system-rescuecd fails to find the root filesystem

vonbiber · 10-04-2021, 03:35 AM

I couldn't find a forum dedicated to system-rescuecd.
As it is based on arch, I thought I could post here.
I already had an external USB hard drive (syslinux) bootable.
I installed some of the files that I extracted from
systemrescue-8.05-amd64.iso to it.

Code:

#ls /mnt/sdb1/sysresccd
VERSION  pkglist.x86_64.txt  x86_64

/mnt/sdb1/boot contains, among other files,
amd_ucode.*, intel_ucode.* and my syslinux menu (main.cfg)
It also contains a subfolder sysrc with 2 files:

Code:

#ls /mnt/sdb1/boot/sysrc
sysresccd.img  vmlinuz

I added this entry to the menu main.cfg

Code:

label sysrc
menu label SystemRescueCD 8.05
kernel /boot/sysrc/vmlinuz
append initrd=/boot/intel_ucode.img,/boot/sysrc/sysresccd.img \
 archisobasedir=sysresccd archisolabel=RESCUE805 copytoram

I tried to boot from that usb drive.
But systemrescue couldn't find the root filesystem.
I got this error message

Code:

ERROR: /dev/disk/by-label' device did not show up after 30 seconds...

And yet, in the console I was left with, this device did show up
when I run

Code:

# ls /dev/disk/by-label
Qubes-83.2-x86_64 RESCUE805

and I could mount it and see its contents.
30 seconds is a pretty long delay. Should I try to increase it (60 seconds) or is there anything else I should do in order for the
root filesystem to become visible?

aus9 · 10-04-2021, 10:34 PM

I do not use syslinux but your dir appears to be wrong.

You appear to have /boot/something but its documents say its to be /sysresccd/boot/something

https://www.system-rescue.org/manual...e_on_the_disk/

so that is likely to be reason why it can not find its files

ls /mnt/sdb1/boot/sysrc is not the same as ls /mnt/sdb1/sysrc/boot

colorpurple21859 · 10-05-2021, 01:01 AM

post the output of

Code:

lsblk -f

with the usb inserted.

vonbiber · 10-06-2021, 02:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colorpurple21859

post the output of

Code:

lsblk -f

with the usb inserted.

I replaced the 8.04 version by the 8.05 and edited accordingly the boot menu.
Here's the output of

Code:

lsblk -f

Code:

NAME          FSTYPE                    LABEL             UUID
sda
sdb           iso9660 Joliet Extension  Qubes83-2-x86_64  2016-09-20-10-42-46_00
-sdb1         vfat                      RESCUE805         30AB-49CB
|-nvme0n1p1
|-nvme0n1p2
|-nvme0n1p3
|-nvme0n1p4

In the boot message I noticed it tries to

Code:

mounting /dev/disk/by-label/ to /run/archiso/bootmnt

But I am confused here. It should either be

Code:

/dev/disk/by-label/Qubes83-2-x86_64

or

Code:

/dev/disk/by-label/RESCUE05

I did mount them manually and I could see their contents.
Qubes is read-only.

colorpurple21859 · 10-06-2021, 05:30 AM

Not sure, it may have something to do with sdb being iso filesystem, which is usually considered read-only, instead of the standard dos partition table.

vonbiber · 10-23-2021, 03:08 AM

[code]
dd if=systemrescue-8.05-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb
[code]
on an empty flashdrive.

The partitioning is weird: two partitions overlap each other

Code:

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1  *        0 1542143 1542144  753M  0 Empty
/dev/sdb2         236    3115    2880  1.4M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)

I works ok. Problem is, it's write-only.
I tried a manual install, erasing everything then
1. create a new partition table (dos-type)
2. create a 4G vfat partition with flags boo,lba, label RESCUE805
3. create a second small vfat partition with esp flag
4. copied the contents of the iso to sdb1
I tried a hack: copying the first 446 bytes of the iso and write them
to /dev/sdb
When I booted on it, I got something on the screen, then
I got an old BIOS boot menu