[Server-devel] mkusbinstall fails

[David Leeming]

Martin,

Pia (very kindly) sent me the hardware with the very same USB stick
pre-configured with 0.5.0. It booted and started the installation fine, but
failed right at the end with an exception error that we decided was due to
hardware. 

My problems started when I tried to replace the version of the ISO on the
USB stick (in the /iso folder), with the latest version (0.5.1). I replaced
it using my Windows machine, but did not touch anything else. When I tried
the USB again in the machine I want to install the XS on, I got the "that
folder does not appear to contain an OLPC School Server image" error. 

That's why I tried to re-configure the USB from scratch using mkusbinstall
and try to get the USB disk back to the state I had received it in from Pia.

So the hardware DOES boot. The disk DOES work. 

What about the mkusbinstall errors as in the ***** attached jpeg ******?
Doesn't that show that it is not running correctly? Could it be a problem
related to running it on Ubuntu (7)? Or is that that normal?

If we can eliminate the issues around mkusbinstall and be certain that the
USB disk is set up correctly, then we can move on to the issues with
starting the install booting from it.

 
David Leeming
Technical Advisor, People First Network, Honiara, Solomon Islands
Alternative email address: leemingdavid at yahoo.com.au 



-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langhoff at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, 16 February 2009 2:03 p.m.
To: David Leeming
Cc: server-devel at lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: mkusbinstall fails

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 3:53 PM, David Leeming
<leeming at pipolfastaem.gov.sb> wrote:
> - insert in XS machine and boot
> - get same error as before

ugh.

There is something going on there... but I am no longer sure if it is
a problem in the procedure you are following or just a hardware
incompatibility.

Overall, USB-based installs are a bit flakey in terms of hardware
compat. Some BIOSes don't always work, and I have seen some machines
where it starts and does not complete. (This is getting much better in
Fedora-10 and 11...)

That's why the wikipage says... in case of trouble, fall back on
CD-ROM installs. Can you try that?

> BTW, where did you see instructions to replace the USB disk partition
> format? I want to make sure we don't have misleading wiki pages...

David - should we be fixing wiki pages anywhere?


m
-- 
 martin.langhoff at gmail.com
 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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