Error on boot after creating usb key for mandriva 2008.1

[Darren Rose]

Using following ISO image for mandriva spring 2008.1

mandriva-linux-one-2008-spring-KDE-int-cdrom-i586.iso

all creates okay, but when I boot it, I get following error

Cannot run '/etc/init.d/rcS': No such file or directory

Assuming it is a typo somewhere in the code as shouldn't it be rc5 not rcS?

How can I get this working please

By the way excellent tool!!!!

[Geza Kovacs (gezakovacs)]

Yes, just tried it and reproduced this error; thus, I can confirm this bug. Apparently, the latest Mandriva One Spring iso file's initrd doesn't have the appropriate modules loaded to boot from a USB drive (probably missing one of the drivers needed to mount VFAT filesystems); either that, or the liveCD ISO file doesn't have the correct isolinux.cfg configuration for booting from USB. Thus, the error message isn't a typo in the code (by the way, /etc/init.d/rcS is indeed the correct path for base startup files; rc5 is simply for runlevel 5, though this isn't what's causing the issue).

Thus, since liveUSB creation for Mandriva via the Live ISO files is currently broken, I've removed the Live version options from Mandriva in the latest version (229) for the time being until I get it fixed.

Since Mandriva appears to have gotten USB-booting working with their custom drives purchasable from their stores, if anyone has one of them, it would certainly be handy if you could post the files syslinux.cfg, vmlinuz, and initrd.gz from those USB drives, which should be found in either the "boot" or "syslinux" subdirectories (I presume that, since the code is GPL, it should be perfectly legal to redistribute those files).

Marking bug status as Confirmed, since I'll need more information on how Mandriva's own bootable USB drives work and the differences between the contents of the purchasable live USB drive and the Mandriva One ISO file before I can start fixing this bug.

[Geza Kovacs (gezakovacs)]

Ok, I think that the issue is that VFAT support is missing from the initrd.gz file on the ISO; after decompressing it and mounting the file, within the /lib/modules/2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb/kernel/fs of the initrd, there was no "vfat" folder, which should have contained the VFAT driver "vfat.ko". I'll thus probably have it working once I pinpoint all the missing filesystem driver files and build them into the initrd, assuming that missing filesystem drivers were the only issue (though if anyone with a working Mandriva 2008.1 LiveUSB could upload the initrd.gz file it contains to somewhere and post a link here to it, it would make my task far easier)

Marking bug status as In Progress.

[drakh (drakh)]

You can find the USB initrd for Mandriva 2009.0 here:

http://lordikc.free.fr/wordpress/?page_id=158