Installer does not properly detect USB CDROM

[Tim Butler]

Binary package hint: debian-installer

When installing from a USB CDROM, the installer (7.04 beta - AMD64 Alternate CD) did not correctly detect the USB CDROM. The installer informs me that no CDROM was detected and allows me to select a module and device manually to correct the error. If I change /dev/cdrom to /dev/scd0 the rest of the installation works fine, however the installer should be able to handle USB CDROM drives without manual intervention.

The CDROM was a Liteon branded external unit, and is detected perfectly once the system has been installed.

Please let me know if specific details of the CDROM are required.

[reproman (reproman)]

I reproduce this bug every time using the 7.04 beta server install. However the suggested device name workaround change to "/dev/scd0" doesn't get me past the the "Detect and mount CD-ROM" step. Below are the lsusb and lsscsi bash reports of my hardware using the 7.04 beta >desktop< installation.

$ lsscsi
[2:0:0:0] cd/dvd HITACHI DVD-ROM GD-5000 0212 /dev/scd0
$ lsusb
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 04cf:8818 Myson Century, Inc. Fast 3.5" External Storage

It is also worthwhile to note that the above USB/DVD drive hardware is neither automatically mounted nor is readable by the 7.04 IA64 desktop release even if manually mounted. However this exact hardware is mounted automatically and fully operational in the 6.10 x86 desktop release. There appear to be very serious problems with USB device configuration in 7.04 all around.

As well this particular DVD device alone when configured on the IDE bus works in all cases.

[Susana Pereira (susana)]

Bug is still present in Ubuntu Feisty final as per duplicate bug 110757.

Petern: is your bug also with amd64?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Looks like this:

cdrom-detect (1.22) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Joey Hess ]
  * After scanning CDs, scan for things that look like USB floppies to
    list-devices, since these can sometimes really be USB CD drives.
    (Which is probably a udev or kernel bug). Closes: #410006, 418850
  * Needs di-utils 1.48.

 -- Frans Pop <email address hidden> Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:08:52 +0200

Could you retest this with Ubuntu 7.10, please, which contains the above fix?

[harald (harald-net)]

retested with the same devices as in #110757 -> Works with gutsy.

[Matthew Carpenter (matt-eisgr)]

I'm not sure if this is the same bug, but I've been trying to install off the Alternate ISO using a USB stick.
I've followed all the procedures at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick and the USB stick boots, begins the installer, but fails to mount the "CDROM". I've tried manually mounting the USB-stick equivalent to /cdrom in efforts to bypass the problem, but I seem to be unable to find the USB stick. Perhaps this is a initrd-problem? I have no such problems booting the Desktop ISO.

Thank you,
Matt

[Henrique Barbosa (hmjbarbosa)]

I'm not sure if this has been solved, but I have the same problem.

When installing 8.04.1 server LTS from a USB stick on a brand new machine that
does not have a CDROM, the installation fails at CDROM detection.

SOLUTION:

Get a shell (ALT+F2) and enter:

$ mount -t vfat <your_usb_stick_device> /cdrom

and the installation will continue. In my case, it stopped again saying that the
cdrom could not be read properly. Looking at the output on the ALT+F4 screen,
there was a message like:

/cdrom/dists/stable/Release

was not found... Serious bug... There ain't no 'stable' directory, but only one
called 'hardy'... Tried to link hardy->stable, but it did not work (vfat file system).
So I just copied the entire tree:

$ cp -pR /cdrom/dists/hardy /cdrom/dists/stable

And the installation continues smoothly 'till the end.

[Justa Guy (nginus)]

The shell does not include any tools to determine where the USB got mounted, ie fdisk, or even dir command.
Using nano /dev<Tab>(autocomplete) has limited results due to the inability to page autocomplete results.

[Jae Kwon (jkwon-work)]

You want the 'ls' command. In any case, try

tail -f /var/log/syslog

and reconnect your USB. I saw my device name (sdb1 for me) show up in the log.

I also used FAT32 and it looks like that nukes the dists/stable -> dists/hardy simlink, so you may need to cp/mv the correct dist subdirectory to dists/stable.