Need advice on installing Manjaro/Arch, boot directory not mounted
 

Hi, I'm trying to install Manjaro on my laptop, I can get into the boot menu for it and it will start booting, but it will error saying

"ERROR: '/dev/disk/by-label/MANJARO_XFCE_2126' device did not show up after 30 seconds..."
"Falling back to interactive prompt"
"sh: can't access tty; job control turned off"
To which it promptly kicks me to [rootfs ]#

I asked around to some friends and they told me to try a few commands to no avail, but this is what happened when I tried them.

"[rootfs ]# ls -ahl /boot"
"ls: /boot: No such file or directory"

"[rootfs ]# ls -ahl /dev | grep sd"
"brw------- 1 0 0 8, 0 May 22 22:58 sda"

Also, when I use "cat /proc/scsi/scsi", only the USB drive that I have written the arch image on is detected, not my laptop's SSD.

To be precise, my specs are: Lenovo Flex 5, Ryzen 5 4500U with Radeon Graphics 2.38 GHz, 16 GB RAM, with a Samsung MZALQ256HAJD-000l2 256GB SSD

Thank you for any advice, I appreciate it.

So all this happens with a installer/live image? And it complains it cannot find itself? That is weird... How did you create the bootable medium, and how are you booting it? And which image (link please)?

Thank you for the quick reply,

I have used a couple of different software to write Arch, then later Manjaro, to a 30GB USB drive. First I used win32diskimager, then I tried Rufus, using the default options for both, and both with the exact same results.
I used the torrents posted on their webpages (here and here (XFCE) respectively.

I went into my laptop's BIOS, disabled safeboot, enabled legacy support and made sure 'Boot From USB' was enabled. Then selected the USB to boot from.
For Arch, I selected "Arch linux install medium", and for Manjaro I selected "Use proprietary drivers".

I did some more looking and I found a post on another forum with nearly the exact problem I have here that says that the issue is "it is trying to boot looking for a disk with name ARCH_201901, which to by coincidence, is the name of the arch Linux installation media." which apparently means there was an issue creating the flash drive.

I'm not really sure what to do from here.


Edit: I've now noticed that the name of the USB gets changed from "ARCH_202205" to a generic "USB REMOVABLE DISC" whenever I put it in my laptop, or restart my laptop. So even if I rename it while it's in the laptop, arch won't be able to find it. I'm still not sure about how to rectify this.


Solution: I unplugged the USB when it was 'waiting' for the drive and plugged it back in, and then it recognized it somehow?? I don't know. But it worked.

So it's solved, but you don't know how?
I wonder what those default options are - it's been ages since I used anything but Linux for that, but afaik you have to use "dd mode" in Rufus.