[Nix-dev] Problems installing NixOS with btrfs from a USB stick

Wout Mertens wout.mertens at gmail.com
Tue Apr 15 08:52:27 CEST 2014


I fixed it by stracing mkfs. btrfs and creating a symlink to /.  Basically
it gets confused by the bind mounts and looks for root at the original
location.
So just strace -eopen mkfs... and look for enoent.
On phone, sorry for lack of details.
On Apr 13, 2014 12:41 PM, "Alexei Robyn" <shados at shados.net> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> If you're talking about the "can't determine mount status of /dev/..."
> issue, this is a bug with mkfs.btrfs. See
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/pipermail/nix-dev/2012-December/010237.html
>
> - Alexei
>
> On Sun, Apr 13, 2014, at 07:49 PM, Cillian de Róiste wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 11:05 AM, Thomas Strobel <ts468 at cam.ac.uk>
> wrote:
> > > Hi there,
> > >
> > > I was running into problems when trying to install NixOS with btrfs
> from
> > > a USB stick. I downloaded the current .iso and used unetbootin to
> create
> > > a bootable USB drive from it.
> > >
> > > Unfortunately, the resulting installation environment did not allow to
> > > use mkfs.btrfs as it could not decide on the mounting status of my
> > > partition. It seemed as if unetbootin prepared the system in a way that
> > > prevented mkfs.btrfs from working.
> > >
> > > Did anyone else experience that problem?
> > >
> > > If so, then my question is if the .iso files could be changed in a way
> > > that allows to prepare the USB stick with a simple dd-command, e.g.
> like
> > > Debian or GRML ISOs do, and that keeps mkft.btrfs working?
> >
> > You could try installing syslinux and using isohybrid to create a
> > hybrid bootable image which you can dd onto a USB stick:
> >
> >     isohybrid filename.iso
> >
> >
> http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Doc/isolinux#HYBRID_CD-ROM.2FHARD_DISK_MODE
> >
> > I'm not sure if that will help with the btrfs issue, but it would be
> > good to know if it worked.
> >
> > Good luck!
> > Cillian
> > _______________________________________________
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> > nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
> > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
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