[solved] Unlocking luks partitions fails at boot, no prompt.

Hello,
I have just installed Arch and I really like it so far - I'm a convert from Ubuntu. I did face a couple of problems that I have not been able to solve and have not been able to find any solutions for anywhere. The most important one at the moment is that with my two encrypted partitions.
Here's my fstab:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
#/dev/cdrom /media/cd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
#/dev/dvd /media/dvd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
#/dev/fd0 /media/fl auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/dvd udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/sda3 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sdb2 /home reiserfs user,owner,auto 0 0
/dev/sda6 /home/nerd/E reiserfs defaults 0 0
/dev/mapper/croot /home/nerd/F ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/mapper/crypt /home/nerd/D ext3 defaults 0 0
and here's my crypttab:
crypt /dev/sda5 none
croot /dev/sda7 none
I have cryptsetup installed, enabled the dm-crypt and aes-i586 kernel modules, and even edited mkinitcpio and added the encrypt hook. At boot, my computer does see both of the drives, but it just doesn't prompt for passwords, what it prints out is:
Password:!unlocking encrypted volume crypt
command failed: No key available with this passphrase.
I am able to mount the drives manually using cryptsetup, and the data is there. Is there any way for me to fix that? Thanks!
Last edited by DavidR (2009-09-19 10:32:57)

afaik, you should have 'ASK' instead of 'none' in crypttab
edit: argh. too late again
Last edited by bender02 (2009-09-18 19:35:37)

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[ Solved ] Issue with Partitioning (setting the boot flag)

I've tried to install Arch a few times. I always seem to run into this issue which affects me later on.
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Though,
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Disk /dev/sda ~465.8 GiB
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Last edited by AndyWM (2015-06-10 17:21:20)

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[SOLVED] "Loading console font" fails at boot

Hello everyone,
At each boot, the line where it loads the console font fails. The font configured in rc.conf is "161", it's the one by default on installation.
/var/log/boot
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Last edited by blno (2012-01-06 21:18:47)

Navigate to /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts, pick the font, test it by issuing
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Last edited by bohoomil (2012-01-04 22:52:51)

Mounting partition fails at boot time, but works after system is up

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Last edited by mindfall (2008-01-24 01:14:58)

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Wiki on dmraid

[SOLVED] Luks with /arch/setup installation , fails at boot

Hi all,
So I tried to install arch on virtualbox with encrypted partitions (root /, /home/ and swap), but it fails at boot.
/dev/sda1 is /boot
/dev/sda2 is swap
/dev/sda3 is /
/dev/sda4 is /home
The root partition seems to be loading fine because it asks for my password, then the boot sequence goes on, until the /home/ (apparently) :
:: Bringing up loopback interface
:: Unlocking encrypted volumes: chome..Usage: cryptsetup [-?vyrq] (...all the options...can't copy paste with virtualbox)
/sbin/cryptsetup: Unknown action
failed [FAIL]
/dev/mapper/croot: clean, 27576/457856 files, 166316/1830898 blocks
fsck.ext4: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/mapper/chome
Possibly non-existent device?
/dev/sda1: clean,29/24096 files, 20790/96356 blocks
[FAIL]
It seems that it tries to open /dev/mapper/chome but it's not mounted yet
In my /etc/crypttab, I added the lines :
chome /dev/sda4 none luks
cswap /dev/sda2 none luks
/etc/fstab (I didn't change anything, /arch/setup configured it that way) :
/dev/mapper/chome /home ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/mapper/croot / ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/mapper/cswap swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
And grub :
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/mapper/croot cryptdevice=/dev/sda3:croot ro
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
What I wanted to do was to have swap,root and home encrypted partitions mounted at boot, but maybe it is not possible?
I tried a lot of configurations for /etc/fstab and /etc/crypttab according to what I could find on the net but nothing worked. I read the whole tutorial https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … _with_LUKS but there is no config for fstab or crypttab or grub when installing with /arch/setup
Thanks for any help !
Last edited by John0000 (2012-04-12 12:50:18)

Indeed you have a point, putting password in plaintext isn't very safe.
There is a good alternative though: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … _a_Keyfile
the reason why you don't have a passphrase for root in a file somewhere is that you provide this passphrase during boot-time.
Somewhere during boot you get the option to unlock you root device by typing in a passphrase... right?
ro means that the volume is mounted read only http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount

