Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

arunsahadeo · 2016-02-06 10:48:08

Hi, all, I have recently started how to learn Linux, first by installing Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS on an old Dell Latitude D610 laptop, and now by trying to install a CD-R with the ARCH_201601 ISO onto a Dell Dimension 2400.

The Dell DImension 2400's specs are as follows:

Architecture Type: 32-bit
Processor/CPU: 2.4GHZ Intel Celeron
Installed memory/RAM: 512 MB
OS: Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit (the Dell Dimension originally had Windows XP, I forgot whether Professional edition or home edition, and I believe that before I installed W7 Ent 32-bit, it had used the Windows XP SP3 upgrade CD)
Graphics card: Intel 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV

I believe it has a 320GB IDE (PATA) hard drive, which is configured as the primary master drive. The computer also has separate CD and DVD drives, both with IDE connectors I believe. It also uses the Soundmax audio drivers.

I was hoping, anyway, to dual boot Windows 7 and the latest version of Arch Linux, as I heard this distro runs well on older machines/hardware, so I saw that the C drive partition on Windows Explorer had a total capacity of 298 GB, and so partitioned about 32 GB of that for a new volume formatted as fat32, as I heard that's ideal if you wanted a partition to install a Linux distro such as Arch onto.

In the first instance of trying to install Arch onto the Dimension, it failed, and when I looked on the command terminal, it said the following:

Mounting '/dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601' to 'run/archiso/bootmnt'
Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601 ...
ERROR: '/dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601' device did not show up after 30 seconds...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you are finished
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[rootfs /]#

Naturally, I assumed that I had to install the Arch iso onto another blank CD and try again, using WIndows 10's built-in disc burning software, but renaming the iso to ARCH_201601 before burning. However, this did not work, as it still could not find ARCH_201601. I am keen to mess around, as this is my dad's old desktop and he wanted to chuck it out otherwise, but I don't have an infinite amount of free time on the weekends, and I don't want to spend hours pursuing the wrong methods / techniques if there is a simpler solution.

Sorry for intruding on this like you guys, I will make sure to find the relevant introduction thread and properly introduce myself. And thank you to any and all who consider my problem and respond to it.

P.S. I have photos of the interactive prompt during the installation process if they can be used as a reference point / documentation of fault.

Last edited by arunsahadeo (2016-02-06 10:51:34)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-02-06 11:06:48

arunsahadeo wrote:

partitioned about 32 GB of that for a new volume formatted as fat32, as I heard that's ideal if you wanted a partition to install a Linux distro such as Arch onto.

No, no and thrice no.

FAT is a terrible choice of filesystem, I'm not even sure if the installation would work at all.

arunsahadeo wrote:

using WIndows 10's built-in disc burning software

That's probably the cause of your problems.

If you have a spare USB stick, I would recommend using that instead and transferring the ISO image to the stick with USBWriter

x33a · 2016-02-06 11:10:44

arunsahadeo wrote:

so partitioned about 32 GB of that for a new volume formatted as fat32, as I heard that's ideal if you wanted a partition to install a Linux distro such as Arch onto.

You heard wrong. Linux has its own file systems. I am not even sure if you can install Linux on FAT32 or NTFS.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/File_systems

In the first instance of trying to install Arch onto the Dimension, it failed, and when I looked on the command terminal, it said the following:
Mounting '/dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601' to 'run/archiso/bootmnt'
Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601 ...
ERROR: '/dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601' device did not show up after 30 seconds...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you are finished
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[rootfs /]#

You are able to boot using that CD? At what point do you get this message?

Naturally, I assumed that I had to install the Arch iso onto another blank CD and try again, using WIndows 10's built-in disc burning software, but renaming the iso to ARCH_201601 before burning. However, this did not work, as it still could not find ARCH_201601. I am keen to mess around, as this is my dad's old desktop and he wanted to chuck it out otherwise, but I don't have an infinite amount of free time on the weekends, and I don't want to spend hours pursuing the wrong methods / techniques if there is a simpler solution.

It might be better to try a live USB, if your laptop supports it.

Edit: Snaked by Head_on_a_Stick

Last edited by x33a (2016-02-06 11:12:06)

arunsahadeo · 2016-02-06 11:13:31

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

arunsahadeo wrote:
partitioned about 32 GB of that for a new volume formatted as fat32, as I heard that's ideal if you wanted a partition to install a Linux distro such as Arch onto.
No, no and thrice no.
FAT is a terrible choice of filesystem, I'm not even sure if the installation would work at all.
arunsahadeo wrote:
using WIndows 10's built-in disc burning software
That's probably the cause of your problems.
If you have a spare USB stick, I would recommend using that instead and transferring the ISO image to the stick with USBWriter

Hi Head, thanks for the prompt reply. That's strange, most people online recommended fat32 as the file system for my secondary partition when installing Linux distros such as Arch, as opposed to say, NTFS or exFAT.

Are you saying that it's going to be almost possible trying to install the latest version of the Arch distro off a CD? I know that some people said that they've had issues writing the ISO onto a CD using native Windows disc burners, would my luck not change even if I used a native Linux disc burner on another distro, say Ubuntu?

Anyway, thank you for the heads-up, luckily I can mess up the Dimension as much as I want, so I hope to learn a lot of the do's and dont's on installing Arch for next time, haha.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-02-06 11:17:45

arunsahadeo wrote:

would my luck not change even if I used a native Linux disc burner on another distro, say Ubuntu?

I seem to remember a problem thread here about using k3b to burn an Arch ISO image to a DVD and getting the same error message you have seen.

