Manjaro Won't Boot to Live USB

[CharlesM2020]

Greetings everyone,

 

             I have been attempting to boot Manjaro from a USB in order to try it before Windows 7 becomes unsupported. Manjaro does not boot, and I am left with an error "'/dev/disk/by-label/MJRO1815' device did not show up after 30 seconds". It falls back to an interactive prompt, and that is where I am stuck. I have looked for solutions, and it seems that for others Manjaro just boots. The few similar issues I have found remain unresolved but hint at an issue with using an AMD CPU and an Nvidia GPU. I do not have an AMD GPU to swap and see if that is the issue, nor does my motherboard have onboard graphics. Note: I have ensured "Secure Boot" is disabled in the BIOS, though there may be other necessary BIOS settings that I am unaware of.

 

              Steps I have tried:

 

              1) Booting Manjaro from an "Easy 2 Boot" USB drive, locating the .iso in the LINUX folder.

              2) Booting Manjaro from a USB drive with the Manjaro image written with Rufus.

              3) Booting Manjaro from a USB drive with the Manjaro image written with LiLi USB creator

              4) Booting Manjaro from a USB drive with the Manjaro image written with Win32DiskImager

              5) Booting Manjaro from a USB drive with the Manjaro image written with Etcher

              6) All of the above with other USB drives.

              7) All of the above with other Manjaro images

 

             Hardware Specifications:

 

             CPU: AMD FX-8120

             Graphics: EVGA Geforce GTX 650 Ti

             Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-DS3P (Rev. 2.0)

 

             Special Note: I am using 2 x 1TB Hard Drives in RAID1, configured using the onboard RAID controller. Windows OS is installed on a separate SSD.

[Eigenvektor]

That sounds more like the installer has problems accessing a certain disk or directory. I found something here, which might help.

 

LiveUSB creators put Manjaro into their own directory, but the boot loader expects it to be in ‘MJRO1815’.

 

So, when you’re in prompt [rootfs ]# do the following:

1. cd dev/disk/by-label
2. ls -lAh
3. You should see the directory created by the LiveUSB creator (e.g. ‘MYLINUXLIVE’)
4. mv [the directory] MJRO1815
5. ls -lAh
6. Double check that the correct directory is now present
7. run exit and enjoy!

NOTE: If you get the message "can't cd to [directory]", run this command:

chmod o+x [directory]

 

[Master Disaster]

Tbh it sounds like a USB issue rather than a drive or software problem.

 

You'd need to confirm if MJRO1815 is the usb drive or one of your internal drives. Try lsblk -f in terminal and see what happens.

[CharlesM2020]

18 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

That sounds more like the installer has problems accessing a certain disk or directory. I found something here, which might help.

 

LiveUSB creators put Manjaro into their own directory, but the boot loader expects it to be in ‘MJRO1815’.

 

So, when you’re in prompt [rootfs ]# do the following:

1. cd dev/disk/by-label
2. ls -lAh
3. You should see the directory created by the LiveUSB creator (e.g. ‘MYLINUXLIVE’)
4. mv [the directory] MJRO1815
5. ls -lAh
6. Double check that the correct directory is now present
7. run exit and enjoy!

NOTE: If you get the message "can't cd to [directory]", run this command:

chmod o+x [directory]

 

Thank you for your prompt reply. I booted to the prompt and attempted the first two commands. This resulted in the following structure of "/dev/disk/by-label":

 

lrwxrwxrwx   1  0     0     10 Jan 8 03:20 SecondaryData -> ../../sdd2

lrwxrwxrwx   1  0     0     10 Jan 8 03:20 System\x20Reserved -> ../../sda1

lrwxrwxrwx   1  0     0     10 Jan 8 03:20 Vault -> ../../sdc1

 

I do not have a firm grasp on the Linux directory structure, however, I know that the drives named SecondaryData and Vault have important data on them that I would rather not rename, move, or otherwise modify in order to get the Live USB to boot. I am unsure what 'System\x20Reserved' is, and think that may be the directory referred to in step 3, however the name was sufficiently different that I wanted to come back and receive input before moving it.

[CharlesM2020]

34 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Tbh it sounds like a USB issue rather than a drive or software problem.

 

You'd need to confirm if MJRO1815 is the usb drive or one of your internal drives. Try lsblk -f in terminal and see what happens.

Thank you for your advice, you may entirely be correct. I do not have a brand-new USB to try and am left with the ones I have been using. I have, however, begun a surface test on my USB using EaseUS Partition Master. I don't know if EaseUS is the utility to use, but I do not trust Windows scandisk. Any suggestions for fast USB testing programs would be appreciated.

