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Topic: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

I am trying to erase everything for my hard drive.
My issue is I have never used a program like this, so some guidance will be appreciated.
Many thanks

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

ve downloaded, burned to a media disk with a compatible iso image program, Ive booted
And get this:

Gparted - Live CD 0.3.4-6 (auto-configure)
Gparted - Live CD Do X configure (mkxf86config.)
Gparted - Live CD macbook option
Gparted - Live CD with frame buffer
Gparted - Live CD Force VESA Driver
Gparted - Live CD Force I740 Driver
Gparted - Live CD Force I810 Driver
Boot MBr on first hard drive
Boot partition#1 on first hard drive
Boot partition #2 on first hard drive
Boot partition #3 on first hard drive
Boot partition #4 on first hard drive
Boot mbr on second hard drive
Boot partion #1 on the second drive

I have tried 1st,2nd,3rd and 7th option.

And get this:
!!Invalid loop location/gparted.dat
!!Please export loop with a valid location or reboot and pass a proper loop=...
!!kernel command line!


After that I get /bin/ash:can't access tty; Job control turned off
/Newroot#
larry!Help!!!

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

Hi
From witch drive do you boot off ?
I guess it might be external usb drive, right ?

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

no I am booting to a cd disk But ive been told to use 0.3.3.0 version which is easier to use

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

If you are merely trying to erase your HD and not more than that you can always use some HDD makers' specialized software. From what I know WD & SeaGate (and I think Maxtor, Samsung and Hitachi as well...) have specialized free software to manage their HDDs. Usually you make one or two bootable floppies with it. Both WD and SeaGate are using Knoll's tools that include the option "write zeros to the entire drive". Be careful though!!!! After using this there is NO WAY of retrieving data...

6 (edited by Guil-T 2007-06-17 07:10:09)

Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

Ive got the same problem... the thread should be renamed to "invalid loop error" or something more visible than just guidance. This problem is very frustrating, I have tried the last 3 loads and none work. I always get the invalid loop location:/gparted.dat

And I am booting from a CD too. I tried booting on my USB and got the same error. Im desperate..

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

Guil-T wrote:

Ive got the same problem... the thread should be renamed to "invalid loop error" or something more visible than just guidance.

done wink

Guil-T wrote:

This problem is very frustrating, I have tried the last 3 loads and none work. I always get the invalid loop location:/gparted.dat

And I am booting from a CD too. I tried booting on my USB and got the same error. Im desperate..

This usually come from the root=/dev/XXX which is not good.
If you end up coming back to the shell, could you please try to type this :
# ls /dev/s
and then hit tab key, and gimme the output

You may have something like this :

[johndoe@ws043 ~]$ ls /dev/sd
sda    sda3   sda7   sdb10  sdb5   sdb8   sdc1   sdd1   sde2   sdf5   
sda1   sda5   sdb    sdb11  sdb6   sdb9   sdc5   sdd5   sdf   
sda2   sda6   sdb1   sdb2   sdb7   sdc    sdd    sde    sdf2   
[johndoe@ws043 ~]$ ls /dev/sd

Well this is my PC, and not done from within the livecd, but it is just e.g.

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

or even try this too :
# ls /dev/sr

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

9

Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

LarryT wrote:

or even try this too :
# ls /dev/sr

First thank you Larry for beeing so quick to answer. Merci

Here is what i got

/newroot # ls /dev/s   [TAB]
/dev/sda        /dev/sda3       /dev/sdb1       /dev/sg0       /dev/synth
/dev/sda1      /dev/sda5       /dev/sdc         /dev/sg1
/dev/sda2      /dev/sdb         /dev/sdc1       /dev/sg2

/newroot # ls /dev/sr   [TAB does nothing and then hit ENTER]
No such file or directory

/newroot # _

I really hope this will help

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

okay, it should be either sg0, sg1 or sg2
So here is what you gonna try editing grub menu
edit twice (hitting "e") the first line, and then  point out cdroot, and change cdroot to this :
cdroot=/dev/sg1
if it failed try sg2
or even sg0

then escap twice and hit enter.

and tell me what happens then

you have an example with the fifth choice :  title=GParted-liveCD (boot off External-usb-cd : /dev/sr0)

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

I am going to try a lil more but I edited it and then pressed escape and e again and the line was back to just cdroot. I re-edited it to cdroot=/dev/sg1 and pressed esc twice then enter and i could see in the command line the parameter was back to cdroot. Ill try pressing enter after editing it or sumthing.