[Solved] Problem booting root in LVM, which spans two LUKS partitions

Hello,
I recently switched to Arch from OpenSuse, and I'm having a bit of trouble getting my encrypted disks to boot properly. I have two disks, the first is a 4 TB drive set up like this:
MBR partition table
Partition 1 - Windows 7, 200GB
Partition 2 - Linux boot, 200MB
Partition 3 - Luks partition, 1.7TB
Partition 4 - Luks partition, 1.7TB
Within partition 3 and 4 is an LVM volume which spans the two partitions. The reason for that is just that I can't have a 3.4TB partition on an MBR formatted drive (as I understand it). I have the root volume and swap, etc within this LVM. The second hard drive is simply a data drive, also encrypted. My problem is that I don't know how to tell the system to open both of these encrypted partitions at boot, in order to boot the root volume. This worked fine under OpenSuse and I only needed to enter the Luks password once (it is the same for both partitions).
As it is right now, my boot parameters in /etc/default/grub look like this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet nomodeset cryptdevice=/dev/sda3:sda3_crypt root=/dev/mapper/vg_arch-root"
Currently the system boots, asks for the password to /dev/sda3, hangs for roughly 20 seconds and then kicks me into a root prompt. I can manually open /dev/sda4 at this point using cryptsetup and the system will continue booting normally... but I would like to have it set up properly, so I don't need to do that. Considering OpenSuse does this out of the box I figured it should be possible under Arch. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Last edited by keitolainen (2015-06-09 21:56:08)

As a quick update in case anyone is reading this, I cleaned up the script a bit and hopefully made it something closer to a "proper" fix.
Rather than editing /usr/lib/initcpio/hooks/encrypt directly, I did the following:
cp /usr/lib/initcpio/hooks/encrypt /etc/initcpio/hooks/
then changed the following section of /etc/initcpio/hooks/encrypt from:
# Ask for a passphrase
if [ ${dopassphrase} -gt 0 ]; then
echo ""
echo "A password is required to access the ${cryptname} volume:"
#loop until we get a real password
while ! eval cryptsetup open --type luks ${resolved} ${cryptname} ${cryptargs} ${CSQUIET}; do
sleep 2;
done
fi
to:
# Ask for a passphrase
if [ ${dopassphrase} -gt 0 ]; then
echo ""
while true ; do
echo -n "A password is required to access the ${cryptname} volume: "
read -sr password
echo $password | cryptsetup open --type luks ${resolved} ${cryptname} ${cryptargs} ${CSQUIET}
if [ $? = 0 ] ; then
break
fi
done
echo $password | cryptsetup open --type luks /dev/sda4 sda4_crypt
echo ""
fi
then edited /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and changed:
FILES=""
to:
FILES="/etc/initcpio/hooks/encrypt"
and ran
mkinitcpio
This is working well for me and I think it's a little cleaner than the solution I posted earlier. Sorry for the awkward bash, if anyone has a more elegant solution please let me know.

