Arch on external hd

I have arch installed on my 40gb exterbal hard drive. The 'root' filesystem is defined as /dev/sda1 in /etc/fstab.
The problem is that depending on a pcs config, this changes. For example if another pen drive is plugged in it may be ./dev/sda1 instead and boot will fail. The same happens if a SATA hard drive is installed - they register as /dev/sdx.
I get dumped to a command line where i have to remunt / rwx, edit fstab and reboot. This gets annoying, how do live cds, and other distros that boot from pen drives get around this?
Also on a differnet note i cant get a working xorg.conf, Xorg -config creates a file but when i use it all i get is a black screen with the default X cursor. I can run Xorg without xorg.conf but at the moment its not displaying enough colours- i can see lines on gradients.
I run Xfce4 and previously the problem went away when i uinstalled xorg-video-drivers, but after a comlete reinstall the problem persists.
Again how to pen drive based distros and live cds get around this?
Any ideas?

Hi I have a problem on boot how did you solved it? (description of my problem is here http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=19434)

Similar Messages

Can't boot Arch from external HDD

Hi, well first off this is not my first Arch Linux installation, I'm using Arch for a little over a year now (coming from slack). But this is my first attempt to have Arch on an external HDD.
Alrighty, the situation is as follows: A rather new computer (supports booting from USB devices and the bios is set to boot from removable devices first) with a built in HDD and an external HDD that's connected to that computer via USB.
What I did: I connected the external HDD to the computer and booted off a 2008.6 Overlord core-CD.
Arch-Live recognized the internal HDD as sda and the external HDD as sdb.
I partitioned the external HDD using cfdisk and ran mkfs.ext3 on it (I didn't use any switches with that).
I started the installer, set my mount points (I should mention I'm not gonna use a swap partition here), installed the packages, well just went through the installation routine and installed grub in the MBR of sdb (the external HDD).
Then I rebooted. And this is what doesn't work: When I boot that computer with the external HDD connected the computer completely hangs right before grub would come up. It freezes completely, ctrl+alt+del doesn't work, I need to use the powerswitch to reboot the computer.
So I put the Arch-CD back in the CD drive trying to boot into my Arch System on the external HDD. So I started typing:
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdb1 ro vga=773
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
When I try to boot off that grub tells me that there is no such device as hd1,0. The funny thing is, that the auto copmletion in grub works for the kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 but it doesn't for the device /dev/sdb1, in fact even root=/de<tab> returns a "unrecognized string" message.
So this is what I did and I can't boot off my external HDD, neither can I boot into my system on the external hdd from the cdrom.
What am I missing here?

The harddrive you boot from is in my experience always hd0. Could this mean your external disc is hd2?
Have you tried chainloading from the installer cd to your external disc?

Installed Arch on external usb drive: Drive errors after reboot

I installed Arch on my external usb hard drive and everything seemed to be working fine. After rebooting though, I had a bunch of filesytem errors (ext3) and the system was unstable. I am guessing that this has to do with the unloading of the usb modules at shutdown. If this happens to early, then the root drive doesn't have a chance to shutdown properly, hence the filesystem errors.
Anyone know how to solve this?
Thanks!

EtreCheck looks at your log files for any kernel I/O errors. That is what it is reporting. EtreCheck just reports what it finds and tries to avoid judgements exception the most extreme cases. The drive might be OK. I am seeing more reports of this than I would have expected. It may just be a problem with Yosemite. It really prefers SSD disks in all cases. On my own machine, I have seen a slow external drive exhibit classic failure symptoms and sounds when connected via USB2. But then when I switched to FW800, it was fine. Other people are reporting that when they downgraded back to Mavericks, their disk errors went away.
So, I don't have a good answer for you. The drive might be bad, and it might be fine. Yosemite is definitely having problems with it. You may experience performance problems with that drive attached.

Installing Arch on external hard drive

Hi guys,
I'm trying to install Arch on an external hard drive, and making it bootable. However, I can't install grub on it. The grub installation failed during setup, and when I run grub-install, I get:
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: This GPT partition label has no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible!.
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists.
ubuntu@ubuntu:/$ sudo grub-install /dev/sdb3
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Attempting to install GRUB to a partitionless disk or to a partition. This is a BAD idea..
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists.
How can I boot without grub, or make grub work?

