Install from USB does not work...

[omelette]

Hi. I downloaded the current Mageia, burned it onto cd and played about with it for a while - I like it!

Unfortunately, I have spent about 3 hours trying to get it installed on a drive-less mini-pc via USB in vain! I've tried creating the bootable USB by multiple means, (UNetbootin, Xboot & a M$ variant) and all failed the boot sequence at the same point - a "squashfs error: unable to read squasgfs_super_block". Bizarrely, the 'Progress' bar on the splash-screen continues to advance (slowly) even though installation has terminated! I also noticed that when I left the CD-ROM in the drive of my laptop as I attempted to boot from USB, that when it same to the same 'point of failure', but before issuing the "Fatal" error messages, it immediately switched to loading from CD_ROM rather than USB - this is an indication of a clear-cut bug to me!

I have also found that at least 2 users have filed bug-reports on this. Yet there's doesn't seem to be a mention of this problem anywhere here - have others actually succeeded in installing Mageia 1 from USB? I would have thought this would rank as a high-priority issue - after all, I can't even install it!

[djennings]

Did you try the methods listed in the instructions?
http://www.mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=mageia_installation_media

[omelette]

Damn, I hadn't seen the wiki.

I tried the "dd" option from the command-line first - doesn't work, although I end up with a seemingly perfect ISO-copy, when I reboot I am informed that "No file-system" is found. Next I tried downloading the 'Mandriva-seed' package - the link you supplied is dead but I managed to google up the M$ version and run it from a VirtualBox'ed XP - btw, why is it so BIG, 26meg uncompressed, just to copy a few files!

SUCCESS, IT WORKED!!!

Respectfully though, it should not require a dedicated app just to create a bootable USB. I have probably 10+ distros already installed this way and Mageia is the first one that has been this stubborn. I hope this is resolved in version 2.

But enough of my bitching. KDE4 seems quite nice. I had a full year with Debian Lenny KDE and really wasn't a fan - of KDE that is, Debian was rock-solid, never gave me a problem. KDE4 seems a lot less 'plasticy'...

Thanks for you help!

[djennings]

Unetbootin has never worked with Mandriva either. I have no idea why not.

The 'dd' method has always worked for me, but I usually use it with the all.img bootloader (found in the 'Install/images folder on Mageia servers ftp://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/linux/mageia/distrib/1/x86_64/install/images/ " This image boots you into a bootloader which will then do a network install over ftp to a public mirror. I prefer to do a network install because it will install all available updates and so save a lot of time upgrading later. KDE 4.6.5 has just been released for Mageia 1 so there are 400+ updates waiting for you.
I hope you enjoy your Mageia experience.

[barjac]

I guess that omlette already added to this bug report which I suspect is related.
https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1506