[SOLVED] Arch Linux Duke (2007) Fails to Boot

Folks, I have a unique and challenging problem that has exhausted my Arch Linux skills, and so I am now turning to you.
I have a vintage Pentium Pro 200 system (that’s 200 MHz folks! – 200 MHz 686 architecture – the original 686!), two CPUs, running a dual boot between Windows NT 4.0 and Arch Linux Duke (2007). It has 512 MB of RAM and a 120 GB hard drive, partitioned up between Windows NT and Linux. I built this system new in 2007, hence the dated version of Arch. It has run like a charm all these years, granted not getting that much use. After about a year of no use at all, I fired the system up last week to help with a little research for a blog post I was writing on networking Windows NT 4.0 and Mac OS 8.6. Windows NT 4.0 fired right up with no issue, and after I was done testing what needed to be tested I tried to boot over to Arch.
After a year of disuse, Arch unexpectedly and stubbornly refused to boot. The boot process started up just fine, but towards the end, it declared that it could not mount the root file system on the root device and took a kernel panic and stopped. My Arch skills have gotten a bit rusty in the last few years, but I dusted them off and went to work. My guess was a file system or superblock error. Arch wouldn’t boot, but I dragged out my trusty RIPLinux 2.9 Rescue Live CD and fired it up. It came right up and ran, and I was able to mount the Arch partition and view all the files… everything seemed to be there; it just wouldn’t boot. Windows NT 4.0 AND RIPLinux both boot and run on the machine, so the hardware is fine as well.
A little information on the disk layout. Windows NT 4.0 is in the first partition on the hard drive. The extended partition has a second Windows NT 4.0 partition (sort of a /home partition for Windows NT 4.0), followed by the main Arch partition (the one I am trying to boot), followed by a swap partition and then the largest partition, which I use to share data between Arch and Windows NT 4.0 (I have loaded an ext2/3 driver into Windows NT 4.0 and it happily accesses the Linux partitions on the box).
RIPLinux’s e2fsck did find some issues with the Arch partition and I had it repair them all. I checked again afterwards that all the files were still there, and they were. With the partition now known to be clean, and the superblock repaired from one of the backups, all should have been well. However, Arch still wouldn’t (and still won’t) boot.
RIPLinux has a kind of a chain loader function, so I had it attempt to start up Arch for me. However, this was flummoxed by the fact that Arch addresses all my hard drive partitions as /dev/sdax and RIPLinux addresses them as /dev/hdax. Hence, without a common language, it was hard to get the one to start the other. Still, using this function, I have been able to get a crippled version of Arch running on the machine again. No modules had been loaded, and so it couldn’t do almost anything, but there it was (and is), Arch Linux Duke, at the CLI level. From there, I can see all the files, I can move freely in and out of my user account and the root account, but I can’t make the thing actually boot properly.
If you have read this far, you are a trooper. Summarizing what I know, the hardware is good, the file system is clean, the superblock is good, I can mount it cleanly from a live CD and I can chain load a crippled version of Arch. Here is the boot process blow-by-blow. When I try to do a normal boot, the Windows NT 4.0 loader passes control to the Lilo boot sector I have placed on hda1 (sda1 in Duke’s parlance). Lilo takes over, present a menu and when I select Duke, takes off. Arch Linux Duke starts to boot. It gets a good long way along, all the way along to:
:: Loading udev events [Pass]
:: Mount root Read-only
:: Checking file systems
This is where it stops.
The next thing I see is:
/dev/sda6
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else) then the superblock is corrupt and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
E2fsck –b 8193 <device>
I then get a sort of character based splash screen that says
**********FILE SYSTEM CHECK FAILED ****************************
* Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root file system
* is currently mounted read-only. To remount it read-write, type:
* mount –n –o remount,rw /. When you exit the maintenance
* shell, the system will reboot automatically
Give root password for maintenance
At this point, I give the root password and enter the maintenance shell as root. I typed in “mount” and the first entry I got back is
/dev/sda6 on / type ext3 (rw)
This is exactly the root partition that the start up complains about. It is clearly there. I can see it, I can walk around it… it is clearly there. Why won’t it boot? Despite the message, the superblock is fine – it passes every test e2fsck can throw at it.
At this point, I did a “e2fsck /dev/hda6 (which is how RIPLinux would have passed it into Arch” and it says it is “clean”. I suspect that the Superblock message is because Arch sees root as sda6, while RIP passed it in as hda6...
Deciding to see what Arch would be seeing as it tried to set things up in the boot sequence, I tried the following next:
# mknod “/dev/root2” b 3 6
(“3” because RIPLinux refers to my hard drive as IDE, while Arch refers to it by major number “8”, which is SCSI. By the way, it IS an IDE drive – not sure why Arch insists on using the sdx nomenclature instead of hdx)
Then I entered “mount /dev/root2 /mnt/hda6” and “ls /mnt/hda6”
All was well. I can make the node, I can mount it, and I can see the contents. All is clearly well, but something is clearly wrong enough that Arch can’t boot.
I am totally out of ideas. I have tried every trick I know and am out of tricks. I would welcome any insights as to what I could try to get this venerable Arch installation back on its legs.
By the way, the key section of the /etc/lilo.conf file (lest anyone want to know) is:
image = /boot/vmlinuz26
root = /dev/sda6
label = ArchLinux-Duke
initrd = /boot/kernel26.img
read-only
I am stumped. Thanks in advance for any and all pointers you may be able to offer.
Last edited by mac57 (2014-06-02 17:42:21)