Well I tried installing GRUB onto MBR first, but it didn't work. That's when I tried to put it onto a partition, but that didn't work either, same message.
fdisk -l /dev/sdb:
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
But reading with gparted (in their order on the disk):
/dev/sdb1 ext4 142.58GB
/dev/sdb3 ext4 3.91GB (that's the Arch / partition)
/dev/sdb2 ntfs 151GB

Install Arch on External Hard Drive Bootable on Most Computers

At work I've been using a Mac OS X partition to boot up people's Macs and perform file recovery/partition manipulation. I'm trying to figure out how to install Arch Linux to an external hard drive so that it can be booted by the max number of computers, both PC and Mac. Should I go with grub, grub-efi 32 bit, grub 64, lilo, efistub, etc. for the bootloader? Can anyone give me some guidance on this?
Thanks
Last edited by duke11235 (2013-06-05 03:10:34)

With grub, you can actually specify where the config is located. So you can put the grub config for UEFI in the same path as grub.efi, then the bios grub could still be in /boot/grub like usual. Personally, I would use something else though, as I am not the biggest fan of grub.
I think that you need to read through the grub wiki page, as most of the grub knowledge that i have (which isn't much TBH) came from that page. So the fact that I know this crap and I don't use it, means to me that you haven't actually read through that page very closely. It is a wealth of information actually.
I like using the EFISTUB for UEFI, so I am more of a gummiboot or rEFInd kind of user. Then I use syslinux as my backup bios setup.
I know nothing about requiring rEFInd for UEFI booting from an external HDD. I have never actually tried it. But when I set up UEFI on my old macbook in the ESP, the entry just showed up in the mac bootloader. So unless the Macs don't respect some of the basic UEFI standards (which is a very real possibility) there should be the ability to have multiple ESPs.

Portable Arch on external USB (video detection)

Hello Forum,
For school next year, two teachers want to teach some programming in a Linux environment. They want it to be stand-alone, portable and user friendly (I think they're just sick of our Winders/Novell system.) I figured external USB hard drives were the best bet. (we tried flash drives. neat idea but still flaky)
This is totally a cinch except for one very big part which is detecting which video driver to use. I'm not sure if Arch has an "autodetect graphics" script, but I couldn't find one immediately so I wrote my own, knowing that I'd only have to support Intel, nvidia and ati cards.
I started by making a working xorg.conf using the appropriate driver for the PC I was using. Then I copied it to xorg.preconf and replaced the driver name with "UNCONFIGURED." Then I wrote this and had it run at boot.
#!/bin/bash
if lshwd | grep VGA | grep -i intel
then echo Intel graphics detected
sed 's/"UNCONFIGURED"/"i810"/' /etc/X11/xorg.preconf > /etc/X11/xorg.conf
elif lshwd | grep VGA | grep -i nvidia
then echo Nvidia graphics detected
sed 's/"UNCONFIGURED"/"nv"/' /etc/X11/xorg.preconf > /etc/X11/xorg.conf
elif lshwd | grep VGA | grep -i ati
then echo ATI graphics detected
sed 's/"UNCONFIGURED"/"ati"/' /etc/X11/xorg.preconf > /etc/X11/xorg.conf
else echo "Can't recognize a graphics card. Trying ugly video mode."
sed 's/"UNCONFIGURED"/"vesa"/' /etc/X11/xorg.preconf > /etc/X11/xorg.conf
fi
exit 0
And you have a rudimentary video detection script which at least works in my environment. I always love to hear how it might be done better/differently!
Note: seems like vesa fails unless you start X in the same mode as the console framebuffer. Unfortunately 1024x768x8 is as high as our 'lowest common denominator' system goes. Anyone have any tips on milking performance out of vesa? (anybody still USING vesa?)
thanks and cheers,
sean

Suggestions are always welcome
Check out our new forums too: http://forum.faunos.com.
One of the unique features of FaunOS is the way it handles writes. Any changes (like system updates, or new file creation in HOME or root filesystem) are done in RAM. At shutdown/reboot FaunOS asks you if you'd like to save the session. If you answer "yes", the changes are saved back to your USB key in the form of an overlay file which is unioned (aufs) with the original FaunOS image at next system startup. So one USB write per boot. These overlay files are also clearly marked so you can back track to a previously saved session. Another way to describe this is FaunOS supports root file system image snap shots.
Besides the session saves you can access and write any local hard drive from the "Storage Media" icon on the desktop.
I think you'll find many more features that are unique to FaunOS.
Glad your trying out FaunOS. We'll happily answer any questions you have on our forums.
Raymano
Last edited by raymano (2007-06-12 01:00:56)

How to upgrade/downgrade an existing Arch from external media?

Hi there!
After last upgrade of kernel and video drivers i got a blank screen with no tty console.
I read couple of threads in » Pacman & Package Upgrade Issues
I found out that the solution would be "to boot from external media, chroot and downgrade kernel to 3.9.9"
Questions:
1.How would i do that?
2.Should i downgrade or upgrade (if with the new kernel the issue is fixed)?
Thank you!

