Created attachment 415157 [details]
boot.msg

also attached boot.msg in case that helps

I need /var/log/boot.kiwi not the boot.msg file

I have tested building a live usb stick with kiwi and it worked fine
with the 11.4 source I have. Coolo this has worked without kiwi changing
before so what has changed ?

- did you change isohybrid in some way ?
- did fdisk change again ?
- did you still have some code applied to the iso after kiwi created the hybrid ?

this works for many others, just not here. and boot.kiwi is attached in #0

Can Bug 669556
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=669556
be related to this one?

sorry, overlooked the log in the first comment. If the iso is booted as
a hybrid disk kiwi checks for the MBR id stored in the iso. The log
said there where three disk devices:

   sda, sdb and sdc

one of them is the hybrid disk and kiwi mounts them one after the other
and searches for the file: boot/grub/mbrid which is not found on any
of the disks. That's the reason why the boot failed at the end

I have no clue why the file is missing. So first I'd like to know if
the file is present in the iso. Could you do the following:
  
  mount -o loop openSUSE-GNOME-LiveCD-Build1056-i686.iso /mnt
  ls -l /mnt/boot/grub/

does the file "mbrid" exist ?

Thanks

Just plugged in the usb stick (don't have the .iso anymore) and there is a /boot/grub/mbrid file, it's 10 byte long and contains the string "0xb4590386"

> ll grub/
-rw-r--r-- 1 arun users 10 2011-02-08 07:14 mbrid

sda and sdb should be the two harddisks I have in my computer. the usb stick normally gets mounted as sdc (at least when I boot linux from the HD)

HTH

sorry, overlooked the log in the first comment. If the iso is booted as
a hybrid disk kiwi checks for the MBR id stored in the iso. The log
said there where three disk devices:

   sda, sdb and sdc

one of them is the hybrid disk and kiwi mounts them one after the other
and searches for the file: boot/grub/mbrid which is not found on any
of the disks. That's the reason why the boot failed at the end

I have no clue why the file is missing. So first I'd like to know if
the file is present in the iso. Could you do the following:
  
  mount -o loop openSUSE-GNOME-LiveCD-Build1056-i686.iso /mnt
  ls -l /mnt/boot/grub/

does the file "mbrid" exist ?

Thanks

don't know what bugzilla does here...

anyway thanks for the info. So the mbrid looks good. Are you able to
boot that iso with the id in it ?

How do you deploy the iso ? Do you do it the following way:

   dd if=file.iso of=/dev/<stick-device> bs=32k

then boot from this stick and then you see the error ?
It sounds totally strange to me that the mbrid is on the iso
but can't be found later when kiwi mounts it as a disk again

if you boot with:

   kiwidebug=1

you get a shell as you know. In that shell can you find out
which device is the stick and perform a manual mount of
the first partition. After that tell me what you see there
can you find the mbrid file ?

Thanks

another question I have is: You said the stick usually appeared as
sdc. From the log I found:

   dev=/dev/sdc1
   mount -o ro /dev/sdc1 /mnt
   mount: special device /dev/sdc1 does not exist

so if sdc is the stick something is broken with the partition table
written by isohybrid. Can you also do the following test to make sure
the isohybrid table is valid:

   losetup /dev/loop0 file.iso
   kpartx -a /dev/loop0

   mount /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt

there must be a partition in this table. Can you confirm ?

To comment 9: I deployed the iso using imagewriter as instructed on http://en.opensuse.org/Live_USB_stick.

I ran it again with kiwidebug=1 and at the shell I could mount sdc1 via

mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt

all I got is a warning that it was mounted ro only.

/mnt showed all the files, as far as I can tell, that I see if I plug the usb stick into a running linux system.

To comment 10: I'm not sure how to do the losetup using the usb-stick, so I downloaded the .iso again and all the steps worked, that is loop0p1 existed.

Is there a way to recreate the iso from the usb stick, so that I can doublecheck the sha1 and see if imagewriter worked?

HTH

I think it's imagewriter causing the trouble. Could you do me a favor
and install the iso you have downloaded with the dd method:

   dd if=file.iso of=/dev/sd... bs=32k

!! make sure you really have the correct usb stick device here
dd just dumps and does not ask any question :)

you can use cat /proc/mounts before and after you plugged in the stick
to be sure you picked up the right device

also make sure the stick device is not mounted

Thanks

tried it, still the same issue... did the same check with mounting the usb stick in the kiwidebug shell and mbrid file is there too.

Here are the steps I took:
* downloaded iso
* checked sha1
* dd command as in comment 12 using /dev/sdc
* boot with kiwidebug and checked mbrid after mounting the usb stick
* => same error message

I can try it in a bit on some different computers in case that helps.

tried the same stick on a different computer and there it worked, that is it booted 11.4RC1. So I guess there is some hardware related issue? Is there anything I should post about my computer that could help resolve this issue?

looks like a BIOS problem to me. Maybe a BIOS update helps. I guess the
problem is that the BIOS see this as a CD/DVD (as we put a iso structure here)
and it does not populate the partition table which then results in no
partitions on linux

I often saw this on HP machines but they even refuse to boot from the stick

I'm afraid I can't fix this

Marcus, can you please take a look at Bug 669556

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=669556

OpenSUSE 11.4 is at RC1 stage, and "normal boot form stick" doesn't work.
Not tsure if thse two bugs are realted, but point is that I can't test RC1 on 3 machines which I ususally use to test OpenSUSE before release.

this is not related to this one. This one can't find the required data
before mounting the clicfs. The one in 669556 is later in the system when
the already running clicfs process crashes

something for coolo

Tried the BIOS update, but no luck... To boot from the stick I do have to set the BIOS boot sequence to USB, so if it sees it as CD/DVD it doesn't show it in the BIOS settings as this...

I'll try again with RC2. Should I report back here in case it starts working?

Anyway, thanks for looking into it.