Folks, thanks for all your helpful comments, and I wanted to report back to you that I finally overcame the issue, and ArchLinux-Duke (2007) is once again executing flawlessly on my old Pentium Pro 200 system. I won't bother reporting here all the blind allies I went down as I tried to figure out what was wrong, but in the end, literally moments before I was about to give up and overwrite my Arch installation with a new Linux variant (antiX seemed well suited for such old and low power hardware), my attention was drawn to a note I had made in my files back in 2007 about a problem with similar symptoms. In that case, I had just deleted ZenWalk Linux from the hard drive (both Arch and Zen had been on the drive), and merged several partitions to make use of the newly free space. This had changed Arch's view of the drive lettering, and what had been its /dev/sddx root device was now /dev/sdcx. Arch failed to boot, throwing off the same errors I was seeing now. I wish I had recalled that note a month or so ago! It would have saved me a lot of work and a lot of frustration.
At any rate, as a last step, and testing the idea that maybe the drive lettering had changed for some reason, I repeatedly manually booted Arch, specifying root=/dev/sda6, then /dev/sdb6, then /dev/sdd6, and finally, /dev/sdc6. Eureka! Arch now considered itself to be on /dev/sdc6 whereas previously it had been on /dev/sda6. This got me part way there, but the boot failed at the filesystem check stage and threw me into root. I disabled the file system check in /etc/rc.sysinit and got farther. Then I cleaned up /etc/fstab to agree with the new sdc naming, and I was back on the air fully.
So, what had happened was that Arch had changed its view of the drive it was on from sda6 to sdc6. While I could not understand why this "sudden" change had occurred, at least I had a solution, and had Arch back up and running.
Trolling through the rest of my notes, I found the answer. In 2012, the Tekram SCSI card in the machine failed, and I ultimately replaced it with an Adaptec card. The Tekram card did not have a BIOS segment on it. The Adaptec card did. My guess is that this caused the two internal SCSI devices I have built into the system (Iomega ZIP and Jaz respectively) to be enumerated first, claiming the "sda" and "sdb". device names. That left "sdc" for the root device, and that is where Arch went next. This is my guess anyway.
I should have caught this issue back in 2012, at the time, but from my notes, I can see that I tested the new card thoroughly using the Windows NT 4.0 side of the machine, but never thought to bring up Arch as well. Hence, this problem lay dormant for two years, before I attempted to fire up Arch last month and blundered right into it.
It has not all been bad. I have learned more about the ext2 and ext3 file systems and superblocks in the intervening time than I will ever need to use. I have learned how to manually boot Linux on a machine whose BIOS is so old that it cannot address the disk cylinder that the kernel is on and I have completely refreshed the many general Linux skills that used to just flow from my finger tips. It has been a frustrating experience, but ultimately a successful and useful one.
Just wanted to let everyone know that this is now [SOLVED]. I would mark the post as such, but I don't see any obvious way to do that. Thanks again everyone.

[solved] Cannot complete install, grub fails to boot the new install

I'm using the 2009.08 USB image.
I've tried this 2 weeks ago, tried it again today, same result. (I'm on Win7 meanwhile).
I'm installing arch, everything goes fine.
I've tried 2 setups:
a)
100GB ext4 /
12GB swap
(no separate /boot, should work)
b)
100MB ext3 /boot
100GB ext4 /
12GB swap
Neither a) or b) will boot.
When the newly installed grub boots, I get a error saying:
filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
I get this for the ext3, ext4, and windows partitions.
I get it for both a) and b) setups.
I have doublechecked the menu.lst file. I've even created another entry setting root=/dev/sdb1 (as opposed to the default /dev/disks/by-uuid/..).
I should mention, I have two disks, the first (sda) is currently with a Win7 installation, the 2nd (sdb) is the one I'm trying to install Arch again (and failing).
After the reboot, I've tried booting into the livecd again and manually trying to mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt, it works.
Why isn't my grub boothing from ext{3,4}?
Last edited by Frantic (2009-11-05 18:35:15)

Rede wrote:
I was getting that error but after re-installing grub and making some changes to the menu.lst file it was fixed.
I was able to at one stage boot into arch but it gave problems with the root. Now it just seems to freeze while trying to load grub.
I am currently trying yet another install of grub. I have been noticing though that my menu.lst file has been rolling back or not updating when I chroot back into my install after changing it earlier.
Try mounting your /boot partition under /mnt/boot.

