Mageia forum

I have been in the process of adding Linux distros on a hard drive in sequence. I now have six distros including Mint and 5 Ubuntu derivatives. I just attempted to install Mageia 4 but incurred an error mounting the partition. There were no details provided as to why the error occurred. What should be my next step?

archp2008 wrote:I just attempted to install Mageia 4 but incurred an error mounting the partition.

What media did you use for installation, and when did the error occur exactly?

Thanks for the reply. I burned the iso Mageia-4 x-86 _64 to a DVD. The MD5 value matched the one supplied. The error occurred some seconds after I began to proceed with installation after selecting the empty partition and choosing the / option for that partition and ext4 formatting. The adding of partitions in manual mode is a little different than for other distros. I will try it again and write down the exact error message.

It said "formatting," then "mounting partition," then "mounting partition uuid = "......" in directory /mnt/media/win in c4 failed" On the bottom it simply read "an error occurred" I had to hit the reset to reboot. I went into GParted in one of the distros and it showed the entire hard drive as unallocated, but going back into Windows and using Easeus partition manager it showed all the partitions including the one that had the error. I deleted it again for the next try. Is it impossible to use third party products like Easeus for this?

I also have had this problem. Currently stuck with Mageia 3, since I'm unable to install 4.
Any thoughts?

Seems like the issue come from mounting the windows partition. You can also use Ctrl+Alt+F2 to switch to a text console,
maybe you see more details about the command used and the error message there.

What windows version do you use? Also make sure hybrid shutdown is disabled,
or in custom partitioning make sure the windows partitions have no mountpoint assigned.

Doktor,

Thanks for your reply, I'm currently running Windows 7 ultimate, with multiple partitions, one just for the Win7 OS, and another one for my "data", both of course are NTFS partitions. I will try to remove the mount points for the win partitions, hope mageia installs, and then add mount points again (since I use my "data" partition in mageia).

Thanks, will give it a shot.

I switched to the text console, and noticed that the error was occurring when it tried to mount one of my three external hard drives. I unplugged them, and the installer is running fine. Perhaps the OP has the same issue.

I tried again with Mageia 3. This time I got "unable to access medium "core release" and the second try, "media.cfg not found."

Archp2008,
If you have external drives, unplug them and try mageia 4 again. Worked for me, but now I can't get my hp LaserJet 1000 to work...

archp2008 wrote:I tried again with Mageia 3. This time I got "unable to access medium "core release" and the second try, "media.cfg not found."

That's a totally different issue, please create a separate thread for that. Actually sounds more like a broken install media.

doktor5000 wrote:Seems like the issue come from mounting the windows partition. You can also use Ctrl+Alt+F2 to switch to a text console,
maybe you see more details about the command used and the error message there.

What windows version do you use? Also make sure hybrid shutdown is disabled,
or in custom partitioning make sure the windows partitions have no mountpoint assigned.

There were some references to windows partitions. I have six versions of Windows in multiboot setup. In custom partitioning, how do I make sure the windows partitions have no mountpoint assigned? At which point do I use Ctrl Alt F2?

archp2008 wrote:In custom partitioning, how do I make sure the windows partitions have no mountpoint assigned?

By removing the mountpoint information if it is there.
http://doc.mageia.org/installer/4/en/co ... drake.html

Click on the windows partition, click on "Mount point" on the right side, and empty that field. Rinse and repeat for all other windows partitions.

archp2008 wrote:At which point do I use Ctrl Alt F2?

At any time, once the graphical installer has started, Also Ctrl+Alt+F3 and F4 are available IIRC. But you don't need it, it's just to gather more information or the complete command and error message once a problem occurs.

Thanks again. I have three hard drives - 320gb, 640gb, and 1tb. The six linux partitions and swap partition and one large ntfs partition (movies) are on the 320gb drive. The 640 gb drive has Win7, Win8 and Win 8.1 besides a couple of data partitions. The 1tb drive has XP and two versions of Vista besides a couple of data partitions. It is vital to me that the Mageia does usual OS prober successfully and correctly identifies and lists the Win8 loader so I can still boot to all my Windows installations. Does it matter about the mount points being or not being assigned? I had no problem with the six ubuntu distros finding and listing it. Do I have to make sure that all six windows OS partitions have no mount point assigned?

This time it finished. The only thing I can think of that I did differently is to go into advanced options and choose to mount the destination partition before beginning the installation. The boot menu did not list any of the other 6 linux distros. It did list the Windows boot loader. Mageia itself boots into emergency mode. I'm not sure if I can recall the suggested commands for rebooting and default but I tried both and nothing changed. Please help.

