Troubleshooting: Installation

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[edit] Basic USB Stick Boot Troubleshooting

What to do if you can't get the Eee to boot from the USB-stick (Symptoms: Boot menu is not displayed on [Esc] or the Eee boots from HDD even though you had the USB selected at boot time)

  • Press F2 Key early during Boot to enter BIOS Setup. Boot - Priority - make USB device first. Press F10. (Will be forgotten after one use, at least with my 901GO)
  • On EEE1000HE the bios menu is confusing for boot priority, one should go to the HDD items to get the USB device before the HDD (strange)... (BTW all this should be properly explained to newbies)
  • Make sure you have the most recent BIOS version. On the Linux as provided by ASUS ("Xandros" in Easy Mode) you can do this under "Settings" -> "Add/Remove Programs" -> "BIOS Update". Install the most recent version (latest date/highest number).
  • Eject the memory card if you have one in your card reader.
  • Press F2 Key early during Boot to enter BIOS Setup, Select Boot and then disable showing the Logo during boot. Now it will show you when to press Esc.
  • At least on the EEE PC 2G (701), plug the stick into the single USB-port on the left (not into one of the two on the right).
  • When I hit F2 or ESC and chose my Sandisk USB stick for booting, I noticed the computer was still ignoring my USB stick. The Sandisk Cruzer USB stick apparently comes with a U3 application (it auto-runs a menu to give me options on what I want to do with the USB stick). I had to un-install the U3 application first before running unetbootin, as unetbootin does not automatically delete the U3 application. There is an uninstall.exe option when you explore the existing folders in the USB which allows you to remove the U3 application. Uninstalling the U3 application essentially turns the USB into a regular storage device. Afterwards, I was able to boot from the USB with no problems. Take away: Make sure your USB is completely clean before mounting the .iso.
  • On reboot, my USB stick was available as an option in the boot menu, but selecting it would still boot into Xandros. I found that rebooting with the usb stick removed, pressing esc to boot, powering down at the boot selection screen, re-inserting the USB stick, then powering back on and following the normal boot process worked.
  • Make sure that the USB stick is formatted as any file system as long as it IS NOT NTFS on both of my 900's it refused to boot until the removable storage was formatted as FAT

[edit] More Technical solutions

[edit] Installing the live image on the USB

  • If you encounter the following error when running the sudo parted command
    Error: The flag 'boot' is not available for loop disk labels.
    You have mistakenly added a 1 after the letter of your device for this command. Note that sdX is the drive while sdX1 is the partition on it.
  • If you encounter the following error when running the isotostick.sh command
    ./isotostick.sh: line 103: /lib/udev/vol_id: No such file or directory
    You may need to locate where the vol_id command exists in your current distro and update your local copy of the script. This command may help you locate the missing executable
    find / -name \*vol_id\*
  • If you encounter the following error when running the isotostick.sh command
    cat: /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin: No such file or directory
    You may be using a version of syslinux which is too old and does not contain the mentioned file.
  • If you encounter the following error when running the syslinux command
    sh: mcopy: command not found</coe>
    <code>syslinux: failed to create ldlinux.sys
    You will need to install the mtools package to get the needed utility. On some distros you can use the following command
    apt-get install mtools
  • If, while trying to use Unetbootin, you encounter the following error
    Error: /lib/tls/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.4' not found
    You can try Install: from a Live Ubuntu image on a USB stick, and followed the "How to configure a USB stick manually" instructions.
  • if unetbootin doesn't seem to do anything but your usb stick or memory card as been mounted to a location with a space
    (eg. a card or stick is mounted to /media/NO NAME.)
    • Unmount the memory card or stick (right click and select Unmount)
    • Do this in terminal
      sudo mkdir /media/eee
      sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /media/eee
      (You might have to replace /dev/sdX1 with the corresponding device name on your machine.)

[edit] Error on Booting the USB on the EEE PC

  • If you encounter the following error on boot
    Could not find kernel image: linux
    1. After boot: you may enter a kernel filename, realtive to the usb-stick main directory and also add options.
      On my stick the kernel file is ubnkern, the initial ram disk filesystem image is ubninit and the rest was text in syslinux.cfg.
      All together resulted in the following line. I typed it in and thus instantly booted ubuntu eee:
      ubnkern initrd=/ubninit file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper
    2. In some cases the syslinux.cfg may present a syntax error on top, presenting at line 1:
      default menu.c32
      To solve this: open syslinux.cfg in a text editor and correct line 1 with:
      default unetbootindefault
      where unetbootindefault is the default option, marked by "menu label Default", like in this example:
      label unetbootindefault
      menu label Default
      kernel /ubnkern
      append initrd=/ubninit file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash --
      Save changes made to syslinux.cfg and reboot from the USB stick and everything should run smooth.
  • If you encounter the following error on boot
    Could not find kernel image: /casper/.vml
    You are running into some problem with command length interpretation. To fix this:
    1. Mount your usb drive under a working distribution.
      Either via gui or
      sudo mount /dev/sdX# /media/usb (where X is the usb device location, and # is the partition, most likely 1, and /media/usb is wherever usb devices are normally mounted.)
    2. Copy the following files to the base directory of the usb drive
      • casper/vmlinuz
      • casper/initrd.gz
      • install/mt86plus
      use drag and drop in a gui, or issue the following terminal command:
      cp /media/usb/casper/vmlinuz /media/usb/caspter/initrd.gz /media/usb/install/mt86plus /media/usb
    3. Edit syslinux.cfg and remove all occurrences of /install/ and /casper/ (that is, replace them with nothing - leave the rest of the line as-is.)
    4. unmount (right-click->eject or sudo umount /media/usb) and boot your eee with it as normal.
    If any of these commands gives you an error about permissions, throw a sudo in front of it.
    (These steps allowed me to successfully install ubuntu-eee-804.iso onto a 1gb Corsair Flash voyager and then boot and install on my 4gb EEE PC.)

[edit] How-To download ISO on one machine; then boot eee-pc from the USB

<Notice: This section does not make much sense at the moment. Make sure you use the 'unetbootin' utility to prepare the USB stick, make sure you use the Ubuntu Eee disk image you downloaded (it's a large file, it has a .iso ending) and mark the corresponding checkbox ('iso'!). If you're not extremely unlucky that's all there is to it, else see above. Note that you can also burn the .iso as a disk image (this part is important, the file alone on a standard Joilet file system won't do) to a CDR or DVD. You are advised to google for further documentation (burn iso).>

I used my desktop pc to download the ISO, and then tried this procedure to boot the eee-pc. It won't work.

Unetbootin will ask where the ISO is, and if you point to the desktop copy, it will not be available when you move the USB to the eee-pc. So, copy the ISO onto the USB stick and transfer it to the eee-pc. Then begin the procedure above, on the eee-pc.

yeah, and what if I don't have a working operating system on the eee? how am I going to do this then?
||that´s my problem too. I don´t have an USB DVD and I lost my OS...

STEP 1: Press F9 while booting STEP 2: Restore the work settings STEP 3: ??? STEP 4: Profit what is this idonteven

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