Im having trouble getting my macbook pro to boot up after a fail safe boot, im getting as far as the grey screen with the apple loggo. so im trying to run a disk repair but is saying the disk is locked, how do i unlock disk??

Im having trouble getting my macbook pro to boot up after a fail safe boot, im getting as far as the grey screen with the apple loggo. so im trying to run a disk repair but is saying the disk is locked, how do i unlock disk??

Some clarification may help.
You say you cannot boot normally. It shows a gray screen with the Apple logo.
Did you say it will boot successfully in Safe Mode (boot, then hold down the Shift key)?
How did you boot the machine to run Disk Utility? (Which keyboard combinations)?

[Solved] How to resize an encrypted luks partition?

Edit: This worked: http://www.enigmacurry.com/2007/04/28/r … ilesystem/
I have some empty space on my harddrive, and wish to fill it up, with my existing partition.
This is my harddrive setup in gparted:
And fdisk respectively:
[ricky@archlinux ~]$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda -l
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x58bd1192
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 289169 144553+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 289170 195607439 97659135 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 (the crypted luks partition) contains an lvm group.
I am trying to enlarge the luks partition, to fill all of the empty space, soi can give some more space to the lvm's inside the encrypted partition.
I did come across an interesting page here: http://www.enigmacurry.com/2007/04/28/r … ilesystem/
Is this the correct approach, by deleting the WHOLE partition (not the data), and then simply creating a new partition, with the same start-sector, and the higher end-sector?
Will that allow me to then resize my lvm's inside of the luks partition?
I am sorry if this is confusing.
Last edited by xdemo (2011-03-18 07:53:35)

jakobm wrote:Please be sure to use the bbs search: Defragment a NTFS partition from LINUX
That thread has absolutely no information other than a list of motivations to use Windows to defrag it... and a link to a buggy Python defragger.
Here's the only bulletproof way to defrag NTFS under Linux:
Make a new partition of the same size (or bigger), and format it to NTFS and mount it at /defragged
Mount your fragged partition at /fragged
rsync -av /fragged /defragged
Wha-la. /defragged is now your fragged partition, defragged. Reformat /fragged and rsync it back if you really must.
Drives get fragmented if you do multiple copies at the same time, so don't do anything else on the drive while it's syninc.
Last edited by dagelf (2014-08-28 07:21:54)

[SOLVED] "Filesystem check failed" during boot process

I was using XFCE on my netbook recently and clicked "shutdown". It logged out to the command prompt and nothing happened. Assuming that I'd clicked "logout" by mistake, I typed "pacman -Syu" to run an update... And moments later it suddenly started the shutdown process.
Now, whenever I boot up, I see the message below. I tried booting from a GParted CD to check the filesystems for errors, but none were detected.
Can anyone suggest what I might need to do to fix the problem?
rootfs: clean, 11026/246512 files, 477083/984576 blocks
home: clean, 4386/527280 files, 237183/2105344 blocks
/dev/sdb2 is mounted. e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.
************* FILESYSTEM CHECK FAILED ************
* Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root
* file system is currently mounted read-only. To remount
* it read-write type: mount -n -o remount,rw /
* when you exit the maintenance shell the system will
* reboot automatically.
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue):
Last edited by esuhl (2012-03-27 01:20:07)

