Parrot 4.4 "Installation step failed

Support
1

Hello,

I am slowly desperating with computers. I want to install Parrot, yet I can’t convince it to get installed. I downloaded Parrot 4.4-Security-64 and burned it with Etcher onto the USB drive and used the Windows CD-burner to burn the ISO also onto CD. I own a HP Pavilion g6 with a 64 system, but without any OS installed (The HD was erased)

Here is what I know:

I reach the boot menu and the screen, with all the life boot and install options.
Life boot won’t boot - It gets stuck at a proccessor command line on the black screen.
The installs won’t work - none of them. I elaborate later on.
The only way I get Parrot to start is via the last Life boot option, that blocks errors. That is where I am writing now. So far so good.

I want to have a permanently configured OS, that won’t start from the default install settings every time. So, I want to install Parrot onto my HD. No matter, which Installation method I choose, I end up at the installation process after the partitioning.

After it reaches like 4%, I get an error, telling me the following:

,Installation step failed
An installation step failed. You can try to run the failing item again from the menu, or skip it and choose something else. The failing step is: Install the system"

I tried different partition modes and used different boot sources, but it doesn’t seem to have any improving outcome.
There should be nothing on the hard disk and when I open gparted in the “No error life mode”, I see, they are formatted accordingly. At the end, I end up with 4 partition. One swap, one ets4-root-partition, one tiny partition containing some boot infos (the rest of the last attempt to install, but I clean the partitions each time to not have interferences from the failed attempts before.)

I am not sure how to solve this. I don’t think the ISO is corrupt. Because it happens with different ISOs from different download sites, burned onto different mediums.

But I am at a loss. Does anyone have an idea or hint I could follow?

2

can you boot into live mode from the usb ? also how big is your usb drive ?

you could make a encrypted persistent usb until you figure this out

if it boots into live from the usb open a terminal
type
sudo su
then
fdisk /dev/sda

then press n
press enter at the next few prompts
once thats done close that terminal and open a new one

sudo su
cryptsetup --verbose --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sdb3
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdb3 my_usb
mkfs.ext4 -L persistence /dev/mapper/my_usb
e2label /dev/mapper/my_usb persistence
mkdir -p /mnt/my_usb
mount /dev/mapper/my_usb /mnt/my_usb
echo “/ union” > /mnt/my_usb/persistence.conf
umount /dev/mapper/my_usb
cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/my_usb
reboot

then once you boot from the usb select encrypted from the grub menu
and this way will save what you want and you will be able to use parrot
this is the way i use parrot then even if i mess up and want to start fresh i can just reboot into live again and fdisk and delete the partition and set it up again easily

3

That sounds like a nice idea.

I gonna try it out in an hour in the uni library.

The USB drive is 16GB big.
Can I boot into life mode? I have to answer with a mixed yno. The normal life boot doesn’t get past a certain “command line” at the booting screen. I gonna post, where it gets stuck in an hour. But I can use the life mode option, that suppresses errors.(I also name it properly later o.O. But everybody seeing the boot screen should know what option I mean.)

I’ll be back with more infos in an hour.

4

Now, I’ve tested out generic life boot. I knew it wouldn’t succeed, but to further the understanding and encircle the characteristics of the issues, I wanted to post the outcome of it. So, the black boot Screen with the lines being rapidly written gets stuck at:

,async_tx: api initialized (async)"

It doesn’t even read like an error or any issue is happening. Even the lines before don’t contain any slightest hints of any issue.

Sometimes, it gets beyond that, but gets stuck at initializing an Internet connection. This comes out:

,IPv6: ADDRCONF (NETDEV_UP) : wlan0: link is not ready!"

Sometimes, I use ethernet attached, but then, it says link up, without anything happening. I could wait an hour without any further advancements. (Now, it happened for the first time even with the “failsafe (prevent errors)”)
I don’t even think an internet connection is neccessary for booting the full ISO and it isn’t, as the failsafe (prevent errors)" works without internet and then in the desktop, I can perfectly connect to wifi or anything I want.
But now, I am trying out the aforementioned method as an emergency solution. I don’t care where my system boots from - it doesn’t need to be inside the physical computer. But it needs to be customizable permanently. I respond after the test of the idea.

5

So,

As I am trying to get the persistence method to work, I have failed to do so. The USB sdb doesn’t possess sbdx partitions and after opening gparted just to check the usb layout, it just Shows one single Partition “sdb” without numbers on it. Of course I could alter the command lines accordingly, but I am uncertain, if that overwrites the bootable usb and would break the bootability.

Here is what I got so far:

"#fdisk /dev/sda

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.32.1).
Changes will remain in Memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

Command (m for help): n
Partition number (5-128, Default 5):
First sector (976771072-976773134, Default 976771072):
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (976771072-976773134, Default 976773134):

Created a new Partition 5 of type ‘Linux filesystem’ and of size 1Mib.

