[SOLVED] 'Failed to $1' error during installation

[saivin]

Hi,
I am trying to install gentoo onto my desktop. I've downloaded x86 minimal install cd and verified its integrity. When I boot and choose 'gentoo', it comes till choosing keyboard and the tries to mount devices and gives the following error.

>> Mounting squashfs filesystem
mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on /newroot/mnt/livecd failed: Invalid argument
!! Failed to $1; failing back to the shell...
...
/bin/ash: can't access tty; job control turned off

I'm put in to shell after this.

Did 'dmesg | tail' and found the following lines interesting.

EXT4-fs: Update your userspace programs to mount using ext4
EXT4-fs: ext4dev backwards compatibility will go away by 2.6.31
...
SQUASHFS error: Major/Minor mismatch, older Squashfs 3.1 filesystems are unsupported

I'm not able to make out anything. Any ideas...

[MikeTbob]

I've always had better luck with the Universal or LiveCD, using Knoppix or another Linux distro to install it.
Gentoo Linux Documentation -- The Gentoo Linux alternative installation method HOWTO

[saivin]

Oh, how did I miss that HOWTO

Thanks Mike... used Debian to install Gentoo...

Now compiling X. Thought of replying to you after establishing X, but that will take a long time...Thanks again mate...

Out of curiosity, do you know, by any chance, what the above error means? But otherwise the thread is closed.

[MikeTbob]

when I was searching earlier, I noticed some similar errors and they seemed to indicate a bug where the mount command was being called either too early or too late by the boot scripts and it produced the same errors. I suspect a bug.

[Jonathan183]

Similar post for install here post #17 as you can see from post #18, document is outdated .

I found mirrorselect the only issue ... you can just manually add info to /etc/make.conf example here. You can emerge mirrorselect but probably better to just add the entries manually for GENTOO_MIRRORS and SYNC.

[saivin]

No, its not mirrorselect issue in this case. Coz, to make mistake at that stage we need to get into the gentoo environment which we are not able to. Its failing at squashfs stage. This is a bug and the here is the link: boot-bug

Anyway, as for the problem, its for the gentoo devs to solve it and make it easy on next users. For the time being my gentoo is up and running. Even X is up and am posting from it.

Thanks Mike for the link to alternate install method and thanks Jonathan for thread on USE flags. Believe me it was very useful during this install.