Thank you all for your replies :-)
hadrons123 wrote:What happens when you do try the suggestion given by it?
I don't exactly know how I should "repair manually"... I thought a filesystem check in GParted would have been enough...
lijpbasin wrote:You can boot the system using a archlinux live cd, and run fsck manually on every linux partition in the old system with options.
DON'T mount any of the filesystems before running fsck, or your data will probably be lost. If you want to check the partition information first, run fdisk -l with root privileges.
Thanks. I tried booting from an ArchBang live CD last night and ran "e2fsck -pcv" on each partition. The check completed, but the problem persists... I just tried again using "fsck" as you suggested and got the following output (but the machine still fails to boot with the same error as before):
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
usr was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
usr: 115811/458752 files (1.7% non-contiguous), 783161/1834496 blocks
Gcool wrote:
/dev/sdb2 is mounted. e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.
As mentioned already, the reason it's failing is because the /dev/sdb2 partition is mounted before it can be fsck'd. What is this partition exactly (which filesystem, what's on it, mountpoint,...)?
I'm not overly familiar with the Linux boot process, but why would it suddenly be mounting this partition before fsck-ing it? Even if it was mounted when the netbook shutdown, surely the boot process starts with all partitions unmounted...? Anyway, the partition details from /etc/fstab are below.
<file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext2 defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/sdb1 /home ext2 defaults,noatime,user_xattr 0 1
/dev/sdb2 /usr ext2 defaults,noatime 0 1
I'm (now) aware that mounting /usr as a separate partition is a bad idea and (having read the "Error when booting with the new initscripts" thread), I have told pacman to ignore updates to the initscripts package (until I figure out how best to work round or fix that issue).
Shark wrote:Write umount /dev/sdb2 in konsole or unmount partition in gparted by right click on problematic partition and click unmount. Than proced.
If I type "umount /dev/sdb2" at the prompt, I get the following error:
umount: /usr: device is busy.
(In some cases useful info about processes that use
the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))
I tried "umount -l /dev/sdb2" to unmount when the device becomes free... but it never does.
I also booted into GParted, but there is no option to "unmount" /dev/sdb2. There is a "mount" option in the menu, but it is greyed out. If I open a terminal window from the GParted Live environment and type "sudo umount /dev/sdb2" I get the following message:
umount: /dev/sdb2: not mounted
DSpider wrote:Are you mounting the root drive with "ro" (read only) in fstab?
No (as shown above). I don't *think* I've messed anything up with fstab or any other config files -- everything was working perfectly till the netbook shutdown whilst pacman was running.

Error "Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed" when installing Yosemite

I Have a MacBook Pro 8,3 17" and have been running OSX Maverick 10.9.5 quite happily. I finally decided to bite the bullet and update to OSX 10.10.1. I went through the App Store and clicked install on the Yosemite offered there.
THe install took about 55 mins and then right at the end it reported: Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed, install failed.
now i can't boot normally or restore from my time machine backup.
can anybody suggest a fix?

Install OS X Using Internet Recovery
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.
Partition and Format the hard drive:
Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
After DU loads select your newly installed hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the correct drive to use if you have more than one.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
This should restore the version of OS X originally pre-installed on the computer.

How to solve the issue "OEL 5.6 boot Oracle ASMLib driver: FAILED" ?

Folks,
Hello. I am installing Oracle 11gR2 RAC using 2 VMs (rac1 and rac2) whose OS are Oracle Linux 5.6 in VMPlayer.
I downloaded Oracle Linux 5.6 Media Pack for x86_64 (file name V24479-01) from https://edelivery.oracle.com/linux.
I have installed OEL 5.6 for VM rac1 and done the follows:
1) install rpm and oracleasm packages for rac1.
2) edit /etc/hosts to set up IP addresses for eth0 and eth1 for rac1 and rac2.
3) edit eth0 and eth1 for rac1 by using command [root@rac1 \]# neat
But when boot the OS, I see "initializing Oracle ASMLib driver: FAILED".
When configure Oracle ASM library driver by running the command:
[root@rac1 /]#/etc/init.d/oracleasm configure -i
Its output "initializing Oracle ASMLib driver: FAILED"
I think the reason is the OS cannot initialize Oracle ASMLib driver. My question is:
Do any folk understand how to solve the issue "OEL 5.6 boot Oracle ASMLib driver: FAILED" ?
Thanks.

Folks,
Hello. Thanks a lot for replying. OEL 5.6 comes with 2 kernels: uek and red hat
I have chosen to use red hat kernel for 64-bit. I run the following command:
[root@rac1 /]# uname -rm
Output: 2.6.18-238.el5x86_64
I have downloaded 4 files for this version of kernel from
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/linux/downloads/rhel5-084877.html as below:
oracleasm-2.6.18-238.el5xen-2.0.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
oracleasm-2.6.18-238.el5debug-2.0.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
oracleasm-2.6.18-238.el5-debuginfo-2.0.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
oracleasm-2.6.18-238.el5-2.0.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
I have installed the 4 files and got the error messages for the first 2 files as below:
[root@rac1 /]# rpm -ivh /home/oracleasm-2.6.18-238.el5xen-2.0.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
Error: Failed dependencies: kernel-xen=2.6.18-238.el5 is needed by oracleasm-2.6.18-238.el5xen-2.0.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
[root@rac1 /]# rpm -ivh /home/oracleasm-2.6.18-238.el5debug-2.0.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
Error: Failed dependencies: kernel-debug=2.6.18-238.el5 is needed by oracleasm-2.6.18-238.el5debug-2.0.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
The last 2 files have been installed successfully. But when reboot Oracle Linux Server-Base 2.6.18-238.el5, I still see :
"Initializing ASMLib driver: FAILED."
[root@rac1 /]#/etc/init.d/oracleasm configure -i
Its output "initializing Oracle ASMLib driver: OK "
My questions are:
Does the issue OS "Initializing Oracle ASMLib driver: FAILED" have effect later ? Do we need to solve it ?
Thanks.