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US … tion_Media
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chroot
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Downgrade
If the new kernel is fixed, that's the best answer by far. If it's not, downgrade until it is.
Last edited by Scimmia (2013-08-10 15:54:35)

GNOME 3.4 changing remembered automount and display settings

Here's an interesting observation.
My setup is the following: notebook computer + external display.
2 user accounts A and B and I'm using GNOME 3.4 in fall-back mode.
I think it's important to know, account A was created before I bought external display and started using it as a main one. Account B was created when I already used external display.
So, I use only external display at 1920x1200 resolution:
xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1200, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA-0 connected 1920x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 518mm x 324mm
1920x1200 60.0*+
1920x1080 60.0
1600x1200 60.0
1680x1050 60.0
1280x1024 60.0
1280x960 60.0
1024x768 60.0
800x600 60.3
640x480 60.0
720x400 70.1
LVDS connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
1280x800 60.0 +
1280x720 59.9
1152x768 59.8
1024x768 59.9
800x600 59.9
848x480 59.7
720x480 59.7
640x480 59.4
I also have a bunch of external USB drives connected to this notebook computer and they get automounted with the help of udisks2 helper:
mount |grep udis
/dev/sdb1 on /run/media/A/9d244934-d9fa-4a8e-8dd7-5c595f5518cf type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uhelper=udisks2)
So, I boot my Arch Linux, external display is connected and notebook is configured (by clicking Fn+Display key to choose to output video signal to external display only), I see GDM. So far so good, only external display is used, choosing automatically correct native resolution of 1920x1200.
I enter user account password in GDM, GNOME starts loading.
What happens for user A is that:
- notebook's display gets lit up, showing video output in its native resolution of 1280x800
- external display duplicates the video output apparently in this 1280x800 resolution (because the image is kind of zoomed and unscaled, blurred: because it's not a native resolution)
- I have to click Fn+Display key to switch available modes and choose one when only external display is used. When it's done, native resolution of 1920x1200 is chosen for external display and all is good.
However, when I resume from sleep notebook when logged in as user A, even though the external display is used in native resolution, just as it's supposed to be, I can see that notebook's screen is glowing, but not showing any video output. I need then to turn off power for it pushing Fn+Sun (an icon depicting sun with one half filled, and the other empty signifying on/off modes) .
The USB disks. When GNOME is loaded for user A I can see in Places my drives, but I have to manually click them to get them mounted. When resuming from sleep, I have to do it again. They're automatically detected, but aren't mounted.
All of that shouldn't be normally happening. Why?
Because for user B none of that is true.
External display works as expected on GNOME's start, when resuming from sleep under user B notebook's screen never isn't glowing. USB disks are automounted when user session is loaded, or OS is resumed from sleep.
Obviously, I want the same for user A. But there aren't really any settings to tweak, at least none that I know of or could find myself.
It would seem that something like session settings are different for these two user accounts, but I know really little about session management in GNOME. Might be something else.
I would appreciate it if you shared your insights or ideas as to how to make user A GNOME session to behave much like user B's in respect to displays and mounting of external USB drives.
Last edited by xCrucialDudex (2012-10-13 07:56:41)

I have the same problem as you. I can't access the system settings nor the online accounts thing. I guess we will have to wait till the next patch or something. Here is the bug report.

Oracleasm listdisks is not listing all disk groups and returning "strange special characters" and disks groups are dismounting unexpected

