[Bug 658865] Re: Install from USB fails: "An attempt to configure apt to install additional packages from the CD failed"

[Richard H]

Hello,

I had the same problem, too, installing Linux Mint 17.2.  The
installer just crashed, informing me that it had crashed, and not
giving massively helpful error messages.

I don't like having to trash the contents of a usb stick in order
to install an os, so I have one usb stick created under Linux with
good old grub1 (or grub4dos) on there.

My problem was that I had not copied these directories to the root
of the usb drive:

/preseed 
/.disk   
/dists   
/pool    

The whole usb stick is mounted under /cdrom on the resulting live
system, and some or all these directories being in the root
directory seem to be immovable.

It's unfortunate that all these files, only amounting to 8.2MB in
total on Mint 17.2, and 5.6MB on Ubuntu 15.04 can't all be more
portable and placed anywhere.  It's unfortunate, too, that after
years of bug reports, the error handling on this is unhelpful.  It
seems to be an upstream ubuntu problem, though.

To fix, this is what I did, assuming that the usb stick is mounted
under /usb:

#Mount the iso image as a loopback on /cdrom
mount -o loop linuxmint-17.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso /cdrom

cd /usb
mkdir mint17.2
cd mint17.2
#Copy all CD files to /usb/mint17.2
rsync -avv cdrom/ . --progress

#Now copy the necessary dirs to the root of USB:
cd /usb
rsync -avv /cdrom/preseed /cdrom/.disk /cdrom/dists /cdrom/pool . --progress

My grub1 menu.lst command line is:
 
title Linux Mint 17.2
kernel /mint17.2/casper/vmlinuz file=/mint17.2/preseed/linuxmint.seed live-media-path=/mint17.2/casper/ ignore_uuid boot=casper ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw splash --
initrd /mint17.2/casper/initrd.lz

The same idea can be used for Ubuntu 15.04.

Grub4dos also works for booting usb sticks.

Cheers,

===Rich

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/658865

Title:
  Install from USB fails: "An attempt to configure apt to install
  additional packages from the CD failed"

Status in Estobuntu:
  New
Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in Baltix:
  New

Bug description:
  Please note that removing /usr/lib/ubiquity/apt-
  setup/generators/40cdrom from your system may cause the installer to
  crash at a later stage.

  Original report follows:

  Binary package hint: ubiquity

  Description of problem:
  When trying to install Ubuntu 10.10 from USB, ubiquity crashes with this message: "An attempt to configure apt to install additional packages from the CD failed."

  Root of problem:
  The problem is that the file structure on the usb differs to what is on a livecd and apt-setup is unaware of this.

  WORKAROUND:

  There appear to be two alternatives:

  a) Remove the script that causes the error, when installing from a Live setup ("Try Ubuntu"):
     sudo rm /usr/lib/ubiquity/apt-setup/generators/40cdrom

  b) Create the files as they are expected:

     To resolve this, simply copy the contents of filesystem.squashfs on
  the iso into the usb stick. Luckily the parts it is reading from this
  appear to be just apt config files so the fact that you lose symbolic
  links or permissions on a FAT32 usb stick shouldn't matter.

     On your current Linux installation: (If you don't have one you could use a live cd off a different usb stick)
     1. Create USB stick.
     2. Type in a terminal:
     sudo mkdir iso
     sudo mkdir source
     sudo mount -o loop pathtoiso/ubuntu-10.10-desktop-amd64.iso iso
     sudo mount -t squashfs -o loop iso/casper/filesystem.squashfs source
     sudo cp -pLr source/* pathtomountedusbstick

     (Thanks Klaas Hartmann for the workaround :))

  Architecture: i386
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
  LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
  Package: ubiquity 2.4.8
  PackageArchitecture: i386
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.33-generic 2.6.35.4
  Tags: maverick
  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic i686
  UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

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