# [OmniOS-discuss] Unable to boot r151014 USB installation media; difference between ISO and USB files?

Marcus Marinelli marcus at plumdev.com
Mon Oct 5 00:35:06 UTC 2015

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    Hi All,

    I'm hoping to be able to use OmniOS in a hosted/cloud environment, but
    having some problems getting a working image setup.

    I began by trying to install the latest stable (r151014) by writing the USB
    disk installation file (OmniOS_Text_r151014.usb-dd) to a virtual device on
    the VM provider, adding a blank disk to install to, and booting the
    virtualized KVM node against the usb image.

    The VM comes up and shows the OmniOS grub splash screen, lets me choose the
    regular or ttya/ttyb boot menu selections, however after getting the
    initial "SunOS Release 5.11 Version omnios-f090f73 64-bit" messages to show
    up, things start going poorly.

    After "Preparing image for use" is shown, next I see:

    Requesting System Maintenance Mode
    (See /lib/svc/share/README for more information.)
    Console login service(s) cannot run

    Enter use name for system maintenance (control-d to bypass):

    At this point, once I drop into the shell, svcs -vx shows

    svc:/system/filesystem/root-assembly:media (Installation file system
    assembly) is in state maintenance due to reason "Start method exited with
    $SMF_EXIT_ERR_FATAL" and consequently a whole bunch (55) of dependent
    services are not running.

    If I look at the svc log for system-filesystem-root-assembly:media, I see:

    Executing start method ("/lib/svc/method/media-assembly")
    Unable to mount media

    Looking in /lib/svc/method/media-assembly, I believe it is failing quite
    early:

    . /lib/svc/share/media_include.sh
    . /lib/svc/share/smf_include.sh
    . /lib/svc/share/fs_include.sh

    volsetid=$( < "/.volsetid" )

    echo "\rPreparing image for use" >/dev/msglog

    /usr/sbin/mount_media $volsetid
    if [ $? -ne 0]; then
    echo "Unable to mount media"
    echo $SMF_EXIT_ERR_FATAL
    fi

    For reference, the contents of /.volsetid ($volsetid) is
    "r151014-2015-09-30T13:22:46.571554"

    If I run the /lib/svc/method/media-assembly script at this point (from the
    shell) I can see that /usr/sbin/mount_media is returning exit code 1, which
    explains why the script is failing and consequently SMF has given up.

    In order to diagnose this further, I then took the same USB image
    (OmniOS_Text_r151014.usb-dd) and wrote it to a real physical USB disk, and
    booted a real physical machine from it. The machine is 2 or 3 years old at
    this point - not brand new, but not ancient either. The surprising thing is
    I experienced the same behavior - the "real" machine failed to boot in the
    same way with seemingly the same issue.

    At this point, I thought maybe something was wrong with the r151014 USB
    installation media, so I downloaded r151012, r151010, r151006 and r151004's
    USB installation files. Flashed them all (in sequence, working backwards)
    to a real USB stick and experienced the same problem on all of them.

    I then took the r151014 ISO image file, burned that to a disk, and put it
    in the same physical computer, and it booted right up and loaded the OmniOS
    installer fine.

    It looks like this may be related to another user's recent experience:

    http://lists.omniti.com/pipermail/omnios-discuss/2015-September/005651.html

    (at least it sure seems like the same failure mode, although it's not clear
    from that email chain if the user installed r151012 successfully from the
    .usb-dd image or if they, perhaps, also used an ISO image for the
    successful '012 installation they mentioned)

    Can anyone (Dan? :)) help shed some light on what I might be doing wrong
    here with the USB installation media?

    Thanks,
    Marcus
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