Hi everybody,
I have a 3 node Oracle Cluster with verstion 11.2.0.3.0 installed using ASM/ACFS/ADVM.
Red Hat 5.7 - Kernel 2.6.18-371.12.1.el5 64bits
OracleASM version:
     oracleasm-support-2.1.8-1.el5
     oracleasm-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5-2.0.5-1.el5
     oracleasmlib-2.0.4-1.el5
On may, 2014 we had a physical failure in our storage system and all our disk partitions were completely lost.
The Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle RDBMS haven't needed to be reinstalled because they were healthy.
The Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) was lost (it was composed by three ASM disk groups in a redundant structure) and after recreation of the OCR disk groups I recover the Oracle Registry information from backup.
All cluster information were recovered (listener, SCAN, VIP, databases and services)
Databases could not be started because all ASM disk groups have been lost and oracle ASM instance (asmcmd -p) was showing all disk groups, but they were all "empty" - the physical partition related with them were recreated.
All the "old" disk groups were dropped, and the "new" disk groups were recreated and all the backups from the databases were restored.
After all services were up, and the environment seems to be OK, I check the healthiness of it, by executing the oracle cluster post-installation tool and others verify tools (crsctl and srvctl), well all returning messages saying that the environment was completely OK and no errors were found or generated (including in many log files I have inspected)
After 2 weeks from the completely recover of the environment, without any error/failure message been received from it, the disk groups started to dismount unexpectedly, from whatever node and not only one specific disk group stops, but any one of them, any time.
I opened a SR in Metalink (Oracle Support) and they conduct me to upgrade RedHat kernel version and OracleASM version.
Simultaneously I opened a Case Solution in RedHat to help me identify the better way to do the upgrade in advantage of the Oracle specifications.
From:
rpm -qa | grep kernel
kernel-devel-2.6.18-274.el5
kernel-headers-2.6.18-274.el5
kernel-2.6.18-274.el5
rpm -qa | grep oracleasm
oracleasm-support-2.1.8-1.el5
oracleasmlib-2.0.4-1.el5
oracleasm-2.6.18-274.el5-2.0.5-1.el5
To:
rpm -qa | grep kernel
kernel-devel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5
kernel-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5
kernel-headers-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5
rpm -qa | grep oracleasm
oracleasm-support-2.1.8-1.el5
oracleasm-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5-2.0.5-1.el5
oracleasmlib-2.0.4-1.el5
Well, after this upgrade less times the disk groups dismounted, but they continue dismounting from whatever node, any disk group, any time.
So, I opened another SR in Metalink (3-10143566371 still open) and they are conducting me again to upgrade the RedHat kernel version and OracleASM version.
Information about OracleASM:
# oracleasm listdisks
ACFS
FRA
OCR01
OCR02
OCR03
$ asmcmd -p
ASMCMD [+] > ls -l
State    Type    Rebal Name
MOUNTED EXTERN N      ACFS/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      ARCH/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      DEV/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      DIR_LOG/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      JAVA_ARCHIVE/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      MSAF/
MOUNTED NORMAL N      OCR/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      PRD_DATA/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      PRD_REDO1/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      PRD_REDO2/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      PRD_REDO3/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      PRD_REDO4/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      RASTR/
MOUNTED EXTERN N      STAGE/
This is what happens when execute "oracleasm scandisks":
# oracleasm scandisks
Reloading disk partitions: done
Cleaning any stale ASM disks...
Scanning system for ASM disks...
Instantiating disk "ùìÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿìóæþÿ¥Ï¨®Ð¢"
Unable to instantiate disk "ùìÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿìóæþÿ¥Ï¨®Ð¢"
Instantiating disk "ü´ñõ
                        ñõúìsö"
Unable to instantiate disk "ü´ñõ
                                ñõúìsö"
~±Ã1~u·}cÿ-Ûg disk "
¾s
~±Ã1~u·}cÿ-Ûinstantiate disk "
¾s
Instantiating disk "à·Öªß³Ö½Þ®hìëÖßßÞÖÛÜØÖÕ"
Unable to instantiate disk "à·Öªß³Ö½Þ®hìëÖßßÞÖÛÜØÖÕ"
Instantiating disk "êËbkî,c
~,XZ±´b¹u²´biÅr"
Unable to instantiate disk "êËbkî,c
~,XZ±´b¹u²´biÅr"
Instantiating disk "
PuTTYPuTTYUnable to instantiate disk "
kÍ3|úùõ/øÊInstantiating disk "u
i)ïìL"
kÍ3|úùõ/øÊe to instantiate disk "u
My question is: "This will really solve the problem?"
Another: "Oracle really understood what is happening and they can help me to solve this problem?"
Final: "Can anyone please help me this problem?"

Hi,
my two cent.
Wait for the SR feedback.
But for the future I advice you to do an ASM Metadata backup to be able to restore this data if you lost
configurations or complete disks and so on.
asmcmd md_backup -b <Pfad>/Filename
and also an ocrconfig backup via crontab.
ocrconfig -local -manualbackup
regards

Arch corrupts FS on external USB drive.

