Installing from a KDE Neon live environment to external SSD fails every time
 

Hello, i am attempting to install/create a bootable version of KDE Neon onto an external SSD (My Passport 2TB made by Western Digital.) and every time i try it gives me an error (Boost Python error in job "Unpackfs") i have tried everything i can and nothing seems to work. The drive is new and not formatted (I think because i have tried this over 13 times already.) and i have no experience with creating partitions or bootable drives in general. I just barely managed to get the live enviroment running using UNetbootin and installing KDE Neon onto the laptop i am using to do this and then running it in "Try without installing mode"

Please help!

Boot it up with the live environment, and use GParted or similar app to format the drive to ext4 from the live environment, and then retry the set up again.

It will then overwrite the newly created drive and create partitions as needed, when it is 'uninitialised' with no formatting the set up programme (calamares?) won't see the drive as its not mounted properly for writes.

I believe the installer is calamares yes. I will try this and see if it works. Thanks.

Ok i did that i think. Now if i go into the installer i have four options. There is the single partition on the drive in ext4 format. What should i do? Install alongside? Replace the partition with KDE Neon? Erase the disk? Or manually partition the drive? Also its asking where do i put the boot loader. Do i put it on the drive itself or what? There are two options for that: Master Boot Record on the drive itself and System Partition (/) unless i dont need a boot loader for what i want to do with this drive? (Which is have it so i can boot directly from it and essentially have it as a portable OS that shouldnt degrade.)

Edit: I tried to install and it didnt work. Exact same error.

https://userbase.kde.org/Installing_KDE_neon

Boot into the live environment again, and next install try, when asked, choose entire disk, and it should then create the UEFI partition (Fat32 format typically around 300MB - 1 GB) and the OS partition it needs.

Im trying to install to an unformated drive, not the drive the live environment is on. This was the first thing i did and it didnt work.

If you want to install it on an unformatted drive, then you will need to create the partitions before it can install anything. Linux doesn't assume what you want done, or even what file system you want to use..

If you had previously created a single partition on the drive and formatted ext4, then when you reboot and run the installer, tell it to 'use the entire disk' you just formatted, calamares installer should then create the partitions it needs and format them itself before installing the OS

Modern UEFI computers use GPT partitions, so essentially your disk would typically end up with a 1MB 'blank unformatted partition' first, then a 600MB boot/efi partition formatted as FAT32 and then typically either a single partition formatted btrfs with sub-volumes, or perhaps one or more partitions formatted ext4 depending on your preferred layout choices.

So the key to this is after i use the Partition Manager to make the Partition on the drive i need to reboot the entire live environment and then run the installer once the live environment is booted?

Because here is what i have been doing: Using KDE's Partition Manager to format the entire 2TB drive to etx4, going to the Install program on the desktop of the live environment, selecting the 2TB drive i formatted, and then trying to get the installer to install directly to that drive. I have made the partitions before but it fails as soon as the installer gets to creating the necessary partitions to install the OS. Its formatted for GPT (The installer says it needs 8MB of space for the GPT boot partition apparently?) and then i retry it.

Now I think I can see what is happening.. from blank unformatted disk.. create new 'GPT' type partition, not MBR.. (this will create the 8MB GPT bit) then format the new partition Ext4 so its usable.. don't forget to actually 'fix' these changes to disk, in GParted it doesn't actually apply the changes until you ask it to, usually a 'tick' to apply button.

At this point, it should have formatted your disk as partition type GPT and in Ext4 format, now you should be able to install KDE, choosing 'entire disk' when asked

If it won't let you install at this point, then you may need to reboot and install, but this time it will already have a formatted drive ready for it.

The first and second part is what i did after what you initially told me. The same error still happened. Do you want the full error report? It might help.

This is the full error: <div><strong>Command 'mount' returned non-zero exit status 32.</strong></div><div>None</div><div><br/>Traceback:</div><div><pre>File &quot;/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/unpackfs/main.py&quot;, line 496, in run
return unpackop.run()

File &quot;/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/unpackfs/main.py&quot;, line 316, in run
entry.do_mount(source_mount_path)

File &quot;/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/unpackfs/main.py&quot;, line 133, in do_mount
raise subprocess.CalledProcessError(r, &quot;mount&quot;)</pre></div>

Could be a permissions issue, try running installer as sudo

Alright i will see if that does it.

Well, 1: It didnt work you cant run it as Sudo.
2: I figured out the problem. Apparently Calamares didnt install or download correctly when i made the live boot partition.
3: Im not sure why i was trying it this way because its a bad idea so this is getting marked as solved.