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

[Thomas Strobel]

Thank you very much for looking into it and fixing it so quickly!

On Tue, 2014-04-15 at 08:52 +0200, Wout Mertens wrote:
> 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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