OMV 3.x USB installation issues

I have been using OMV 2.x for a few years. Found that OMV 3.x is released and decided to test it on a system. I am not well versed with Linux. But I am a good troubleshooter. This is my first post to the Forums.

Ran into some issues installing from USB flash drive. I tried two different systems and several flash drives. Searched the net and forums as best I could and did not really find any answers that resolved the problems I was seeing. So I did some testing. Using an Intel Core Duo system and another system at home which I don't remember the Intel CPU type at the moment.

FIRST to note, burning a CD and installing OMV 3.x using a CD drive works. There were no problems. But, not every system has a CD drive installed and I don't want one in the file server nor do I want to have to use one, even a USB CDROM, to install OMV (because I don't want to have to burn disks and for future reasons).

I used an 1GB and an 8 GB USB flash drive. Used Win32DiskImager to write all ISO images to the USB flash drives. Obviously, this is a small sampling of flash drives and systems, but even a small sample can provide some insight. Perhaps others could duplicate these test and expand on the sampling.

The problems I found with the USB sticks I used:

The 1GB stick failed with a CDROM detection/driver error. Apparently, it could not mount the USB stick to the /CDROM directory.
The 8GB stick did not have the CDROM error but it did fail during copy of system files and it consistently failed at 25%.

The size of OMV 3.x ISO is about 385MB and is based on Debian Jessie. Repos in the OMV installation refer back to Debian website for updates for Debian, therefore OMV is not using a modified fork of Debian. The Debian 8.9 amd64 netinstall ISO is about 247MB. The Debian 8.9 amd64 CD 1(one) ISO is about 630MB. Assumption - OMV 3.x is using a modified netinstall ISO for installation or a stripped version of the first CD ISO. Will test using the netinstall ISO. Hypothesis - if the problem is related to Debian then the same problems installing OMV 3.x should occur when installing Debian 8.9 netinstall; if the problems do not occur when installing Debian 8.9 netinstall then there is likely a problem with the OMV 3.x install. Also tested both sticks with OMV 2.x ISO.

Testing results:

Both, 1GB and 8GB sticks installed OMV 2.x with no problem and system booted fine.

The 1GB fails installation with a CDROM detection/driver error for OMV 3.x, Debian 8.9 netinstall AND Debian 8.7 netinstall (ISO tested to see if earlier version would work). For the OMV 3.x installation: Searching the Internet, found that when the Debian/OMV installation menu came up, the USB drive could be mounted by going to the shell and manually mounting the USB drive to the /CDROM directory, then returning to the installation menu and continue skipping the CDROM detection/driver step. HOWEVER, OMV 3.x installation failed during system copy at 25%.

The 8GB fails installation of OMV 3.x during 'system file copy', consistently at 25%. The 8GB installed Debian 8.9 netinstall with no problems, with only the standard system utilities marked (no desktop, print server or other options marked); and system booted.

Conclusion:

The CDROM detection/driver error is a problem with the Debian Jessie distribution and occurs for some USB flash drives. Possibly, older flash drives; since the one I used is 1GB and obviously older.

The OMV 3.x consistent failure of copying system files at 25% but the success of Debian 8.9 installation, suggests that there is a bug in the OMV 3.x installation script, perhaps something minor package left out or a missing command option. After, farther investigation on the Internet, found that ALT-F5 during OMV installation will show a log screen. This log screen appears to indicate a problem with reading a SMASHFS file system. I have no idea what that is. I suspect it is related to using older hardware that the folks at OMV thought one driver could handle both older and newer hardware but really can't. The Debian netinstall ISOs kept all the drivers.

The folks at OMV put a lot of work into this project. I like the fact that I can repurpose older hardware for a fileserver. OMV soes make it easier for the Linux challenged people like me to do. Dumps like this happen, that is why I am posting this, to help figure out what is going on. And I will learn more in the process.

Plan to investigate this some more, but thought I would share what I found so far. For those folks with a CDROM detection/driver error, the problem is likely with the USB flash drive.

Richard

Answer without a good explanation is not a good answer. But sometimes the explanation is complicated.

Zitat von tkaiser

First step would be to test both your USB thumb drives as outlined here in 2nd paragraph: https://forum.openmediavault.org/index.php/Thread/18991
And then please never ever use Win32DiskImager again but Etcher (download link see link above). If you feel you want to use this dangerous tool then use this variant (reasons outlined there).

tkaiser, I will look into the suggestion given in your first paragraph.

You might consider rephrasing your second paragraph. The first sentence is informative. I can look at Etcher, I have never heard of it. The second sentence is not very instructional or informative. The phrase 'If you feel you want to use this dangerous tool then use this variant ...' is insulting or at least, belittling. The Forum is a place to learn, which implies teaching. Your statement implies that I am knowingly using what you consider a dangerous tool (and may be one), combined with a statement of how I might 'feel'. That does not teach anything. And you don't know me to know how I might 'feel'. Saying that Win32DiskImager is dangerous and that I should look at Etcher would be informative without being unintentionally criticizing. It might be helpful to explain why Win32DiskImager is dangerous.

I have used Win32DiskImager for a few years, its not been perfect. I have also used Rufus, LinuxLive and a few other USB software. I have never heard of any of them being dangerous. I have experienced that none of them work for ALL iso images. I did look at the link provided for the Win32DiskImager variant. And found there are two things worth noting:

1) The variant site also mentions that 'dd' has the same dangerous problem that Win32DiskImager has:

'But few people have met the problem of flashing SD with 'win32DiskImager' or 'dd' utility.

Those utilities read data from an OS image file and write it to storage media.
But USB host in your PC, USB memory card reader or SD card itself may have problem to perform the secure and stable image copy.'

This is interesting because OMV's wiki instructions for copying the ISO to USB uses the 'dd' utility.

2) The variant site's posting is dated '01 February 2013 at 13:24 pm' and shows a screen shot of Win32DiskImager and states the verification features were added to version 0.6. I am using Win32DiskImager version 1.0 which has verification and includes a 'Verify Only' button. Version 1.0 was released in March 2017, five years after the posting on the variant website.

Win32DiskImager has changed since 2013, so maybe it is not as dangerous as it once was. And perhaps 'dd' is not as dangerous as it once was. I have looked at the Etcher website, to be honest I am not impressed by the site. It looks good on the surface but there is no information as to why they are better than any other USB writing software. I have found each USB writing software has pros and cons. Rufus for example, the only USB writing software (that I know of), that will create a DOS bootable flash drive. And, yes, I sometimes have to boot a computer to DOS.

I am testing a BeagleBone Black board, seeing if I can use it as a small fileserver and for pxe booting. The BeagleBone site also refered to Etcher for writting the USB drive. The files from BeagleBone are compressed tar.gz files. According to the BeagleBone site, Etcher will uncompress the file and write to the USB drive. Win32DiskImager doesn't do that. So, is a good reason to use Etcher; saves some steps when the images are compressed.

I did use Etcher for the BeagleBone and will try it later with some other image files.

Thanks tkaiser