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#1 2019-07-30 12:12:56

myless
Member
Registered: 2019-07-24
Posts: 4

Installing Arch on 2012 Mac Mini, unable to connect to mirrors

Hello,

I am installing Arch Linux to make a secure server on a Late 2012 Mac Mini with Broadcom 14e4:4331 rev2 Driver. I am also installing it in RAID1 Configuration, as there are 2 1TB hard drives on the system. I followed the guides on the wiki for the RAID Install and it seems to have been setup. Besdies that, the installation, according to the installation guide on this wiki, goes great until I have to run:

 pacstrap base base-devel --needed 

I would post the actual error log, but it is stuck on the mac mini. What happens is a 404 error message, and the live arch linux is unable to connect to any of the mirror lists to install the base and base devel packages, even though

 ping google.com 

Outputs successful results.


Another odd thing I noticed, was that when I initially booted up the Arch Live ISO with a USB drive, I saw the following error:

67404108_896283610738400_2180422727150600192_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_oc=AQlDDw9YJ1VZ0auea1dIv7vENoNct4MGT2Bkwr_MZO6QXNDxN5oGwhv883q-E-dV2nM&_nc_ht=scontent.fbed1-2.fna&oh=62140b7b84ed1bfc1782239f65622ffd&oe=5DA7783F

I thought this was a firmware issue with the 4331 driver and read the following links on the wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=154830

The problem seemed to be solved in that instance, but that was in 2013 with the 3.2 kernel. I do not know if that solution still holds today.

1. I found on the wiki that for the Wireless 4331 Driver, the b43-firmware from AUR is the way to go. So I thought the best step would be for me to make a custom Arch ISO with archiso on a virtualbox Arch Linux that I am currently running on Ubuntu.

2. Another Idea that I had was to connect the mac mini to my iPhone and use that as an internet source. 

3. A final idea was to just disable wireless all together. I noticed that I was able to run the following code successfully:

 ping google.com 

So I assume that the ethernet port works in some way on the computer, but for some reason it will not connect to any of the mirrors that I have in the mirror list (I just took the first US mirror I found in:

 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist 

What I would like to know is out of my three ideas, which is the most feasible? I have no need for wireless connection, so I am leaning towards the third option, but am unsure of how to execute this. Would just removing the b43-fwcutter and broadcom-wl in a custom install do the trick?

I have confirmed that the ethernet driver for this Mac Mini is a BCM57766 14e4L1686 rev 01 FYI.

Thank you all in advance.
Best,
M

Last edited by myless (2019-07-30 12:14:08)

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#2 2019-07-30 12:28:11

Trilby
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Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,447
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Re: Installing Arch on 2012 Mac Mini, unable to connect to mirrors

The third option seems easiest - but there is no need to remove or disable anything.  Just plug in the ethernet cable and boot up with the iso.  That's it.

But when you say `ping` "works" what does that mean?  What is the result of that command?  Also note that the pacstrap command you quoted would be expected to fail as you did not provide a target mount point.

EDIT: potentially relevant: which iso are you using?

Last edited by Trilby (2019-07-30 23:39:30)


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#3 2019-07-30 20:01:42

myless
Member
Registered: 2019-07-24
Posts: 4

Re: Installing Arch on 2012 Mac Mini, unable to connect to mirrors

Trilby wrote:

But when you say `ping` "work" what does that mean?

By work, I mean packets are transmitted and received, I'll be able to attach a picture of the exact output in a couple hours, I will update this post accordingly.

Trilby wrote:

Just plug in the ethernet cable and boot up with the iso.

This is what I originally did. Yet the computer was unable to connect to the mirror list. I did not use the wireless at all, but for some reason, even when using an ethernet port that I know works (tested it on my other computer), I am unable to connect to the mirror list.


Trilby wrote:

Also note that the pactrap command you quoted would be expected to fail as you did not provide a target mount point.

Thanks for the pointer, I had forgotten to put that in the post, but I did provide /mnt as a mount point, where /mnt was a Linux Raid File system, md2 (which included the two 930Gb volumes of my RAID1 system, with 4GB of Swap for each (md1), and 200MB for the boot (md0)).

Since I have tried just plugging in the ethernet cable, is there a possibility that the wireless card, which does not show up when I type:

ip address show

can conflict with the ethernet driver?

Trilby wrote:

EDIT: potentially relevant: which iso are you using?

I am using the latest mirror of the x86_64.iso Arch Linux. I used Rufus, and set it up as a dd boot drive.


Thanks again for your help.