Command (m for help):"

I guess that’s where it’s done, because after pressing enter more, the last line just repeats, waiting for Input.

Checking on sda with gparted, I just see only one Partition with 1MB, flagged as bios_grub:

sda1 is ~100GB btrfs
sda2 is ~50GB swap (much too big, but no harm in it)
sda3 is 1MB unknown file System flagged bios_grub
sda4 is ~320GB btrfs
followed by 1,02MB unallocated disk space.

Anyways, I am trying the second step:

“sudo su
cryptsetup --verbose --verify-passphrase
Device /dev/sbd3 doesn’t exist or Access denied.
Command failed with code -4 (wrong device or file specified).”

At this stage, I already knew that this happens, but I think it is one piece of the puzzle to know. Obviously, sbd3 doesn’t exist, as checked with gparted (although I remember seing three partitions in the boot Installation partition menu. And there WAS an sdb3 named my_usb - And this gets me very confused. It also happened with the sda, that the Installation gparted showed a completely different partitioning than the gparted in the desktop of Parrot.)

The question for me would be, should I partition the usb to have 3 partitions matching the criterias to proceed with your idea, or should I just use sdb, because there won’t be any formatting or writing-over actions performed?

And I don’t want to defocus: If this idea works, it would be amazing to have installed programs, changed system stuff and such stay permanently. But to know how to really install the system would be nice after all.

By the way: I found out the failsafe (prevent errors) mode can not succeed if there is an ethernet Connection. If I keep it disconnected, it boots just fine and I can plug the cable in again to get internet or use wifi as I wish.

6

Sorry, I can’t provide you with a solution, but comming from Arch and knowing the lovely Arch Wiki you may have to look into this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop/HP
Ist says regarding HP Pavillion G6 (if that is your model)

Intel Core i5-3230M, Intel HD 4000 ( i915 ) + AMD Radeon 7670M HD ( radeon )
Needs PRIME configuration to use hybrid graphics

and

ACPI: Works
Suspend to RAM: Working properly
Suspend to Disk: Not work (don’t turn off pc, just freeze on black screen)

Have you tried booting the live medium with nomodeset ? As far as I remember my parrot install, failsafe blacklists drivers but that might not solve the black screen of death issue.
Setting up Prime or bbswitch on certain Laptop models in Linux may be a pain in the back, you may want to look into disabling the dGPU with acpi-call after succesfull install.

I nedded to enable optimus with acpi_osi=! acpi_osi=‘Windows 2009’ but you may want to look into the bbswitch documentation to find out what you need.

That, for me, would make more sense than assuming the installer broke your crypt, but that is just a guess.

7

hey, i am having the same issue as you and have tested it out on a HP envy and a Acer aspire and both times i get an error at the installation step. something interesting i found was that the security version of parrot doesn’t work on any virtual boxes either but the home kde version of parrot works on a VM just fine. so i tried to install the kde version on my HD but still it had the same error so its a bit strange. i really cant figure out why it is doing that. if you are able to get a home version to work in your HD you can type ‘sudo apt install parrot-tools-full’ to get all the security tools from the security version. good luck hopefully you find a solution and if you do can you post it here :slight_smile:

8

Thanks for the input so far. I will work out a solution one way or the other. It is a good hint to search for the same issue in fora of other Linux OSes. Maybe that brings up some fruitful info.
Anyways, I still hope to try out the persistence mode, just to have something to begin with, without constantly re-resetting the system o.O
If I find out a solution, I mean when (always be optimistic;), I promise to let you all know, so that it will help everybody else.
But I am still interested in a lot of ideas from you to solve this;)

10

Thank you very much, that you took your time to elaborate all these steps to me/us. Since I have no OS on my computer (ALL OSes so far had the boot issues I described above.), I will buy another usb drive monday and format that one. If I format the only thing with an at least failsafe-life-bootable OS, I wouldn’t be able to use my laptop anymore o.O
Then, I will go through it step-by-step.

By the way: Shouldn’t you simply get root permission by either writing “sudo su” and press enter in a terminal or open right away the root terminal from Applications->System Tools->Root Terminal? Should work that way.

12

Hey,

After a long time without being able to use my computer, I am finally able to continue. What happened?: My life USB drive has molten accidentally, because I unintentionally blocked the exhaust port, redirecting the heat directly over the USB drive.
Now, I bought a new one and created a new life USB on a friend’s computer after he came back after the Christmas-New Year holidays.

My USB drives all were and are 16Gb big by chance. So, in theory, this should be more than enough. Tomorrow, I will finally realize the idea the first responder gave to me as an emergency solution. The only stability issue I noticed, is, that the OS freezes after an extended period of time. But since I am working off a life drive, I am not able to read out any logs yet to know what may cause this issue. And it is not my first priority. The first priority is to have a persistent OS. Anyways, I will update you.