in Slackware and previous Salix versions (again, IIRC), whereas now we use xorriso instead of mkisofs+isohybrid.We assumed at some point in time that the difference in behavior came from using grub vs elilo, but maybe that's really using xorriso instead of mkisofs+isohybrid that helps?

laprjns · 01-04-2017, 06:10 PM

You are correct, my laptop does not have any problems UEFI booting either Salix 14.2 or Slint 14.2 iso's. But I do recall having problems booting Salix 14.1 isos on my laptop. Salix 14.1 isos pre-dates the change to xorriso, so yes maybe it is iso images that are made using mkisofs+isohybrid that causes the boot problems on my laptop.

Didier Spaier · 01-05-2017, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by laprjns

... maybe it is iso images that are made using mkisofs+isohybrid that causes the boot problems on my laptop.

So we have two suspects and do not know which is guilty. To investigate further, I have rebuilt an ISO image of Slackware64-14.2 named fake_Slackware64-14.2 using xorriso, and uploaded it here. To do that I just copied the content of a genuine Slackware ISO in a directory then ran xorriso from there:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
ISO=$(mktemp -d)
STORE=$(mktemp -d)
PATHTOISO=$STORE/fake_slackware64-14.2.iso
mount /storage/images_iso/slackware64-14.2-install-dvd.iso /mnt
printf %b "Copying the genuine ISO in a temp directory...\n"
cp -a /mnt/* $ISO
umount /mnt
printf %b "Rebuilding the new ISO...\n"
( cd $ISO
EFIOPTIONS="-eltorito-alt-boot -e isolinux/efiboot.img -isohybrid-gpt-basdat -no-emul-boot"
xorriso -as mkisofs \
    -isohybrid-mbr /usr/share/syslinux/isohdpfx.bin \
    -hide-rr-moved \
    -U \
    -V "FAKESLACK" \
    -J \
    -joliet-long \
    -r \
    -v \
    -x source \
    -o $PATHTOISO \
    -b isolinux/isolinux.bin \
    -c isolinux/boot.cat \
    -no-emul-boot \
    -boot-info-table $EFIOPTIONS . \
)  2>${PATHTOISO%iso}log.txt
printf %b "Hopefully, $PATHTOISO has been built\n"
printf %b "Check the log file ${PATHTOISO%iso}log.txt\n"
printf %b "Don't forget to remove $STORE and $ISO when you are done\n"

I would be grateful if you could take the time to try to boot this ISO on your Asus laptop in UEFI mode. The results maybe won't give us a definitive answer but at least we will know if grub+xorriso works better that grub+mkisofs+ishybrid with you hardware+firmware, assuming that you can compare the outcome with trying to boot a genuine Slackware ISO.

laprjns · 01-06-2017, 04:55 AM

Downloading the test iso now, Should be able to give it a try over the coming weekend.

laprjns · 01-07-2017, 08:06 AM

No it doesn't work any better than the normal Slackware iso. It did UEFI boot occasionally, just like the normal Slackware iso, but stop at the grub prompt most of the times that I attempted to boot it. This ASUS laptop seems to have the issue with the grub2 bootloader that Slackware uses. I have not seen any problems, booting other distros isos using grub nor do I have problem with Salix isos which use elilo.

Didier Spaier · 01-07-2017, 08:25 AM

Thanks for investigating. It's up to Patrick to decide what to do with this information w.r.t. Slackware, but at least it can comfort the choice of elilo to boot the installation media of Salix and Slint in EFI mode.