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

hm, sorry, i should be more expressive !
I always imagine people are living among  pingouins wink

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

so :
e to edit
e to edit the line again
then use arrow to find cdroot and add =/dev/sxx (be careful : us keyboard here !!!) but i guess this not a problem with you wink
then ENTER
and "b" to boot
(well in fact you can see it is exactly what you can read at the bottom of the screen wink

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

BTW, before cdroot=/dev/... you may change scandelay from 6 to 10

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

OK I just red your second last post but this is what I figured with a tiny bit of reading once booted on the live cd. unfortunately it didn't work but ill try changing the delay too now. I just want to say I am very impressed with your dedication... Thank you. Ill give it to you in 10 minutes... smile

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

OK I tried changing the delai to 10 and retried all  of the sg0 sg1 and sg2 and it did not work. I also unplugged my usb stick and checked my devices and sg2 was gone along with sdc and sdc1.

Its funny cuz it loads the igz fine and when it attempts to load the gparted.dat after the keymap question and the language question... it just say invalid loop location: /gparted.dat

Then it tells me to give them a good l00p with either capital o or 0(zeros) or to rebout specifying a good loop=...

Keep it up Larry your giving me hope.

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

well the last thing is the most easier in fact :-p
I forgot to mention it before (since I caught a cold last night, my mind is a bit slow wink)
when you got the shell with /newroot , try to find somewhere something like /mnt/s** or may be it is directly mnt/s** or dev/... or /dev/....

This is the way I used to point out how to boot off external usb cdrom. I remember I got the /newroot and then I found what was the exact name of the device i needed to use.

If you can't find it, i will try by myself : I know how to get the same error you reported. But maybe you will find alone ?

Gonna sleep now and treat my cold wink

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

I am very much a noob in linux but... I have found something in /mnt/ so when i list it it gives me cdrom 
[distname] livecd and nothing more.  [distname] i dont remember what it was.

Of course I find sgx in the /dev/ flder but not in a /mnt/

I am going to try some more things...

Someday I will live among pingouins smile

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

Okay, i got it !
Booting off a external usb cdrom with first option, it stops on keymap choice as expected.
On the above line I can read :
Media found on /dev/iseries/vcd*
Then I set my keymap
And it hangs, reporting :

!! Invalid loop location : /gparted.dat
!! Please export LOOP with a valid location, or reboot and pass loop=..

Then we got the ash :

/newroot #

At this poit try this :

/newroot # ls /dev/s

and hit "TAB key" twice
Here, it returns many devices like : sda1, sda2, sda..., sdb1,... sde1,... sdg0, sdg1, sdg3, AND sr0 !
Here it is : the cdroot must be set to this :

cdroot=/dev/sr0

Then you have to edit grub like we mentioned it above. The fifth option of the current livecd is a good example, since it is already set to cdroot=/dev/sr0
So just edit this line and make the correction you thing you should. You may increase the scandelay to 10, 15 or 20.

Tell me if it rocks ?

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

hmmm,

I dont have an sr0, I have 3 sgx and lots of sxx. I think I will try them all. I tried the cd on my other pc and it boots like a charm.

I must go to work now but ill give you the result in 8hours.

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

it is not necessary sr0 : it might be something else.
Do you know where your cdrom device is attached ? Is it sata, ide, scsi, usb, ?

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

22 (edited by Guil-T 2007-06-18 15:41:34)

Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

I think its SCSI. Bran new PC...

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

New pc with scsi cdrom?
I now see scsi devices only in some servers.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

hmm you just made me doubt now. Im gonna open it tonight. I really thought i saw scsi in my bios. I know my drives are sataII and unless its a new trend to use usb for internal drives its either sata or scsi.

See my machine spec here:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ … No=1539656

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Re: !! Invalid loop location (Gparted liveCD Guidance)

Perhaps the bios (or Linux) sees it as "scsi", but the only scsi optical devices I've seen last years are in servers (compaq and Hewlett packard). In most desktops they are IDE or, much less, SATA. SATA motherboards usually have 1 IDE controller too, to connect 2 cd or dvd drives (SATA drives and recorders are a little more expansive than IDE ones). To use a SCSI device, we usually need to buy and install a special SCSI controller card.

The sure way to know is to open the box and see what type of cable they use: IDE cables are the large ribbons, SATA cables are rather thin circular section cables.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***