I have since installed another version of Linux which gave me a full listing of all 8 distros including Mageia amd Windows, so the only thing to fix now is to get Mageia 4 out of emergency mode.

Could the grub bug described two years ago: viewtopic.php?p=13547#p13547 still be relevant? How can I save the log files for you from emergency mode in Mageia?

Well, depends what the issue really is that drops you to emergency shell.
Can you save the output of journalctl -xb and post it here? Simply run

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journalctl -xb > log

and post the contents of the file log here.

Where do I find the log file after doing this command? Is the file named simply log?

Yes, it is simply named log. You will find it in the directory where you ran that command, so probably /log or so.

Do I need to access the Mageia Partition from another Linux distro. How do I identify and open msdos 11. The partition is approx 14.8 gb but I could not see anything less than 16gb in the file system from Mint. When I use the filter -p err for journalctl I get multiple occurrences of "failed to mount /media/win_f2" What is win_f2? I also get multiple occurrences of "dependency failed for local file systems," etc. I am using Mint 16 to write to MBR it shows the following bootinfo for Mageia:
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd2,msdos11'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd2,msdos11 --hint-efi=hd2,msdos11 --hint-baremetal=ahci2,msdos11 243676c1-0972-478c-b31f-80831931e49d
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 243676c1-0972-478c-b31f-80831931e49d
fi
linux /boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=243676c1-0972-478c-b31f-80831931e49d splash quiet resume=UUID=bd4bcbc1-1222-477c-ac94-e476dfa67387 vga=788
initrd /boot/initrd.img

From mint, could you please post either

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lsblk -fl

or

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fdisk -l

output as root please to see what filesystems you have?

Otherwise, you can simply edit /etc/fstab when in Mageia emergency shell and comment out all noncritical/windows filesystems by prepending a # on the line, or by adding nofail to their options. Also see https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_4_Err ... rrect_UUID

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arch@arch-System-Product-Name ~ $ lsblk -fl
NAME  FSTYPE LABEL MOUNTPOINT
sda               
sda1               
sda2               
sda3               
sda4               
sda5               
sdb               
sdb1               
sdb2               
sdb3               
sdb4               
sdb5               
sdb6               
sdc               
sdc1               /
sdc2               
sdc5               [SWAP]
sdc6               
sdc7               
sdc8               
sdc9               
sdc10             
sdc11             
sdc12             
sdc13             
sr0               
arch@arch-Sy

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arch@arch-System-Product-Name ~ $ fdisk -l


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arch@arch-System-Product-Name ~ $ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for arch:

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5d7d47e1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63   287547434   143773686    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2       287547435   532876049   122664307+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       532876050   778204664   122664307+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       778204666  1953520064   587657699+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5       778204729  1953520064   587657668    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/sdb: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders, total 1250263728 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc4102f2e

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *   203929110   469740599   132905745    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2       469756658   687919364   109081353+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb3       687919428   893358584   102719578+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb4              65  1250258624   625129280    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5             128   203929109   101964491    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb6       893374708  1250258624   178441958+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdc: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2b7fa170

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *        2048    29296969    14647461   83  Linux
/dev/sdc2        29298686   625141759   297921537    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdc5        29298688    39452671     5076992   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc6        39454720    82075647    21310464   83  Linux
/dev/sdc7        82077696   123844607    20883456   83  Linux
/dev/sdc8       123846656   154687487    15420416   83  Linux
/dev/sdc9       154689536   185438207    15374336   83  Linux
/dev/sdc10      185440256   218402815    16481280   83  Linux
/dev/sdc11      218404864   259851374    20723255+  83  Linux
/dev/sdc12      290760496   625141759   167190632    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc13      259852288   290758655    15453184   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order
arch@arch-System-Product-Name ~ $

I finally got in the partition that seems to be Mageia - no log folder but a journal folder. The file inside is 8.5mb. There were over 2000 lines on the screen.
I did not see anything yet with the simple name log.

Then best run it again. Before you do that, run

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pwd

which shows your current folder or save it directly to a location which you will find again.

When I ran CODE: SELECT ALL it returned > which I assume means root. I ran journalctl -xb > log again. When I typed dir it returned drakx log tmp When i went back into Mint and opened the second last partition before the NTFS folder named Movies6 (This should be the Mageia partition.) and tried to open the root folder it said I did not have sufficient permsissions to view the contents.