32bit LM13 ISO casper won't mount drive with squashfs and boot via GRUB

[breakdaze]

Linux Mint 13 MATE 32bit full DVD ISO

To reproduce either, extract ISO contents and attempt to boot live system with GRUB, or attempt to boot live system ISO using GRUB loopback feature. Testing done on a GRUBB bootable USB flash drive.

During boot, dropped to busybox, shows after casper-premount, "Could not find the ISO /linuxmint-13-mate-dvd-32bit.iso" in the case of GRUB loopback method.

I expected it to mount the drive with the ISO, find the ISO, mount the ISO as a loopback, find the squashfs and load the live system.

At the busybox prompt, the boot can be resumed by;

1) mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /isodevice
2) mount -t iso9660 -o loop /isodevice/linuxmint-13-mate-dvd-32bit.iso /cdrom
3) echo "LIVEMEDIA=/cdrom/casper" >> /conf/param.conf
4) echo "LIVEMEDIA_OFFSET=0" >> /conf/param.conf
5) CTRL-D

Somewhere in the scripts, when the /dev/sdb1 is mounted, the scripts can't find the ISO, or in the case of an extracted ISO, the scripts can't find the /casper/filesystem.squashfs

Unsure if it is a matter of mounting, or a matter of scanning after mounting, or something else entirely.

Seems to be related to the mint4win not working on 32bit LM13 versions.

It always happens when booting using GRUB.

[caribriz (caribriz)]

Like the OP, I could not boot the 32-bit isos of Linux Mint 13 Mate or Cinnamon using Grub2 on bootable usb flash drive
or from hard drive on desktop pc using Grub2 loopback.

I basically followed these instructions to create a bootable usb stick which worked with previous versions of Linux Mint isos:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-multiple-iso-from-usb-via-grub2-using-linux/

Received this message while booting:
BusyBox v1.18.5 (Ubuntu 1:1.18.5-1ubuntu4) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs) Begin: Running /scripts/casper-premount ... done.
Begin: ...waiting for devs... ... done.
stdin: error 0
/sbin/mount.ntfs: line 1: ELF: not found
/sbin/mount.ntfs: line 2: : not found
/sbin/mount.ntfs: line3: syntax error: unexpected ")"
mount: mounting /dev/sda7 on /isodevice failed: No such device
Warning: Cannot mount /dev/sda7 on /isodevice

Could not find the ISO /linuxmint-13-mate-dvd-32bit.iso
This could also happen if the file system is not clean because of an operating
system crash, an interrupted boot process, an improper shutdown, or unplugging
of a removable device without first unmounting or ejecting it. To fix this,
simply reboot into Windows, let it fully start, log in, run 'chkdisk /r', then
gracefully shut down and reboot back into Windows. After this you should be
able to reboot again and resume the installation.

The /dev/sda7 referred to above was the sole ntfs data partition on hard drive - all other partitions were ext4.

I experimented by deleting the ntfs partition from hdd (wasn't needed) and recreated the fat32 usb flash drive.

Without this ntfs partition on my hdd, both the LM13 Cinnamon and Mate 32-bit isos would then boot perfectly on a 4gb SanDisk Cruzer -
- usb flash drive formatted as fat32
- Grub2 version 1.99-21Ubuntu3 installed from LM13 Cinnamon live-usb
- Copied the isos to the root of the usb stick.

Made a grub.cfg file on the usb stick with the menuentries as below:

menuentry "Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon ISO" {
loopback loop /linuxmint-13-cinnamon-dvd-32bit.iso
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/linuxmint-13-cinnamon-dvd-32bit.iso noeject noprompt --
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

menuentry "Linux Mint 13 Mate ISO" {
loopback loop /linuxmint-13-mate-dvd-32bit.iso
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/linuxmint-13-mate-dvd-32bit.iso noeject noprompt --
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

I can also boot the Linux Mint 13 isos from my hard drive (formatted as ext4 - and no ntfs partition)
with the following menuentries in /etc/grub.d/40_custom:

menuentry "Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon ISO" {
set isofile="/boot/iso/linuxmint-13-cinnamon-dvd-32bit.iso"
loopback loop (hd0,7)/$isofile
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

menuentry "Linux Mint 13 Mate ISO" {
set isofile="/boot/iso/linuxmint-13-mate-dvd-32bit.iso"
loopback loop (hd0,7)/$isofile
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

Obviously, this is not a solution -
but it seems that the ntfs partition was somehow interferin...