IIRC, the solution was to use wodim instead

EDIT: To pre-empt your next question: https://askubuntu.com/questions/174626/ … e-terminal

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-02-06 11:18:58)

ayekat · 2016-02-06 11:21:57

arunsahadeo wrote:

That's strange, most people online recommended fat32 as the file system for my secondary partition when installing Linux distros such as Arch, as opposed to say, NTFS or exFAT.

Those "most people online" are probably not using Linux at all - none of these file systems are smart choices for Linux. Most will probably just not work at all.
However, it should not cause any issues for booting the live CD, since you usually reformat the partition anyway during the installation, so it shouldn't matter what was on the partition before.

The problem is likely that the burning software mangles the disk label - the live system seems to successfully run the initramfs, but when it tries to mount the file systems, it accesses them via labels.

Last edited by ayekat (2016-02-06 11:24:24)

x33a · 2016-02-06 11:40:19

ayekat wrote:

arunsahadeo wrote:
That's strange, most people online recommended fat32 as the file system for my secondary partition when installing Linux distros such as Arch, as opposed to say, NTFS or exFAT.
Those "most people online" are probably not using Linux at all - none of these file systems are smart choices for Linux. Most will probably just not work at all.

I suspect that the OP might be misinterpreting the recommendations. The recommendations might be for a shared data partition for Windows and Linux. Many years ago, when NTFS support wasn't too reliable on Linux, people would opt for FAT32 so that they could share the data between Windows and Linux on a dual boot install.

arunsahadeo · 2016-02-06 11:41:50

Hi x33a, thanks also for the heads-up, I press F12 on the Dimension before the OS boots and on the Boot Sequence, choose to boot from the CD drive.

It comes up with something like

ISOLINUX 6.03 6.03* Copyright (C) 1994-2014 H. Peter Anvin

It then loads the ARCH installation menu, where only options for me are as follows:

Boot Arch Linux (i686)
Boot existing OS
Run Memtest86+ (RAM test)
Hardware Information (HDT)
Reboot
Power Off

When I press TAB when Boot Arch Linux (i686) is highlighted, the following appears at the bottom of the screen (I believe):

.linux boot/i686/vm linuz archisobasedir=arch archisolabel=ARCH_201601 initrid=boot/intel_ucode.img, boot/i686/archiso.img

I then press Enter, go onto the interactive prompt, where it comes up at some point...I hope this image is acceptable:

arunsahadeo · 2016-02-06 11:49:16

Guys, thanks for all your help, I'm thinking that I might try burning the ISO onto a blank CD in Ubuntu and see how that goes.

x33a · 2016-02-06 12:10:49

arunsahadeo wrote:

I then press Enter, go onto the interactive prompt, where it comes up at some point...I hope this image is acceptable:
http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h42 … fkkevt.jpg

The image was a bit too small to read comfortably. The proper way is to post a thumbnail linked to the full sized image. Also, please use code tags instead of quote tags.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … s_and_code

As for the error, I see I/O errors for /dev/sr0, which is your disc drive. This might be indicative of faulty hardware. Has the drive been working fine otherwise?

arunsahadeo · 2016-02-06 13:16:02

Hi, when I go into File Explorer on Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit and check the CD drive, I can definitely see that it's detected the CD with the Arch ISO as being on that drive. I am not sure if the CD drive is faulty as such, as when I installed Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit, I was unable to install via CD as mine were 700-800MB in terms of total storage capacity, whereas the ISO for that OS was 1.4GB and so I had to install via DVD. So I definitely know the DVD drive is working at least.

And here is (I hope) a thumbnail for the image (not too sure how small a thumbnail should be):

Click Here

mrechte · 2016-02-17 09:26:01

Hello,

I am having the exact same problem on a new systems (no existing OS). I tried to boot a Live Fedora CD and it is OK.

When installing Arch, I get:

blk_update_request: I/O Error, dev sr0, sector 1435648

Arch 2016.2 ISO was burnt (MD5SUM verified) with CDBurnerXP on Windows.

mrechte · 2016-02-17 09:43:11

OK I tried with to burn the ISO with brasero. Same problem...

macstar3000 · 2016-02-17 09:51:24

this happens to me sometimes, difference is that i am using an usb pendrive. renaming that one correctly (ARCH_201601) solves the problem.

mrechte · 2016-02-17 10:39:09

Directory /dev/disk/by-label is not existing, due to /dev/sr0 errors, so it is not a question of CD label (that is correct by the way).

macstar3000 · 2016-02-17 11:22:09

mrechte wrote:

Directory /dev/disk/by-label is not existing, due to /dev/sr0 errors, so it is not a question of CD label (that is correct by the way).

well i see a guy whos OP was exactly about that error and he claimed to have renamed the ISO (thats nonsense) instead of the device itself. pretty sure that's the reason and the sr0 errors might be problematic too but not connected to the error he gets.

Silkworm205 · 2016-02-17 15:35:01

Did you validate the checksum on the ISO file? Sounds like it might have gone awry in the download.

Arch Linux

#1 2016-02-06 10:48:08

Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#2 2016-02-06 11:06:48

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#3 2016-02-06 11:10:44

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#4 2016-02-06 11:13:31

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#5 2016-02-06 11:17:45

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#6 2016-02-06 11:21:57

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#7 2016-02-06 11:40:19

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#8 2016-02-06 11:41:50

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#9 2016-02-06 11:49:16

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#10 2016-02-06 12:10:49

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#11 2016-02-06 13:16:02

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#12 2016-02-17 09:26:01

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#13 2016-02-17 09:43:11

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#14 2016-02-17 09:51:24

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#15 2016-02-17 10:39:09

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#16 2016-02-17 11:22:09

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

#17 2016-02-17 15:35:01

Re: Can't find dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201601

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