 

The MJRO1815 name is the name of the USB in Windows, though I do not see that name while looking through the prompt.

[Eigenvektor]

6 minutes ago, CharlesM2020 said:

Thank you for your prompt reply. I booted to the prompt and attempted the first two commands. This resulted in the following structure of "/dev/disk/by-label":

 

lrwxrwxrwx   1  0     0     10 Jan 8 03:20 SecondaryData -> ../../sdd2

lrwxrwxrwx   1  0     0     10 Jan 8 03:20 System\x20Reserved -> ../../sda1

lrwxrwxrwx   1  0     0     10 Jan 8 03:20 Vault -> ../../sdc1

 

I do not have a firm grasp on the Linux directory structure, however, I know that the drives named SecondaryData and Vault have important data on them that I would rather not rename, move, or otherwise modify in order to get the Live USB to boot. I am unsure what 'System\x20Reserved' is, and think that may be the directory referred to in step 3, however the name was sufficiently different that I wanted to come back and receive input before moving it.

All of those are symbolic links (e.g. Vault points to the partition "sdc1"). "System\x20Reserved" is most likely pointing to the "System Reserved" boot partition of Windows (which is the first partition on sda, i.e. sda1). So it looks like none of these is what we're looking for.

 

I assume this is on a USB stick you created with a LiveUSB creator? The topic I linked to recommended LiLi USB, so maybe try to recreate the stick with that (if you haven't) and see if that changes anything.

[CharlesM2020]

9 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

All of those are symbolic links (e.g. Vault points to the partition "sdc1"). "System\x20Reserved" is most likely pointing to the "System Reserved" boot partition of Windows (which is the first partition on sda, i.e. sda1). So it looks like none of these is what we're looking for.

 

I assume this is on a USB stick you created with a LiveUSB creator? The topic I linked to recommended LiLi USB, so maybe try to recreate the stick with that (if you haven't) and see if that changes anything.

Thank you very much for the information regarding symbolic links and interpretation of what they mean. I tried LiLi, is there a specific version that works best with Manjaro? I tend to get the same message using multiple different USB creators, as above.

[Eigenvektor]

Just now, CharlesM2020 said:

I tried LiLi, is there a specific version that works best with Manjaro? I tend to get the same message using multiple different USB creators, as above.

I don't really know, sorry. I searched for "manjaro /dev/disk/by-label/ device did not show up after 30 seconds" in Google, and this is the first thing I found which sounded promising.

 

I've found other people having the same issue with other distributions that are based on Arch, e.g. here: https://arcolinuxforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=840 They're basically using the same solution. I've also found some people saying that they have issues when using a USB 3 drive and that a USB 2 drive works.

[CharlesM2020]

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

I don't really know, sorry. I searched for "manjaro /dev/disk/by-label/ device did not show up after 30 seconds" in Google, and this is the first thing I found which sounded promising.

 

I've found other people having the same issue with other distributions that are based on Arch, e.g. here: https://arcolinuxforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=840 They're basically using the same solution. I've also found some people saying that they have issues when using a USB 3 drive and that a USB 2 drive works.

Thank you for looking, I appreciate you taking the time. I will begin reading that forum. Have a wonderful day!

[Eigenvektor]

6 minutes ago, CharlesM2020 said:

Thank you for looking, I appreciate you taking the time. I will begin reading that forum. Have a wonderful day!

I was considering moving to Manjaro myself, since Antergos (which I use) is sadly no more. So please share if you do find a solution

[CharlesM2020]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Tbh it sounds like a USB issue rather than a drive or software problem.

 

You'd need to confirm if MJRO1815 is the usb drive or one of your internal drives. Try lsblk -f in terminal and see what happens.

I have completed the surface test of two USBs I am using and both passed testing.

 

Attempting the command "lsblk -f" from the prompt gives me "sh: lsblk: not found".

 

Thank you for pointing me in the direction of USB, however. I will look for any settings within the BIOS that may be related to USB as my next angle of attack.

[CharlesM2020]

Greetings everyone,

 

              I am now writing this from a Live Manjaro OS. It seems that the issue was indeed USB related. While in the BIOS, I tried disabling my USB 3.0 controller entirely (legacy USB was already enabled) and moved the USB to one of the USB 2.0 headers on the back of the motherboard. To my surprise, the Live USB booted fine.

 

              Since then, I've re-enabled USB 3.0, and as long as the USB stick is plugged into a USB 2.0 port on the back of the motherboard, the live USB boots.

 

              I wanted to give the solution in case anyone else runs into this issue.