Good day almighty All,
I have a Dell Latitude E6520 laptop with SSD drive, which is probably unrelated to the problem.
Recently I decided to install Arch linux on it, but before that, being a bloody smart person, I decided to back up existing windows partition and CentOS filesystem to the external HDD connected with some noname SATA-to-USB connector.
(Actually it has a name, which is "Bus 002 Device 009: ID 14cd:6116 Super Top M6116 SATA Bridge").
Enclose has my old 500GB Segate in it with LVM partition.
So the box was booted with CentOS installed, first 2048 sectors of the drive and windows partitions were dumped with dd to the files on external HDD.
Could not tell which FS was on the volume, but most probably ext3.
After that I installed Arch (base, base-devel, grub as per installation manual), changed CentOS GRUB-0.9 to GRUB2, rebooted into arch, was unpleasantly surprised by the missing ifconfig, rebooted back into Arch usb, installed net-tools, rebooted into Arch, installed various small things like vim and KDE minimal, added missing ttf-dejavu, still could not boot into KDM - startx only.
Everything was going well so far.
Then it happened.
I mounted my USB drive from Arch and tried to dump on it CentOS partition.
Somewhere at the mark of 30-40Gb from the start I got Input/Output errors and that's it - partition is dead.
When I tried to remount it I've got:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/lenovo01-data,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
I ran fsck on other laptop (Fedora 17) and got file system fixed but empty (well, lots of errors, everything was linked under lost+found).
RIP my backup (I have a copy on the storage and this one will be accessed via network only
I re-created FS (ext3), copied on it couple gigs of test files, connected drive to dell, mounted FS, "ls" the dir, all good.
Unmounted FS, mounted again - get what is quoted above - I/O errors.
The same drive on the same laptop works without any problem with installed CentOS and live GRML so it is not a hardware itself.
So far:
1. external drive can be mounted without problem when it is just connected to Arch
2. After some data traffic it starts to produce I/O errors.
3. When good FS is unmounted and then mounted again the story is the same - I/O errors.
4. As soon as it happened I cannot change FS on drive, I cannot change partition table and so on. fdisk and mkfs completed without error but FS is not there and attempt to mount produces the error above.
Below is some info about installation:
System is installed on encrypted with Luks LVM partition.
External HDD is not encrypted.
[root@darkstar ~]# uname -a
Linux darkstar 3.6.3-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Oct 22 10:23:56 CEST 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@darkstar ~]# pacman -Suy
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core is up to date
extra is up to date
community is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
there is nothing to do
[root@darkstar ~]#
# dmesg after connection of USB drive
[Nov 2 14:08] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci_hcd
[ +0.085473] scsi8 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.0
[ +1.002053] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access Mass Storage Device PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ +0.001279] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773166 512-byte logical blocks: (500 GB/465 GiB)
[ +0.000664] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ +0.000011] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[ +0.000562] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
[ +0.000011] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ +0.002354] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
[ +0.000011] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ +0.049185] sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3
[ +0.003149] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
[ +0.000022] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ +0.000006] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[Nov 2 14:09] usb 2-1.1: reset high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci_hcd
And this is dmesg after I tried to mount fs created on other box.
There was also XFS volume on the same VG.
[Nov 2 14:15] EXT4-fs (dm-8): mounted filesystem without journal. Opts: (null)
[Nov 2 14:16] EXT4-fs (dm-8): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
[ +0.036964] EXT4-fs (dm-8): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
[ +0.026500] EXT4-fs (dm-8): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
[ +0.040551] XFS (dm-8): bad magic number
[ +0.000023] XFS (dm-8): SB validate failed
Will appreciate any help,
Thanks,
Eugene.

Little bit of testing, just out of curiousity - do not have time to dig into it, sorry.
It puts garbage starting with "USBC" in first 32 bytes (the rest of the string varies) and then skips first 4K.
Tested it with CentOS - at least its 2.6 kernel works as expected.
[root@darkstar test]# uname -a
Linux darkstar 2.6.32-279.11.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Oct 16 15:57:10 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@darkstar test]# perl -e 'print "a"x5120' |dd bs=512 count=10 of=/dev/sdb
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
5120 bytes (5.1 kB) copied, 0.258486 s, 19.8 kB/s
[root@darkstar test]# dd bs=512 count=10 if=/dev/sdb status=noxfer |od -tax1
0000000 a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a
61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61
0012000
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
[root@darkstar test]# uname -a
Linux darkstar 2.6.32-279.11.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Oct 16 15:57:10 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@darkstar test]# uname -a
Linux darkstar 3.6.7-1.el6.elrepo.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Nov 18 08:35:06 EST 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@darkstar test]# perl -e 'print "7"x5120' |dd bs=512 count=10 of=/dev/sdb
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
5120 bytes (5.1 kB) copied, 0.303432 s, 16.9 kB/s
[root@darkstar test]# dd bs=512 count=10 if=/dev/sdb status=noxfer |od -tax1
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
0000000 U S B C : soh nul nul nul dc4 nul nul nul nul nl *
55 53 42 43 ba 01 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 00 0a 2a
0000020 nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nl nul nul nul nul nul nul nul ^
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 de
0000040 a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a
61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61 61
0001000 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37
0012000
[root@darkstar test]# uname -a
Linux darkstar 3.6.7-1.el6.elrepo.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Nov 18 08:35:06 EST 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@darkstar test]#
Last edited by Eugene (2012-11-26 01:15:46)

Arch: Install to & run from External USB Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

