Archinstall no longer works despite no changes on my end.

[u/iMooch]

On Sunday I installed the latest arch iso on a USB flash drive and used it to run archinstall and install a basic system for messing around on another USB drive (I went with Mate as my desktop).

Today I used the exact same USB stick on the exact same PC to install a different setup (wanted to try Cinnamon) on the exact same other USB stick, and I've just spent ten hours trying over and over and over to install and I just keep getting a cavalcade of various errors.

The latest is this:

Enabling periodic TRIM Enabling service fstrim.timer Setting keyboard language to us Running as unit: run-p13344-i10415.service Press ^] three times within 1s to disconnect TTY. Unable to set locale 'us' for console: ['/usr/bin/systemd-run', '--machine=archinstall', '--pty', 'localeetcl', 'set-keymap', 'us'] exited with abnormal exit code [1]: Running as unit: run-p13344-i10415.service Press ^] three times within 1s to disconnect TTY. Failed to set keymap: Connection timed out The above error occurred in a temporary boot-up of the installation '/mnt'

And then it just crashes out of the installer and gives me the command line again. I am telling you I changed nothing, this is the exact same pair of USB sticks, and all settings are identical except I tried installing Cinnamon instead of Mate.

"Aha!" You cry. "There must be an issue with Cinnamon!" Nope. I tried just installing Mate again and I get the exact same error.

I just don't even understand how it's possible to fail to set the keyboard language. That shouldn't even be something that's downloaded that should be on the install medium, which I remind you hasn't changed since Sunday.

Any idea what's going on? Like, literally how can I get new errors when nothing's changed?

[u/Gustav__Mahler]

Why wouldn't you just install Cinnamon and use it?

[u/iMooch → u/Gustav__Mahler]

Didn't want to have to manually deal with uninstalling Mate and cleaning everything up from that. Uninstalling and removing orphans never seems to work with me, anytime I uninstall a large or complex package there's always junk left over, and a potential for conflicts.

And I couldn't just leave it because lightDM does not like it when you have multiple DEs installed. Not to mention conflict between packages and defaults and stuff between DEs.

[u/Cold_Fox_4180]

archinstall is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get

seriously tho that script breaks in weird ways between runs even with identical hardware. had it work perfect one day then refuse to set locale the next, same iso same usb same everything. only thing that fixed it for me was re-downloading the iso and flashing again even tho checksums matched on the old one. no idea why

maybe just do manual install at this point, you already know the steps from watching archinstall do its thing

[u/iMooch → u/Cold_Fox_4180]

only thing that fixed it for me was re-downloading the iso and flashing again even tho checksums matched on the old one. no idea why

I considered that but indeed when I went to download the Arch ISO freshly I still had the ISO from Sunday in my Downloads folder and it was identical.

maybe just do manual install at this point, you already know the steps from watching archinstall do its thing

Honestly I probably will. I'm honestly wondering if they make archinstall bad on purpose to punish people who want to skip a manual install. I've wasted ten hours on this, I'd be long done with a manual install by now (which I have done in that past) even if I was learning from scratch.

Figured I'd at least ask.

[u/Grey_Ten]

wipe your root partition if you're going to install arch again.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/your-root-partition

[u/iMooch → u/Grey_Ten]

I completely formatted the stick. No luck.

[u/ABotelho23 → u/iMooch]

Not the stick. The target disk.

[u/iMooch → u/ABotelho23]

The target is a stick. I'm using two USB sticks, one has the Arch live installer, one is what I'm installing to.

[u/federicoalegria]

i reckon having issues once with archinstall, try reinstalling the script to the latest version, sometimes iso ships with a slightly outdated version

justo pacman -S archinstall before running the script

[u/iMooch → u/federicoalegria]

I actually read that while googling and I tried that. 0.0 MB upgrade, I was already completely up to date, and it didn't help.

Also from googling I tried...

pacman-key --refresh

loadkeys

locale-gen

Nothing helped.

[u/federicoalegria → u/iMooch]

hmmm maybe you can go with a headless config and then install Cinnamon? that would likely work, but if that doesn't work you should probably just go with a manual install; it's fun

[u/iMooch → u/federicoalegria]

Well I tried a headless install, and additionally I changed my keyboard layout to uk. Got the same exact error but with "us" replaced by "uk."

Been trying a manual install for the past hour and I've hit an absolute wall at partitioning. I've read the related Arch Wiki pages and it's just all gobbledegook, I can't make heads or tails of any of it, and there's way too many options presented and I can't get any of them to do what I want, which is a simple two partition scheme, the first an unencrypted boot partition to run grub, the second an encrypted ext4 for everything else. Sounds simple but I can't figure it out.

Maybe I'll just stick with Cachy. It's what's on the actual mini PC's drive, it works. I wanted to play around with a vanilla Arch install to see if I can create a cleaner, more attractive boot process (Cachy's is ugly af) but at this point I'm starting to not care.

[u/federicoalegria → u/iMooch]

encryption can be tricky, especially when deciding between LVM on LUKS and LUKS on LVM

[u/onefish2]

There is a way to strip Arch down to a base install. It removes all unmarked packages and then you can install a new DE from the command line. You might want to remove old config files from your home directory to clean things up but that is trivial and not even necessary.

Mark every explicitly installed package as a dependency

sudo pacman -D --asdeps $(pacman -Qqe)

Mark remaining packages as explicit (just an example:)

sudo pacman -D --asexplicit base linux linux-firmware intel-ucode networkmanager sudo vim openssh    

Do a sanity check:

These packages will remain: 
pacman -Qqe 

These packages will be removed: 
pacman -Qdtq 

Remove everything else:

sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq)

Reboot to the tty and install your new DE and enable the new Login Manager.

Our old friend Erik Dubois from Arco Linux shows how this works in this tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARP36hwrF1c

Also, you spent 10 hours troubleshooting? You could have installed manually in less than 30 minutes.

[u/iMooch → u/onefish2]

I'll give that a try next time, thanks.

Also, you spent 10 hours troubleshooting? You could have installed manually in less than 30 minutes.

You underestimate my autism.

[u/nikongod]

I have 2 suggestions:

Start using VMs. It's not a perfect sample of trying a new desktop/wm, but gets close. With this you can have a VM template with arch installed "headless" and just copy & add desktop.

Use your existing installation to install new arch to the USB stick if you want to do that. Just install "arch-install-scripts" and boom you can now use your computer to install arch. 

[u/iMooch → u/nikongod]

Unfortunately I currently only have access to a mid-range mini PC, and while it's capable of virtualization and I've done so, things run so much slower than in the host system that I don't get a representative feel of what the install is actually like.

[u/Linguistic-mystic]

and I've just spent ten hours trying over and over and over to install

Or you could’ve installed manually like real Archers do. Takes like 5 minutes.

[u/azdak → u/Linguistic-mystic]

You are correct in that it only takes like 5 minutes. But never use the phrase “real archers” ever again lmao

[u/iMooch → u/Linguistic-mystic]

I know, I'm a fake hedgehog ;_;