(SOLVED) Dualboot Windows + Arch Linux (Windows boot partition)

Hi,
I have 4 partitions.
sda1: Windows boot partition (ntfs) - This has always been there
sda2: Windows Installation
sda3: HP_Tools - I need to keep this for warranty
sda4: Arch Installation
I want to use GRUB to have a dualboot option at startup. Do I need to install GRUB to the boot partition which is NTFS, this should be ext3 according to the tutorial.
Or can I just install grub on the Arch installation in the /boot folder?
Thanks already!
Last edited by AlexCogn (2012-10-02 15:02:10)

Scimmia wrote:
AlexCogn wrote:When I do that Windows just starts.
Then you didn't install grub to the MBR. Don't forget, installing the package isn't enough, you actually have to install grub to sda as a separate step.
So
# grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda
# cp /usr/share/locale/en\@quot/LC_MESSAGES/grub.mo /boot/grub/locale/en.mo
and then
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
I forgot the installation ... I'm trying it in half an hour, thanks already for you help guys!

[SOLVED] QEMU-KVM fails to boot if passed q35 machine type

As I understand it, qemu still uses the PII3X as the default machine type. I had been using -machine type=q35,accel=kvm for a few weeks to learn more about qemu and KVM. With this code I could boot a win7 VM and I confirmed the ICH9 chipset appeared in the device manager.
After a system update I am no longer able to pass that command. I am using the linux-0.2 image located here.
If I enter this code, the system boots normally:
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -boot order=c linux-0.2.img
This however does not work and the bios complains that there is no bootable media found (after waiting for pxe):
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -boot order=c -M q35 linux-0.2.img
qemu is 1.7.0-2 (built 02/19/14 but this is the only package in pacman's cache)
seabios is 1.7.3.1-2 (built 09/21/13)
I actually tried this on two different machines with the same result. What can I do next to troubleshoot? Thanks.
Last edited by gizzard (2014-04-13 15:55:25)

R00KIE wrote:
The iso should boot, yes. I did try using -M q35 with a WinXP image I have here and it started to boot (I get blue screens and automatic reboots since lots of things change with -M q35).
One different thing I have however is the specification of the interface type for disks. Try using "-drive file=/path/to/image,if=scsi" or "-drive file=/path/to/image,if=virtio", that seems to make it work for me, it still might make Win7 complain though.
I think I'm getting closer thanks to your help. Adding the if variable allows the debian image to boot using the q35 machine type. Here are results of some trials (command and result):
1. qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host -m 1024 debian-live-7.4-amd64-standard.iso
- boots fine
user@debian:~$ lspci | grep ACPI
00:01.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 03)
2. qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host -m 1024 -machine type=q35,accel=kvm debian-live-7.4-amd64-standard.iso
- fails to boot
3. qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host -m 1024 -machine type=q35,accel=kvm -drive file=debian-live-7.4-amd64-standard.iso,if=ide
- fails to boot
4. qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host -m 1024 -machine type=q35,accel=kvm -drive file=debian-live-7.4-amd64-standard.iso,if=scsi
- boots fine
user@debian:~$ lspci | grep AHCI
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82901IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 02)
user@debian:~$ lspci | grep SCSI
00:03.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c895a
4. qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host -m 1024 -machine type=q35,accel=kvm -drive file=debian-live-7.4-amd64-standard.iso,if=virtio
- boots fine
user@debian:~$ lspci | grep AHCI
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82901IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 02)
user@debian:~$ lspci | grep SCSI
00:03.0 SCSI storage controller: Red Hat, Inc Virtio block device
I will try these options with the win7 VM and report back. I may need to recreate it from scratch, so it might take a little while.

[solved] Unlocking luks partitions fails at boot, no prompt.

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