I wanted to play with ArchLinux 2009.02, but replacing the existing Debian-Lenny on the laptop's HDD wasn't an option. So I experimented with installing Arch on an external USB Hard Disk Drive.
I have tried to make this "newbie-friendly", so I hope the more experienced will forgive the detail.
Materials:
Three year old Dell Inspiron 6000
CPU = 2.0 GHz Pentium
RAM = 2.0 GB
Internal HDD = 80 GB
Internal CD/DVD R/RW
External USB HDD = Freecom FHD-2 Pro 80 GB
Archlinux 2009.02 install CD
Steps to install:
1. I put the Archlinux install CD in the drive and connected the external 80 GB HDD in the USB port.
2. When the Dell laptop was booted, I pressed F2 to enter the BIOS setup. I edited the boot sequence to the following:
Internal CD/DVD
External USB device
Internal HDD
On the Dell, you can also press F12 to select the preferred boot device for that boot.
3. I started the laptop and the Archlinux installation menu came up and I proceeded with installation following the "Official Arch Linux Install Guide" and the "Beginners Guide".
4. Used km to change to UK keyboard layout and then began the installer script (/arch/setup). I was installing from the core CD so I skipped the network steps.
5. HDD preparation.
This was fairly straightforward with two cautions:
(a) Make very sure that the external HDD (sdb) is selected for the operations.
(b) Remember to set the Bootable Flag for the first (/) partition on the HDD.
I chose 20 GB for /, 2 GB for swap and the remainder for /home.
6. The package selection and installation was fairly straightforward.
7. Configuration of System
This was section was straightforward with one warning:
USB had to be added to the HOOKS in the /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file!
I found this to be essential for my external USB HDD to function as a bootable device. Otherwise I got the same sorts of errors relating to unrecognisable file system types that other people have reported in the forum.
The relevant line from the end of the edited /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file is below:
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata usb filesystems"
8. Installation of GRUB was the other point where caution and/or correction was necessary.
When it asked where GRUB should be installed, I had to select sdb (my external USB HDD) and not any of the particular partitions on sdb. If the root partition sdb1 was selected then the laptop won't boot from the external USB HDD.
The GRUB /boot/grub/menu.lst as written by the installation routine specifies hd(1,0) which doesn't work when you try to reboot from the external USB HDD. When you boot Arch from the external USB HDD, as far as Arch is concerned - at that point in time - the external USB HDD is the first drive in the system. To fix this:
(a) When the Arch boot menu comes up, press e to edit the grub entries.
(b) Change the first line to hd(0,0)
(c) To the end of the kernel line add rootdelay=8
(d) Press b to boot the system with these temporary corrections.
(e) Once your Arch system has booted, edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst to make the above changes permanent.
The relevant portion of my /boot/grub/menu.lst looks like the following:
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/... ro rootdelay=8
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux Fallback
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/... ro rootdelay=8
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
9. The laptop happily and consistently boots Arch Linux from the external USB HDD when it's plugged in before startup/booting.
Running Arch from the external USB HDD seems as quick as running Debian from the internal HDD.
So if there is a performance penalty associated with using an external USB HDD, my wife and I haven't noticed.
In summary, the three essential points to address during installation to an external USB HDD are:
Remember to set the bootable flag for the first partition.
Add USB to the HOOKS for /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file.
Correct the /etc/grub/menu.lst file.
I hope this is helpful.
Ted

Hi Rookie,
As you say, it is worth remembering the rootfstype= option for the kernel line just in case someone still has problems with GRUB after making all the other changes.
I was working with the most recent Arch 2009.2 release.
I only got messages about unrecognisable file system type when I tried booting with the "stock" or "as-installed" GRUB (before I edited /boot/grub/menu.lst). After editing /boot/grub/menu.lst to identify the drive correctly and add rootdelay, GRUB was able to do the rest and everything worked OK without any error messages.
Best wishes,
Ted

