I am learning a LOT working with MCNL, and thats always fun. I have working editions so thats always good. However I seem to be perpetually riding the little yellow short bus when it comes to using a new USB stick.

Background.

I have 4 different USB Sticks all working fine (now) with MCNL.

HOwever I JUST bought/received a new 8GB stick from Alcor, that is giving me fits.

Here is what I have tried:

1) booting from a clean toronto disk and going to MCC to create a 800MB fat32 partition. That works fine, use MCNL to create USB, that workks fine'
boot from said flash and get a BOOT ERROR! Thats ok, I've had this before WE know how to fix this (or so I thought)

2) reboot, kill the existing partition, recreate 800mb partition, reboot, open CLI, SU, type dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=2 everythig SEEMS to work. Go to MCNL, create USB, everything goes smooth. Reboot, then receive the following error (this is a first)
[/color]ERROR unable to mount loop file system
commands were:
losetup /dev/loop0 /initrd/cdrom/livecd.sqfs
mount -r -t squashfs /dev /loop0 /initrdloopfs[color="#808000"]
Dropping you to a linux shell
Then it drops me to a very limited Linux shell.

3) So I kill the partition, try opening a teminal SU, fdisk -l /dev/sda it APPEARS to go well, I recreate the partition, reboot
Start the mcnl menu and reeive the same error as in number 2.

In windows or linux, copying files to and from the stick all seem to work fine, it's getting MCNL to boot thats causing me issues.

But of course any and all information and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

J

OOPS I just read my message and realized the yellow is almost impossible to read and very annoying. sorry, but the error message came up in colors?


here it is again in black:


commands were:
ERROR unable to mount loop file system

losetup /dev/loop0 /initrd/cdrom/livecd.sqfs
mount -r -t squashfs /dev /loop0 /initrdloopfs

1. Boot the Live CD without plugged stick, plug it in, wait two seconds, run:



And post the output here.

2. Click on the devices icon on the desktop, open the partition on the stick that holds the base system.
What is the content? How big are the files?
* type mount to see where the partition is mounted, example at: /media/removable
* type: ls -l /mnt/removable
to see the content.

3. Did you try to boot it on a different PC?
Did you try to boot from CD with inserted stick with the bootcode: livecd fromusb

The error is not a first stage boot error, but can have different causes, a bad copy from CD to the stick, a problem with the usb port (the solution would be to boot with the cheatcode: livecd noapic irqpoll, or the alias: lenovo (without livecd), a problem that this stick is too 'fast', or a special partition table ...
The boot error indicates that at this stage it looses contact to the usb port/partition/stick or can't find the base system on the partition.

I'm going to take these 1 at a time just in case.

heres the output from the above command:



Realize that the ONLY partition on here right now is the 1.4GB one created to hold the system, I left the rest unpartitioned to leave out any confusion.

But excellent point about it NOT being a 1st stage boot error, I do in fact GET the splash screen and initial text openeing and it does begin processing the OS

Since I'm booting this on my laptop DEVICES sees my 2 Linux partitions and 2 NTFS partitions of my HD's
It ALSO shows the 1.2GB removavle device

mount from a terminal = /dev/sda1 on /media/disk type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime, whelper=hal,flush.uid=500,utf8,shortname=lower)

I tried using Ksnapshot to shoot a screenshot to show you whats on the device per your output request, but that wont open correctly. However other than not showing the rw attributes I am able to plug it into my winbox and shoot THIS screenshot that is here as an attachment:

I havent tried a different PC, but will do so as soon as I comeback from lunch.

however using the bootcode livecd fromusb shoots me back to the toronto boot menu.

so then i tried to let use the menu command to boot from USB, and received the same error code that I get when i attempt to boot straight from the USB

Ok, Tried a different pc, no go :(

then I tried formatting the other 7.5GB etx3 to see if that would resolve it , no go.

bow I've done a low level format of the key (using the makers sw) and IT says its 256MB

so I MAY have a bad key.

that would stink.

I', going to try once more then contact the seller.

Is this really '/dev/sda 1' or '/dev/sda1'

1. /dev/sda can't work, this is not a partition

2. The boot flag is missing

Is the livecd.sqfs file the orginal of Toronto or a remastered one?



... hm, there is something wrong with the device, it seems.

actually it looks like there IS something wrong w/ the device. I was able to find the manufacturers website (looking for something like U3uninstall) and came across a suite of utils that show this is a 256megabyte 8 giga BIT memory chip.

so I have an RMA from the seller for a trade in.

but thanks for your effort, hopefully in a week, i'll be able to post that all is well.
but in answer to your questions

1) it is SDA1 (bad typing)

2) you are correct it IS a remater, I thouht it was clean, but I had added PAN

3) Tell me about the boot flag again? I know I've seen the how to on this, but cant remember where or how.

j

When you create and format a first partition with the MCC, the boot flag is automatically set.

Running fdisk -l it would look like this:

Thanks, I THOUGHT it was automatically set, but since I havent gotten a successful format and setup through MCC, that may be why its not showing.

As I said earlier the stick is going back today, and hopefully I'll have a new one by the begining of next week.

The funny thing is that I have a good working copy of Toronto on a stick now. I was just using some docs that I had written for a class to start working on remastering my own full install of MDV Spring on my master pc.

Glad I tested it, intsead of just setting it aside until I was ready to use it....

Thanks for all your input.

Have you or anyone else seen the latest distro head to head in this months Linux Format?

j

just an update.

the seller sent me another "8gb stick", got it yesterday.

plugged it in, it showed 8.6GB (?)

So i copied 8 GB of files over, wehn i went to open them up, 27 of the 28 directeries were EMPTY and the one that DID have files the files were corrupt.

So since she suggested I reformat last time, I figured I'd try it again this time.

it formatted out to 8GB, so I copied 7.6GB of iles over, same results

24 of 25 folders were empty and the 25th had corrupt files.

In doing some searches on the net for this particular chip, and its support, I am finding LOTS of folks having similar issues with similar schips.

it LOOKS like the controller in these devices is programable to the point that they can be setup to DIsPLAY 8 Giga BYTES, when in actuality you have a total of 8 Giga BITS of storage.

So I've asked for a refund of the price plus all my shipping charges, but I guess the moral is, watch out for USB Keys using the ALCOR MP_6980 chipset.

They acn easily be turned into fakes.