{"id":36,"date":"2011-09-27T19:43:33","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T19:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/info.ffteixeira.net\/2011\/09\/27\/installing-debian-distributions-from-usb-sticks-problems-and-solutions\/"},"modified":"2011-09-27T19:43:33","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T19:43:33","slug":"installing-debian-distributions-from-usb-sticks-problems-and-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"Installing Debian distributions from USB sticks \u2013 problems and solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you tried to install any distribution which uses Debian-Installer (Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives) using my method for\u00a0booting multiple CDs from a USB stick (with ext2 partitions)<\/a>\u00a0(see also\u00a0the version with FAT16 partitions<\/a>, you most likely encountered the error \u201cNo common CD-ROM drive was detected.\u201d immediatly after the \u201cDetecting hardware to find CD-ROM drives\u201d screen.<\/p>\n

This is, of course, caused by the fact that Debian-Installer looks for CD-ROM drives and tries to mount them using the iso9660 filesystem (the ISO files format). Since we are running from a USB stick, our partitions are formated as ext2 or FAT16, so they will be ignored by Debian-Installer.<\/p>\n

There is a quick fix though \u2013 Debian-Installer will happily use the files from the \/cdrom directory if it is already mounted by the time it tries to check for CD-ROMs! You should follow these steps:<\/p>\n

Step 1<\/strong>: Boot the USB stick, select the distribution that you want to install.<\/p>\n

Step 2<\/strong>: When the installer asks for the language selection, don\u2019t choose anything and press ALT-F2, then Enter to activate the console.<\/p>\n

Step 3<\/strong>: Create \/cdrom and mount the USB stick partition to it (\/dev\/sdc2 and 5 are my partitions, make sure you have the right ones, for example by looking at the log messages in console 4 \u2013 press ALT-F4 \u2013 or checking what sd* devices were created in \/dev):<\/p>\n

# ls \/dev\/sd*\n# mkdir \/cdrom\n# mount -t vfat \/dev\/sdc2 \/cdrom\nor\n# mount -t ext2 \/dev\/sdc5 \/cdrom<\/pre>\n
If you get an error message saying \u201cInvalid argument\u201d, the most likely cause is that you run from a ext2 partition but the initrd doesn\u2019t support ext2 filesystems. This is the genius work of Debian developers, and I will provide a fix for it in another blog post.<\/p>\n
Step 4<\/strong>: Press ALT-F1 to go back to the installer dialogues and continue installing.<\/p>\n
Additional step<\/strong>: If at some point, you get an error from the installer with the message \u201cFailed to determine the codename for the release\u201d, it usually means the installer is trying to access a symlink that is no longer there (most likely cause: you used a FAT16 filesystem, which does not support symlinks).<\/p>\n
The solution is simple: take a look at the error messages in console 4 (press ALT-F4) and you will most likely see the installer tried to look for the release name \u201cstable\u201d. Get back to console 2 (press ALT-F2 and Enter to activate it), see what\u2019s in \/cdrom\/dists and \u201cfix\u201d it:<\/p>\n
# cd \/cdrom\/dists\n# ls\nlenny\n# mv lenny stable<\/pre>\n
You can now return to the installer (press ALT-F1) and select Retry. The installation should continue correctly.<\/p>\n
Credits\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you tried to install any distribution which uses Debian-Installer (Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives) using my method for\u00a0booting multiple CDs from a USB stick (with ext2 partitions)\u00a0(see also\u00a0the version with FAT16 partitions, you most likely encountered the error \u201cNo common … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ffteixeira.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}