[SOLVED] external USB HDD fails to install arch w/boot device ERROR

I've been working on installing arch linux via an external USB harddrive (specifically seagate free agent go 320GB) for 1 week now, and everytime I failed - until TODAY! thankfully I found this post, where user Dieter@be references this link, which displays BUG ID#17231 at the top titled "Can't boot LiveCDs 2009.08 (/dev/archiso doesn't show up)". the bug report states ::
I can't boot the LiveCDs 2009.08, neither netinstall nor core.
When it tries to access /dev/archiso it shows these messages:
:: Waiting for boot device ...
Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/archiso ...
ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds ...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, logout when you are finished
ramfs$
reading further thru this bug report, I found a very insightful post by Heiko Baums (cyberpatrol) where he says the following, and I quote ::
Problem found. The link /dev/archiso wasn't created.
After
ramfs$ cd /dev
ramfs$ ln -s sr0 archiso
ramfs$ exit
it continued booting correctly.
And sg was also loaded after this. ;-)
as you see, the bug report was for the CD version, not the USB version - yet, my issue with the USB bootdisk was the same, (no matter which boot disk I tried = netinstall, core, .img, .iso, etc) meaning I got the EXACT same error = "ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds ..." ! well, I figured that I'd try one of the new fancy ISOs found @ http://build.archlinux.org/isos/ - specifically I use/used archlinux-2010.03.04-netinstall-x86_64.iso.
upon running Unetbootin from windows 7, and choose to install the ISO archlinux-2010.03.04-netinstall-x86_64.iso to my first partition on my USB harddrive (that first partition being FAT32, and had already been set as bootable previously), that completed successfully. I rebooted, and choose to boot from USB drive, the ISOlinux bootloader came up as normal, I choose DEFAULT and off it went.... sure enough, it errored out at the same place as listed in the bug report ::
:: Waiting for boot device ...
Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/archiso ...
ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds ...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, logout when you are finished
ramfs$
this time though, I issued the following 2 commands ::
ln -s /dev/sdb1 /dev/archiso
exit
from there, EVERYTHING worked as it should!
to recap: the solution for me was create a symbolic link pointing /dev/archiso => to my partition which held the archlinux netinstall (which is where I told Unetbootin to install it to)! done and done. I felt this needed to be posted here, as I could not find this solution after MANY google searches, archlinux wiki searches, forum searches, etc. honestly, I think it would be prudent to have this tidbit of information added to the Install from USB stick archwiki page as a side note to those that may run into this issue.
this is not the FIRST time I have run into this problem with a USB install of archlinux, but this is the FIRST time I found a fix! thanks to all the great posts I reference here, without this information I dont think I would have been able to install archlinux on my new alienware m11x laptop.
-peace-
PS: no amount of rootdelay=XX nor pmedia=usb nor usbdelay=XX would work in my above attempts either.
Last edited by fnord0 (2010-03-12 04:54:26)

FAT16 here. Parted Magic sees my USB drive as sdd. I tried your way and surprise, surprise, it didn't work.
ln -sf /dev/sdd /dev/archiso
mount -t vfat /dev/archiso /bootmnt
mount : Invalid argument
I thought maybe you meant mount -f vfat /dev/archiso /bootmnt instead. I tried it too, it resulted in a kernel panic.
What else can I try besides installing from a IDE/SATA CD drive ? Because this issue is NOT solved. At least not for me. Wonder if "archlinux-2010.04.05-netinstall-i686.iso" from the here will solve it (really hope so).
SOLVED IT HERE (with yet another image): http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=93645
Last edited by DSpider (2010-04-17 14:21:27)

Installing Arch on a non-empty external HDD.

Hi. I'd like to install Arch on my external HDD, where i already keep my music. It still has ~120GB of free space while my main laptop HDD is almost filled up.
The format of the external HDD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so i can make a new partition while keeping the files. (I'm doing it on OS X).
how do i make the partition right so that i'll be able to install Arch? Which version should i download? I'm thinking Core USB Image but I'm not sure.
Any help is appreciated because I'm a total beginner.

IIRC, when I re-partitioned my external USB (NTFS) to build Arch, I just shrank the existing partition, booted up with an ArchLive CD, and let the installer create the necessary filesystems in the available space.

Does arch support booting from an external firewire cdrom drive?

as above?

If the mobo provides that function through bios provisions the arch system should boot.
EDIT: There may be issues with udev and mkinitcpio to ensure the boot sequence is not terminated by the udev detection.
Last edited by lilsirecho (2008-05-14 15:18:04)

