What to do if there is a problem installing OM Lx

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Note: The information in this thread applies to all current versions of OM Lx. Applies for Cooker, ROME, and Rock. Rock is currently v. OM Lx 4.3, version OM Lx 4.2 and older are no longer supported.

Secure boot is not currently supported in OM Lx. To boot the ISO and install OM Lx you must disable secure boot in UEFI/BIOS firmware.

If you are having problems installing OM Lx the first question to answer is do checksums match? You should always check this with any .iso file as soon as you download it but sometimes people forget or don’t do it. I’ll describe how to check checksums for OM Lx ISO in a future post below.

The next thing to discuss is where is “best” place to report an issue with installation. The following applies to all issues.
If the issue is at all technical, a bug report.
Issues posted in forum should be limited to issues that other users can help you with. That is what forum support is for, users helping users.

If you are going to post a bug report it is wise to go ahead and have all of the following and attach all of it to your report. Try to keep in mind when you post any information whether it is screen shots or files that you don’t know what information the person trying to help you solve your issue needs. So don’t fall in to the lazy “I’ll just post the part I think they need”. Be detailed. If you are posting terminal output post all of it. If there is more than 20-30 lines place that in a .txt file and post the .txt file in bug report or forum thread.

For forum posts at a minimum: The simplest thing to do if one encounters a problem during installation of OM Lx (any version) is to make a screen shot of the error and post it in a forum thread describing your issue and what you were trying to do. Even better is to go back and repeat the installation process and take screen shots of what you trying to do and post those with a screen shot of the actual error.

For bug report in addition to above: For more technical errors developers will want the installation log. This is basically the terminal output of running the installer manually from Konsole (KDE terminal app). This is an easy one step command. Open Konsole and run this:

$ pkexec calamares -d | tee /home/live/calamares-installation-log.txt

Then follow all the installation steps as you normally do until process either completes or errors out. This will create the file ‘calamares-installation.log.txt’ which one can easily attach to their bug report (or forum post).

Remember you are in a ‘Live’ environment which won’t save that file so you can temporarily store the data to an image hosting service for screen shots and a pastebin or similar service for code/terminal output. Or you can transfer the files and screen shots to a flash drive or DVD/CD depending on your set up.

And if you combine your ‘calamares-installation.log.txt’ with screen shots you will make it much easier for a knowledgeable contributor or a developer to help resolve your issue.

For hardware related problems developers will want your hardware information. If you know or even suspect your problem may be hardware related a good place to start is with basic hardware information. If you are filing a bug report go ahead and include this from the beginning.

This is also a very easy one step command the will create a file you can attach to you forum post or bug report. Like this:

$ inxi -F > inxi_F.txt

This will create the file ‘inxi_F.txt’.

Another common information request is dmesg output. By now you get the gist of how this works. > is a redirect sending output to the file listed after the command.

$ dmesg > dmesg.txt

There can be more information needed for some issues. If so we will let you know and explain how to get the information.

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To check checksums for an OM Lx 4.1 ISO. Currently Lx 4.1 is only available from SourceForge. Open Konsole (terminal) and cd to the folder where your .iso file is. Next on the SourceForge site go to Files>release>4.1. Now locate the .iso you downloaded probably the x86_64 one and select the circled i.

Screenshot_20200222_190728
Screenshot_20200222_1907281920×1080 316 KB

Now copy and paste the SHA1 and MD5 to a text editor such as Kate or Kwrite like this:

Screenshot_20200222_190742
Screenshot_20200222_1907421920×1080 177 KB

Now go to the open Konsole and do this:

Screenshot_20200222_192756
Screenshot_20200222_1927561920×1080 176 KB

Copy and paste the generated sha1sum and md5sum files directly under the file you copied to text editor already. Like this:

Screenshot_20200222_191444
Screenshot_20200222_1914441920×1080 192 KB

They must match exactly. If they do not match exactly do not use that .iso file.

Wondering how accurate this is? If even one character in any text file inside the .iso file is deleted or changed the checksum algorithm will generate a completely different value that won’t match. There are still other ways something could go wrong because an .iso has a more than just text files but it becomes very unlikely if you verify the checksums.

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And yet another thing to look it problems persist is how you are downloading the .iso file.

Commonly people are downloading using their browser down-loader. For most people most of the time this works just fine. If you continue to have problems or if you see a download where checksums don’t match more than once consider downloading from Konsole (or other terminal). It is an easy one command task. Also anyone with a slow or unreliable internet connection or wifi should consider doing this as a habit. This command will pause downloads and retry them unlimited times if there is any interrption in your internet connection.

$ aria2c -c -m 0 <file_to_download.iso>

To get the <file_to_download.iso> normally you right mouse click on the .iso you wish to download and select “Copy Link Location” and paste in place of the <file_to_download.iso>. So when I do the OM Lx 4.1 x86_64 .iso from SourceForge it will look like this:

$ aria2c -c -m 0 https://sourceforge.net/projects/openmandriva/files/release/4.1/OpenMandrivaLx.4.1-plasma.x86_64.iso/download

The -c Tells aria2c to resume downloads

The -m 0 option will make aria2c retry downloads for unlimited times. Some servers tend to break connection after some time. But, this option makes aria2c automatically retry when such things happen.

These options are mostly for users with slow or unreliable internet connections. If you have a reasonably fast and reliable internet connection you can just use aria2c.

There is more about downloading from command line as well as additional options to use curl and wget here.

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