A week ago I got a ‘new’ (used) notebook, which had a virgin MS-Windows installed.
Downloaded the iso for Manjaro KDE, copied it to the Ventoy stick I’d used often for such installations and after a short time fighting the hurdles with which Windows tries to prevent the installation of other OSs, I had a fresh Manjaro up and running.
Some hours of exploring the KDE desktop environment later (I use - a highly customized - Gnome on my ‘main’ computer from which I’m writing this - for ~8+ years), I had found that I’d need at least 4-6 weeks studying and customizing KDE before I get it into a productive state.
So I tried to install a fresh Manjaro Gnome in the same way but this didn’t work any longer. Calamares returnes to its options screen when selecting the boot… option.
I made a new Ventoy stick (version 1.1.05) and copied fresh Manjaro downloads to it: same ‘result’, no matter which flavour (desktop environment).
And I installed the SUSE-Imagewriter and made a second installation stick therewith: similar ‘result’.
It failes with the same error messages, that Calamares comes to, if you try a bit harder to get it out of its loop:
mount: /run/miso/sfs/rootfs: unable to read xattr id index table.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
ERROR; Failed to mount '/dev/loop3/'
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you are finished
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[rootfs ~]#
…
…
…
ERROR: Root device mounted successfully, but /sbin/init does not exist.
Bailing out, you are on your own. Good luck.
First the obvious thing:
did you check the integrity of the ISO that you downloaded?
And, for Ventoy:
did you do the same check to verify the integrity of the ISO that ended up on this USB device?
I compared the checksums of every download - same failure for 6 files distributed to 3 sticks.
Well, the checksum comparisons did not fail - the install did.
The weird thing: It worked once, one time without any quirk - a week ago.
I think that was the direct predecessor of the now current KDE-iso.
But a further trial with that one from Github fails now in the same way.
I just clicked download (full version) cause I wanted to see what widgets KDE offers and installed it with no office package - to amend it with LibreOffice-fresh later.
Since I was forced to look a bit deeper into KDE: I might like it more than I first thought - but the effort to customize it will take too long now, before I need the mobile device for a journey.
And the current installation problems have broken my trust to the system - can obviously not control it.
ok - so it isn’t actually the Gnome version, but KDE Plasma you are interested in and have an issue with.
Right?
If you need something that works - and keeps working for years on end, with minimal or no effort:
use Mint (Ubuntu based) or Debian
Xebian is a distribution much like Arch - it is the rolling release of Debian, called: “Sid”
It’s the Debian unstable branch - very much on the bleeding edge like Arch.
I have used it for years - and am considering using it again.
… the updates are much smaller - they use diffs instead of downloading all the whole new packages.
Only the differences - very little data consumed …
It’s the same problem with all versions now.
I wanted to temporarily get rid of KDE and go with Gnome. But that KDE-Install of May 5 is much more sticky than Windows had been.
I used Ubuntu (Gnome, then Unity, then Gnome) and had to make ppas for > ⅔ of the (for me) most important major applications, because the outdated versions in the system’s repository had bugs that had been repaired in the up-to-date versions.
So I was more than happy to stumble over manjaro and have enjoyed its freshness for … 4-6(?) years now.
exactly - none of the sticks boots (2 made with Imagewriter - KDE & Gnome, 1 with Ventoy and 4 distros)
And no it’s not a fault of Calamres - it just returns to the options query, when choosing “boot …” fails.
And no, I don’t think that it’s because “KDE is already installed”.
as far as the info is available here:
a live system not booting because of an already installed system makes absolutely no sense
the “not booting” of the live system has to have some other reason - an already existing system simply cannot cause that
I’ll (reluctantly) download KDE full version - and then boot it and install it in a VM.
I’ll also put this ISO on a Ventoy disk and proceed to boot from it - I’ll even start the installer, but I’ll not install, of course, as that would wipe my system …
I agree with al what you wrote and it’s the first time in the 30(?) years in which I used live systems that I have such problems.
I’m at a complete loss with this system - close to despair.
Starting/booting an ISO from an external medium
USB-stick with Ventoy and the ISO on it, for example
should not have anything to do with what is already present on some other disk connected to the same system.
It could not …
I have zero idea what the cause might be of you not being able to simply boot an ISO from some external medium.
I can boot any ISO just fine -
BSD, any Linux, Windows …
what is on the other hdd / platter does not matter or come into play even one tiny bit …
Just a short interim report: My new Ventoy stick became bootable again!
And cordial thanks @ ‘Nachlese’ and also ‘Phemisters’.
(Will report more tomorrow - but have to get some sleep, before exhaustion becomes overwhelming.)
Firstly: sorry for the delay, … and thanks @ all who contributed!
“Actually” I knew all of what’s been posted here and should have remembered.
The reason for my trouble (and the only issue) had been a corrupted usb stick.
… which came from “forgetting” that I already had a working installation on the target system, the detour to the other computer and probably(?) a slack joint of the usb hub I used to prepare the sticks.
(I never unplug a stick before the system shows it as successfully unmounted (). That maybe why I’ve weaned myself from using sync explicitly. And I didn’t use it now.)
When I recalled that I have an external drive with old Manjaro installations, I tested whether the target system would boot from a usb port anyway - and it did!
So I plugged the (corrupt) Ventoy stick into the Target system (KDE running), downloaded the Manjaro-Gnome-iso directly to the Ventoy stick and tested whether the (before failing) Manjaro-KDE-iso would boot (and install) now.
… and it did!
(Obviously the before corrupt Manjaro-Gnome-iso - and nothing else - prevented booting with this stick.)
@ ‘Nachlese’ & 'soundofthunder": you don’t need to download/use gparted explicitly since the install offers the same functionality. Still, doing it per gparted before may’ve been more convenient.
The bottom line is that ‘Phemisters’ made me think about the health of the usb stick, which had been the issue and led to the solution.
The misleading(?) title of this thread is what a clueless user observes (no error message, just the looping) and the rising panic left me clueless before I started this thread.
). That maybe why I’ve weaned myself from using sync explicitly. And I didn’t use it now.)
