Ubuntu
ubiquity package

Dell Mini 9 Lucid 10.04 usb boot/install fails with 'can not mount /dev/loop1 on /cow'

Asked by HCunningham

I am currently running 9.04 jaunty on my Dell Mini 9. I passed by the upgrade to 9.10 since I do not have sufficient disk space for a download upgrade. Now I am trying to do a fresh install on 10.04 lucid. I downloaded the ubuntu-10.04-netbook-i386.iso and using usb-creator on an XP Laptop made a USB boot key (as I did when I first installed 9.04). When I reboot and pick either (1) run w/o install or (2) install, it fails:

Filesystem autodetection requires /proc to be mounted.
...
Can not mount /dev/loop1 or /cow.

I don't recall seeing an MD5 file on the download site but here is what I get.
root@howard-netbook:/media/disk-1# md5sum ubuntu-10.04-netbook-i386.iso
712277c7868ab374c4d3c73cff1d95cb ubuntu-10.04-netbook-i386.iso

Archive mounter can mount the iso so it looks to be OK.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks,

Howard

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mycae
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Best mycae (mycae) said : 		#1

This appears to be a bug with the USB Copy-On-Write (persistence) mode, using usb-creator.

Tick the ""Discarded on shutdown..." option when creating the USB from the iso.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usb-creator/+bug/492301

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mycae (mycae) said : 		#2

Also, yes, your MD5 appears to be correct (though technically I don't have a full trust-chain to this page.. oh well.):
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#3

http://www.pcmech.com/article/ubuntu-netbook-remix-9-10-usb-install-workaround/
Try this.

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HCunningham (hlcunningham) said : 		#4

Thanks for the quick help...

On to the next problems:
1. BCM WiFi on 10.04 - cannot update driver when booting from USB so I will have to do the install for real - hope that works
2. More distressing is the warning that the 4 GB internal flash driver is being used outside spec - I think I saw something about that on the FAQs.

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#5

Please reopen your question, which is marked Solved or better open a new one.