Snail USB stick and failed installation

giobbi69 · 02-24-2024, 05:37 PM

Hi guys

I admit I'm not using Slackware for years and I forgot almost everything I learned but today I finally had the time and the right mood and so I decided to revive my slackbox on a Lenovo thinkpad.

I downloaded the slackware-current iso from slackware.nl and I diligently put it o an USB stick.

At boot time I got the following output

Code:

mdadm: No arrays found in config file or automatically
Activating LVM volumes:

When I launched cfdisk I immediately noticed the enormous lag using the keyboard.

Anyway, I launched the setup utility and I then formatted the swap partition and it was slow but the / formatting was tragically slower.
Formatting the other ones has been fast as usual.

Once I told setup to look for the USB stick it took more than minutes for the operation to be accomplished.

It was then possible to start the installation but it was clear that it wouldn't ever have a happy ending, in fact, after a few packages have regularly been installed, I got a message like this

Code:

installpkg error #1
There was a fatal error attempting to install
/usb-stick/slackware64/d/llvm-1?.8.6-x86_64-1.txz. The package may
be corrupt, the installation media may be bad, one of the target
drives may be full, or something else has caused the package to be
unable to be read without error. You may hit enter to continue if
you wish, but if this is an important required package then your
installation may not work as-is.

And pressing OK it said the same thing for all the other packages.

Since this ThinkPad is the same I always used for slackware a few years ago and since I never met problems like these ones I'm really perplexed and a bit frustrated.

I tried to change USB stick, completely format my ssd and making new partitions just to be scrupulous but I really don't know what's happening.

Does anybody have ideas?

business_kid · 02-27-2024, 06:43 AM

The usb drive is suspect - not condemned, but suspect. ~~It's also possible that it's usb-2.0, which are naturally laid back. Let's say your usb disk is /dev/sdb when you plug it into your current box. check with lsblk.

Make no partitions. Don't mount it, or unmount it. Download the iso on to your current box and run

Code:

dd if=/path/to/slackware.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M status=progress

Adjust that for your use case. Then boot your box from the usb disk. Yes it may be slow, but it does a lot of searching and checking. Endure it.

That will zap any partitions on your usb disk, btw. So make sure you back up anything you want first

giobbi69 · 02-27-2024, 04:58 PM

The first time I tried effectively it was an usb 2.0 stick, very cheap.

But for all the other attempts I switched to a whole bundle of usb 3.0 sticks.

The fact is I'm keeping on getting a lot of different messages at different installation stages and every usbstick involved is really slow in random moments.

For instance I got things like the following

Code:

m: can't remove 'libgomp.so.1" : Read-only file systen
n: libgomp.so.1: File exists
n: libhuasan.so: Read-only file system
n: libhwasan.so.0: Read-only file systen
n: libitm.so: Read-only file system
n: libitm.so.1: Read-only file system
n: liblsan.so: Read-only file system
n: liblsan.so.0: Read-only file system
n: libquadmath.so: Read-only file system
n: libquadmath.so.3: Read-only file system
n: libtsan.so: Read-only file system
n: libtsan.so.2: Read-only file system
n: libubsan.so: Read-only file system
n: libubsan.so.1: Read-only file system
n: cc.1.gz: Read-only file system
cc-g++-13.2.0-x86_64-1: C++ for GCC
n: c++: Read-only file system
n: g++: Read-only file system
n: x86_64-slackware-linux-c++: Read-only file system
n: x86_64-slackware-linux-g++: Read-only file system
n: libstdc++.so: Read-only file system
im: can't remove 'libstdc++.so.6': Read-only file system
n: libstdc++.so.6: File exists
n: c++.1.gz: Read-only file system

or this

Code:

chroot: can't execute '/usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh': Input/output error

or again

Code:

EXT4-fs (sda4): shut down requested (2)
EXT4-fs (sda5): shut down requested (2)

or

Code:

EXT4-fs error (device sda2): ext4_check_bdev_write_error:224: comm ext4lazyinit: Errorwhile async write back metadata

and so on.

this is crazy because I never met behaviors like these ones.

Since as I stated in the previous post I completely reformatted my SSD drive and there's no OS on it, yesterday night I used a gentoo live and I created from there a slackware installation usb but results didn't change -.-

I ran all the diagnostics by Lenovo on that laptop and all went fine, usb included.
I ran memtest and everything went fine.

So I currently can't say what's going on

business_kid · 03-02-2024, 12:16 PM

We can't diagnose a fault from vague information. At a wild guess, you drive is being automounted (or you're mounting it) but it has error and is mounting read only.

What exactly did you do, what commands, and what was the result? As soon as you or your OS mounts any drive, run

Code:

sudo dmesg |tail

and check for errors. You need to give us a look over your shoulder as you work.