Switching to Arch: Outstanding issue w/ printing

I've spent the last six months or so switching to Arch and intel (from OS X/Debian and ppc). I did think I was getting there but I've got stuck on some issues which seem small in some ways but are really problematic given the kind of work I need to do. Part of the problem is that I don't know where to start trying to diagnose or solve them.
I currently have three such issues. One has to do with getting my internal mic to work in usable fashion. The second is to do with the use of external monitors (e.g. for LCD projection). The third is the one which is really, really problematic. When it really matters, I can use one of the university's windows boxes for the mic. And the external monitor is manageable because it works and only causes issues on disconnect. But the third I have no work around for and I'm getting kind of desperate.
Generally speaking, printing works fine. My machine is set up to use a number of different printers: a Dell networked printer on my home LAN, an HP in my office via USB and another HP via USB in another office I work in. Printing is generally fast and good quality.
There are two problems. First, printing periodically gets "stuck" and the only way to get it unstuck is to kill all jobs in the queue, disconnect the printer, switch the printer off and then restart, reconnect and reprint everything. Even this is not impossible. I can get everything printed - it is just a question of figuring out what hasn't printed and remembering to recheck everything each time the printer stalls.
Second, certain documents print so slowly that it is, in practice, impossible to actually print them. I'm not sure what is special about these documents. Usually this happens with PDF files but it is certainly not all PDF files. It affects any which contain graphics but it also affects a lot which do not. Other PDFs print extremely fast.
For example, I am currently trying to print a PDF version of a paper. The job was sent at 18:42:37 BST. It is now 19:16 BST and it has so far managed to print 6 sides (3 pages). I'm printing it from acroread because it refused to print at all from Okular or the command line. This particular PDF is an older JSTOR file and these often seem to be affected. Recent stuff from JSTOR prints fine but older archives do not.
pdfinfo for the file gives:
Producer: iText 2.0.1 (by lowagie.com)
CreationDate: Tue Dec 4 07:13:41 2007
ModDate: Tue Dec 4 07:13:41 2007
Tagged: yes
Pages: 16
Encrypted: no
Page size: 595 x 842 pts (A4)
File size: 339426 bytes
Optimized: no
PDF version: 1.4
pdffonts:
name type emb sub uni object ID
Helvetica Type 1 no no no 134 0
DRRZGT+Code2000 CID TrueType yes yes yes 135 0
Times-Roman Type 1 no no no 140 0
Times-Italic Type 1 no no no 141 0
Times-Bold Type 1 no no no 6 0
acroread's properties for the document suggests that the non-embedded fonts are being substituted. For example, Arial MT is being used in place of Helvetica and Times New Roman PS MT is being substituted for Times.
Here's the command being run from ps:
hp-LaserJet-1320-series 410 <username> A9ROojFUrV 1 Duplex=DuplexNoTumble finishings=3 noHPBookletBackCover noHPBookletFilter HPBookletPageOrder=Normal HPBookletPageSize=A4 HPBookletScaling=Proportional HPEconoMode=PrinterDefault HPOption_PaperPolicy=PromptUser HPOption_Tray2 noHPOption_Tray3 noHPStraightPaperPath InputSlot=Auto InstalledMemory=16_31MB noManualFeed media=A4 MediaType=Unspecified number-up=1 PageRegion=A4 PageSize=A4 Resolution=1200dpi sides=two-sided-long-edge Smoothing=PrinterDefault job-uuid=urn:uuid:18b2396b-4dca-38bc-561d-a85b5fc4d85d job-originating-host-name=localhost time-at-creation=1336758157 time-at-processing=1336758157 /var/spool/cups/d00410-001
Any sort of insight or suggestion will be gratefully received and I am more than happy to post further information if somebody tells me what is relevant. I've enabled debugging info in CUPS but I'm not sure what might be of interest and there is a lot of output.
I'm looking for, ideally, a solution which will allow me to just print (preferably solving both problems but at least the second). A second best outcome would be some sort of work around which would allow me to convert these files or something and then print them. (But convert to what?) Failing either of those, I am definitely interested in knowing what I might read, inspect or experiment with.
Given that printing other files works just fine, there must be something about how CUPS is handling files with some particular characteristics, mustn't there? I just have no idea which characteristics of the files are relevant or what it is doing. "I didn't manage to read the/your paper because Linux doesn't like older PDFs" just doesn't sound like a good excuse...
Last edited by cfr (2012-05-11 18:34:07)

ewaller wrote:@cfr: Which interface are you using?
Do you mean am I using cups or something else or do you mean to configure the printers or something else?
I usually use the web interface to configure the printers for cups. I'm using the "recommended" HP drivers for the HP printers (and I think I'm using a proprietary ppd for the Dell printer from Dell but I use that printer much less than the others and not for printing these sorts of files).
I see the same problem with an HP LaserJet 1320 and a P3010 series (I think it is a 3015).
I discovered that if I switch to a gutenprint driver things are better for at least some JSTOR files on the 1320 but I still have issues. For some reason, it doesn't then want to print the last page (no matter how many pages there are) and this driver can only print at 600dpi and has fewer options. The printer is waiting for more data but cups thinks everything has been sent successfully. If I resend the last page to the printer, I then get two copies but one prints much later than the other. I assume this is another way in which something to do with the spooling or the way that cups sends data to the printer is going wrong and maybe connected with why printers get "stuck". Aside from the slowness issue there is definitely something not quite right about the communication between computer and printer. It is as though cups has two speeds: super quick (spools so fast the printer can't keep up); and super slow.
I've tried printing problematic PDFs from at least Okular, acroread and using lp on the command line.
I don't understand how the suggestion concerning converting them to png is supposed to work. Do you convert each page to a separate png file? I guess you could script it but it still seems like a convoluted process. (And I assume it rules out double-sided printing.)

Arch on external hd

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