PCLOS 2025.2 LiveCD gives "no suitable media" erro

julian516

I have been fooling with livecds for probably 2 years at least and I have encountered an error I have never seen before.

I downloaded the PCLOS 2025.2 livecd and burned it. No issues. MD5sums checked, etc.

I put the livecd in my System76/Ubuntu laptop and loaded it. Partway through an error message came up:

"ERROR: No suitable media for the livecd content found. Workaround: Copy the content of the livecd from your boot device to an IDE/SATA disk. Dropping you to a limited shell."

Now, I burn and look at livecds frequently on this machine and I have no trouble doing it. But OK, something is wrong .....

So I went over to the wife's Windows XP desktop (I do this at great peril you understand), put the livecd in the drive and it loaded up quite nicely! And an attractive livecd it is. Now we know it is a good disk.

So back to the System76 laptop. I tried "Safemode Vesa" and it booted, so my suspicion is that this has something to do with the xserver and/or my Nvidia 9300M circuits?

Has anybody else ever seen this error and do you know what it means? For example, what is the "suitable media" that cannot be found?

Thanks for the help!

_________________
Ubuntu 9.10
Mandriva 2025 KDE
siduxKDE/antiX

lynch · Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2025 8:58 am Post subject:

I have heard of that. It is likely to be the CD drive does not read the CD correctly.
Check this out: link

_________________
Mandriva 2025 Spring -2.6.31.12-server-2mnb
PCLinuxOS 2025 -2.6.26.8.tex3

melloe · Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2025 1:08 pm Post subject:

I have run into some Linux ( can't say about any MS ) having a problem booting all the way from a SATA CD/DVD optical under some conditions. Have never seen that particular error message. Thor got finicky with a couple as it had only SATA DVD RW/ROM. As there was an empty IDE, I added a PATA Optical device.

In those cases, connecting a PATA cable ( older flat 40 or 80 conductor cable ) to the empty IDE, and to a PATA CD/DVD optical solved the problem. Might be a problem for Laptops if they have similar connections. Don't know about laptops. Have yet to work on a newer one, and won't if I have choice.

Good luck.

_________________
mell0: 1. Kubuntu, XP, Sabayon 2. Mandriva,Mint, Mephis
Thor: 1. VISTA, Fedora 2. Chakra, Debian
Sam:XP, SuSE Zues: win7, SuSE testing

julian516 · Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2025 1:22 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the help! You strengthen a suspicion, frankly. The drive in my laptop is my TSTT and it is just not as sturdy as the Sony unit in my earlier Asus laptop. It already has been replaced once, so I will not the surprised if it is the source of my problem.

But talk about an opaque error message! I did whaaaaat????

_________________
Ubuntu 9.10
Mandriva 2025 KDE
siduxKDE/antiX

mushroom · Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2025 3:14 pm Post subject:

I had that happen to me a few years ago

As the CD boots it loads an incorrect driver Sad

When the driver is used the MB can no longer communicate with the CD drive.

This is a machine/distro/version problem an there may be no suitable work around. Sad

In my case the it was an incorrect MB driver and the hard drives were also not recognized. Earlier versions, some other distros, and then later versions worked on that machine.

My advice, don't put to much time in fighting with on that machine, use a different distro and wait for the next release.

_________________
SuSE 8.0, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 11.0, 11.1
Live CDs Mepis 8.0, Puppy 4.3.1, netbook- Zenwalk 6.2

julian516 · Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2025 10:37 pm Post subject:

Thanks mushroom. I think I have learned you are right. I did get the CD to load in "safemode", which apparently stepped around the driver problem you mention. So I did install PCLOS on my HD. Then came multitudinous updates. (300+ as I recall.)

Result: PCLOS will no longer boot and no amount of fiddling with the MBR, etc, etc, will fix whatever has happened. Typically I drop into a GRUB prompt and run a very simple repair. Doing so causes booting to resume normally. Not this time I'm afraid.

This is too bad because PCLOS certainly looks attractive, albeit it is dated. The good news is that the PCLOS website claims that a new version with KDE 4.4 is imminent. So I'll bide my time and take a look then.

This all started because I was looking for distros to audition for New Linux people. The frustration is that the design of PCLOS certainly makes it a candidate. But a blow up such as this certainly would not be a welcome event! (Hi there we're Linux, we blow up. Ooops ....)

So by default Linux Mint remains my first suggestion for people who would like to try Linux.

_________________
Ubuntu 9.10
Mandriva 2025 KDE
siduxKDE/antiX

mushroom · Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2025 2:49 am Post subject:

Don't give up on the distro ...............

Just the distro/version on that particular machine Idea

_________________
SuSE 8.0, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 11.0, 11.1
Live CDs Mepis 8.0, Puppy 4.3.1, netbook- Zenwalk 6.2

JP · Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2025 5:58 am Post subject:

julian516 · Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2025 2:10 pm Post subject:

Agreed JP. Here's what works on my System 76 Pangolin, which shipped originally with Ubuntu 8.10, presently running 9.10.

(1) Any of the core Ubuntu family, which is to say Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Mint. I read criticisms of it in terms of the resources it consumes, but the Ubiquity seems to work. Given that System 76 specs their machines to support Ubuntu this makes sense. (No end of wisdom here ...)

(2) sidux goes on anything I have and it runs beautifully once it is there, but it is not a beginner's distro per se. I have run it on two desktops and my laptop. At the moment I have it on a 16 gig jumpdrive (moved it from my 8 gig drive to give it a bit more room) where it functions as my travel machine. This is wonderful through airport security.

(3) Mandriva 2025 KDE installed easily on my Pangolin and it is a very nice KDE indeed. One message to anyone installing Mandriva; it is not fast and the upgrade process is going to take a while. Brew a cuppa -- or two maybe.

(4) Mepis impresses me as solid, though I do wish The Mepans would let KDE 4.4 out of their factory. Most important for this thread is the fact that Mepis and antiX share an installer that seems to work every time. It is not as pretty as some but but it is safe, efficient and flexible.

I have had trouble getting fedora installed and similarly with Suse. Now lots of people run those happily and they deserve their followings, but I have trouble just about every time I want to explore them. The problem might be my machine but I have a hunch it is some sort of operator failure!

So I'll stay with Ubuntu as my "go to" distribution unless Mepis steals me away, which it might. Mandriva just might do that if it used apt, which I know a good bit better than urpmi. sidux and antiX are just too good to send away!

Of course there's always Windows 7 ... Sad

_________________
Ubuntu 9.10
Mandriva 2025 KDE
siduxKDE/antiX

	USA Linux Users Group Forum Index » Installation and Bootloaders	All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1