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Good night! I am having trouble installing Arch 32 from USB. I didn't just have this problem on a laptop, I tried it on my girlfriend's and a friend's, and the same thing always happens to me. When I am at the selection screen to install archlinux.
I mean
* Arch Linux 32 install medium (i686, BIOS)
* Arch Linux 32 install medium (i686, BIOS) with speach
* Boot existing OS
* Run Memtest 86+ (RAM test)
* Hardware information (HDT)
* Reboot
* Power Off
You know, the first screen.
Well, when I select the first option, it tries to start something, but puts me back to choose, and nothing happens. I can hit enter many times and stay in that loop. When I hold enter and and try to get in and out quickly, I can see that each time the key is pressed, the following appears below:
"Loading / arch / boot / i868 / vmlinuz-linux ... failed: No such file or directory"
I repeat, this happened to me on all the computers that I inserted the pendrive and tried to install. I recorded the image using UltraIso, because it has already been useful on other occasions to install Ubuntu, Lubuntu and Arch Linux (standard) on a 64bit pc. I always used that software and the same flash drive, and I never had a problem. Just in case it's a 32GB Kingston DataTraveler G4, which I then use to burn Linux Mint on another PC (So it works). The ISO I used is the latest from the Arch Linux 32 website, but I also tried an older one and the same thing happened to me. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
Thank you!
Postscript: I don't know if it's useful but the BIOS of the PC on which I want to install Arch32 is Phoenix SecureCore (tm) and the version is BPPNV10A.86A.0018.2012.0523.1327 (I say this because on other PCs it threw me the same error)
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Hmm, that file appears to be present on the latest iso I just downloaded. That suggests it's not mounting the iso at all. I can't remember off the top of my head which keys to press to edit the entries in syslinux unfortunately.
Last edited by levi (2021-05-20 04:33:43)
Architecture: pentium4, Testing repos: Yes, Hardware: EeePC 901+2GB RAM+OS half on the SD card.
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Mmh. I just created an ISO and run it:
wget https://mirror.archlinux32.org/archisos … 6-i686.iso
dd if=archlinux32-2021.04.06-i686.iso of=/dev/sdb conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress
There are several hickups at the moment:
- the login screen presents a cow and a blinking cursor, then no "archiso#" appears. You can
Press Ctrl-C to get a shell.
- coredumpctl shows me that espeak is constantly core dumping
- there is a python3 script hogging old machines.
- The new python installer is currently not yet available for BIOS-based installs upstream
Loading "/arch/boot/i686/vmlinuz-linux" is a message from syslinux trying to load the kernel
(which apparently fails). I would check some things:
- manually mount the USB stick and see whether there is a "/arch/boot/i686/vmlinuz-linux".
- check the BIOS if is is set to BIOS/Legacy Boot, Secure Boot off, USB Legacy on, etc.
- can you boot another USB stick with another Linux on it on the same machine?
You can press "TAB" in a syslinux entry to see what it is doing and also change it. But there
is no such thing as a command line (as in Grub), as far as I can remember.
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Yes, I downloaded the latest iso at time of writing (the april one I think) and it did have a file called vlinuz-linux in the aforementioned place. As you say pressing tab after selecting the operation you which to base your edited boot string on will allow you to edit it. I suspect whatever's after root= is wrong.
Edit: But yeah, it sounds as if even after you've loaded your kernel for real and booted into it your troubles are only beginning.
Last edited by levi (2021-05-20 14:38:48)
Architecture: pentium4, Testing repos: Yes, Hardware: EeePC 901+2GB RAM+OS half on the SD card.
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The root= parameter comes later in the boot process, after loading the kernel and the ramdisk, you
would get "VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)" or something similar. The message
you get is really that syslinux cannot read the kernel from the USB stick.
In old BIOSes this can be caused by too big USB sticks (>2GB) or by some brands..
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I thought the 2GB limit was related to SD cards, not USB sticks, but I guess there might be another reason why 2GB is the limit. Yes, good point that the booting of the filesystem comes after the kernel boots, presumably on real systems the kernel comes from the boot folder which might well be a separate partition and only mounted as long as the bootloader is running, but booting from an iso the kernel should be readable directly from the install medium. It was in the iso I tested, which is reportedly what the OP is using too.
Edit: Also on some ARM systems I've experienced problems initing large cards in the available time for booting. But I guess on an x86 system which is half expecting the boot medium to be a slow as all hell optical disc drive, it's used to waiting about.
Last edited by levi (2021-05-20 19:56:37)
Architecture: pentium4, Testing repos: Yes, Hardware: EeePC 901+2GB RAM+OS half on the SD card.
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