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#4 2019-07-30 23:06:09

Trilby
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Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,447
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Re: Installing Arch on 2012 Mac Mini, unable to connect to mirrors

myless wrote:

can conflict with the ethernet driver?

I don't believe so, no.

So it looks like you have a network connection, but the mirrors return 404, so lets parition the possible problems a bit more.  First, does the IP address pinged actually belong to google (i.e., is there any sort of captive portal on the local network)?  Google seems to have a lot of IP addresses, so perhaps a simpler test would be the following:

$ ping -c 1 bbs.archlinux.org
PING bbs.archlinux.org (5.9.250.164): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 5.9.250.164: seq=0 ttl=41 time=137.050 ms

--- bbs.archlinux.org ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 137.050/137.050/137.050 ms

Check that you not only get a successfull ping, but that the IP address it returns from is the same as in my output.

If that's good, then try to ping the first mirror in your mirrorlist.  Post any errors if it fails.

If that also works, try curling a package from the mirror, e.g.:

curl http://mirrors.rit.edu/archlinux/core/os/x86_64/mkinitcpio-25-2.pkg.tar.xz

This example uses the rit mirror which is good for my location, your first mirror is likely different.  I used mkinitcpio as it was one of the first packages I could think of in a base install that is pretty small - any package should do.

If this also works, then try the pacstrap command again with the '--verbose' flag which (i believe) should be passed on to pacman so we can see what's really happening.  Redirect the output to a file and post the file to a file share site (or just pipe the output to a fileshare curl command) (examples)

Last edited by Trilby (2019-07-30 23:07:23)


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#5 2019-07-31 16:09:54

myless
Member
Registered: 2019-07-24
Posts: 4

Re: Installing Arch on 2012 Mac Mini, unable to connect to mirrors

Hi Trilby thank you for your help here.

Trilby wrote:

First, does the IP address pinged actually belong to google

Here is the output of:

ping google.com

67958169_424301324963202_863348753606639616_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_oc=AQkeNVka8c2PSmMuDxAcGNIRb5vZ5G5PFDgze2Za7YK06Aai92ImjPgJdUq3Xx6Te6I&_nc_ht=scontent.fbed1-2.fna&oh=769fd3f098600fc54d7badf5179b4483&oe=5DECA8A2

As for the output of:

ping -c 1 bbs.archlinux.org

I get:
67785209_475664126332053_3292174904346017792_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&_nc_oc=AQm9xDx9Rlgvf6iTqk4xm1JDBF3yNK2mDIxV5HHejvFSrjkATZp0B9_mKGhinw3HMZkCw9OGeg-kj525AgbCmo0S&_nc_ad=z-m&_nc_cid=0&_nc_zor=9&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-1.xx&oh=a4c1a436057e45c2f38a40d7855886e5&oe=5DDB8F0B
Which seems to me like I am stuck within my own network?
What's odd is that earlier I had Openwall Linux on this computer and I had diagnosed the problem to be that there was no driven for the network cards, even though I had registered my MAC address with the Internet Service Provider I use (It was using a kernel from 2006 and the b43 drivers did not support it). Perhaps this is an issue I have to run by my IT department?

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#6 2019-07-31 16:36:38

Trilby
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Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,447
Website

Re: Installing Arch on 2012 Mac Mini, unable to connect to mirrors

If your IT department is willing to help, that'd be great, but I'd be surprised if they were - even at MIT.

But this is exactly as I predicted, you're behind a captive portal.  You likely need to log in through a web browser.  I don't know which browsers are currently available on the iso, but you can try elinks and w3m, one of those should be available.  It's also possible to work through the login with curl and a text editor, but that can be a PITA, just use whatever TUI browser is available.

Last edited by Trilby (2019-07-31 16:37:18)


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#7 2019-08-01 14:02:44

myless
Member
Registered: 2019-07-24
Posts: 4

Re: Installing Arch on 2012 Mac Mini, unable to connect to mirrors

Trilby wrote:

If your IT department is willing to help, that'd be great, but I'd be surprised if they were - even at MIT.

But this is exactly as I predicted, you're behind a captive portal.  You likely need to log in through a web browser.  I don't know which browsers are currently available on the iso, but you can try elinks and w3m, one of those should be available.  It's also possible to work through the login with curl and a text editor, but that can be a PITA, just use whatever TUI browser is available.

Hmm, thank you for your advice Trilby! I will check out elinks as it seems to be included in the live environment.

Thanks again for all your help. I will edit the title to Solved if accessing a web browser with elinks ends up working.

Best,
M

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