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I am having problems with installing arch.
Having downloaded various iso, I keep getting hit by problems with my CPU hanging at
various stages in the pacstrap process.
This happens when I use an older arch too (i.e. 2012.06-1-archboot-i686) which still has
the graphical installer.
At the moment I am settled on booting a liveCD giving me # uname -a
Linux archiso 3.4.4-3-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Jul 3 15:13:13 UTC 2012 i686 GNU/Linux
Although setting up my network using # dhcpcd eth0
works fine, I have now created myself a mirror of all the base .tar.xz files
Once I have replicated the base .tar.xz to /var/cache/pacman/pkg
running # pacman -S base
goes fairly successfully for a while, but eventually falls over with CPU hangs as well.
# pacstrap
seems unable to use my pkg cache though.
Is it possible to adapt pacman so that it can do the job of pacstrap? (Or perhaps be
more successful with # pacstrap -c )
And what might be causing the CPU hangs?
Thanks,
Derek
p.s.
Doing these steps:
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/home
mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/pkg
cp /mnt/pkg/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
mkdir -p /var/lib/pacman/sync/{core,extra,community}
tar xzf /mnt/pkg/dbs/core.db.tar.gz -C /var/lib/pacman/sync/core
tar xzf /mnt/pkg/dbs/community.db.tar.gz -C /var/lib/pacman/sync/community
tar xzf /mnt/pkg/dbs/extra.db.tar.gz -C /var/lib/pacman/sync/extraactually this time it fell over at untaring community.db.tar.gz
BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for 23s! [loop2:151]
Process loop2...perhaps I should have kept this in noobie
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If its hanging in multiple pieces of software while the PC is under load, it sounds like a hardware problem to me. Possibly RAM or CPU. Has this computer worked with other OS's in the recent past?
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Yes, this computer has worked in the past (and was stable). Its O/S for the last 7 years has
been XP, and I regulary use slitaz or Mint 13 from liveCDs with no noticeable problems.
If you can let me know what commands to type, I can post the full architecture.
Also, if necessary I can check the seating of the CPU and RAM on the motherboard.
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You might wanna check the checksum of the live image.
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mkdir -p /var/lib/pacman/sync/{core,extra,community} tar xzf /mnt/pkg/dbs/core.db.tar.gz -C /var/lib/pacman/sync/core tar xzf /mnt/pkg/dbs/community.db.tar.gz -C /var/lib/pacman/sync/community tar xzf /mnt/pkg/dbs/extra.db.tar.gz -C /var/lib/pacman/sync/extraactually this time it fell over at untaring community.db.tar.gz
BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for 23s! [loop2:151] Process loop2...perhaps I should have kept this in noobie
What are you actually trying to do here? Why do you want to use your old not-up-to-date-anymore pacman-db instead of downloading them from the repo? 'pacman -Syy' (This is only the databases, not the cache, and there can be new updates several times a day.)
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I am trying to do two things...
1) install a version of arch on my computer as the bootable o/s (on HDD)
2) save bandwidth as i am on a limited tarrif, and as pacstrap normally fails part way through the downloading packages stage it makes sense to be able to continue from the place i have already got to ( and hopefully get further ).
3) was hoping that step 2) could be eliminated by installing from a local cache/mirror - but this seems to be only possible with pacmap, not pacstrap
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more info relating to my h/w
Have run 30+ passes of memtest86 with no errors
have done HDD self tests using smartctl (and both long and short diagnoses), again with no errors
If i add kernel options to the netinst liveCD (nomodeset and/or force=mwdma2) then the pacstrap process still freezes, but there are no longer any informative (yet unhelpful) kernel errors like ...failed common READ DMA..... WRITE DMA... cpu lockup
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the kernel freezing is the biggest problem as it is only after this point that i can see how far things have got, but cannot use the computer to capture it
And finally to answer the original question - why would i not want to update my pacman db? mainly because i cannot achieve 1) at the moment. Am more than happy to update and fix my system once i can get it to install and run.
Derek
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I don't understand the problem with Lennie's suggestion: pacstrap is essentially just a pacman wrapper; it just automates the process described in
I think following the link Lennie left is the way to go. Follow the standard "installation guide" until you get to the point where you would use pacstrap, and then follow the instructions here.
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I will certainly give this a try. In trying to answer Lennie's question i had completely missed the large link.
Still have a concern that the newer versions or arch are driving my cpu too extremely, but i can experiment with the kernel flags if i get errors using the defaults.
Will report back afterwards.
Thankyou
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