OSMC installer fails on macOS Catalina 10.15.2

Help and Support
1

Hi,

Have been trying to install OSMC onto an SD card using the latest installer with no luck.
The installer fails to write throwing the following error in the log.

Fri Jan 31 15:46:17 2020 pasting admin script to process do shell script "dd if=/Users/fraser/OSMC_TGT_rbp2_20191118.img of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m conv=sync && sync" with administrator privileges
Fri Jan 31 15:46:17 2020 waiting for finish
Fri Jan 31 15:46:23 2020 osa claims to be done...collect output and verify
Fri Jan 31 15:46:23 2020 Imaging failed!
Fri Jan 31 15:46:23 2020 Messages are:
Fri Jan 31 15:46:23 2020 	 stdout: 
Fri Jan 31 15:46:23 2020 	 stderr: 0:133: execution error: dd: /dev/rdisk2: Operation not permitted (1)

If I simply use dd to write the image…e.g: sudo dd if=/Users/fraser/OSMC_TGT_rbp2_20191118.img of=/dev/disk2

Then it creates the image on the SD card without any issue.

great…but then how do I configure WIFI settings?

The issue is that I have no keyboard to plug-into the PI - so I really need to either configure the WIFI settings on install or else after by altering a file on the SD card.

Am I totally stuck here? Is there anyway to either a) get a working installer or b) manually setup the wifi on the SD card before I insert it into the PI?

Any help greatly appreciated.

2

Hi,

This is a known issue.
For now it is possible to configure WiFi with the preseed.cfg.

I am hoping to have a solution for the installer in a few days

Sam

3

Ah that sounds ace, many thanks for the fast reply…however I don’t see any “preseed.cfg” on the SD - also googling “preseed.cfg” and searching on this forum doesn’t really help either.

Am I missing something? Do I create preseed.cfg at the root of the SD? Also what is the format of it - presume it just takes the SSID and PSK…

Again many thanks for the fast reply and sorry if I am being a bit dim here :slight_smile:

4

You’d need to create it.

d-i target/storage string sd
d-i network/interface string wlan
d-i network/auto boolean true
d-i network/ssid string networkname
d-i network/wlan_keytype string 1
d-i network/wlan_key string passphrase

This would work for WPA-PSK.

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5

Ahhh,

So to be clear (and to help any others who might stumble across this) -

To setup WIFI networking on the SD card when not using the installer

  1. Create a file called “preseed.cfg” at the root of the SD card

  2. Populate the file with the following information:

    d-i target/storage string sd
    d-i network/interface string wlan
    d-i network/auto boolean true
    d-i network/ssid string YOUR_SSID
    d-i network/wlan_keytype string 1
    d-i network/wlan_key string YOUR_PSK

Where YOUR_SSID and YOUR_PSK are the SSID and PSK for the network you wish to join.

Hope that is all correct? Again many thanks for the super fast replies - really appreciated :slight_smile:

6

Hmm unfortunatly that doesn’t seem to work at all - tried it and nothing shows up on the network at all.

Guess I’ll give libreelec a go, thanks anyway :man_shrugging:

7

Didn’t work is a bit vague…

Are you trying to use an internal or external WLAN adapter?

To my knowledge, LE doesn’t provide a pre-seeding option so I’m not sure how that’s going to help in the slightest…

8

Sorry by “didn’t work” I mean that it never connected to the network. I’m using the internal wlan adapter on the PI (also tried with interface wlan0 as well on a clean SD).

FWIW I got LE to work first time - created .cache/connman/wifi.config then added the relevant service fields ssid, etc and turned on ssh in cmdline.txt - worked perfectly first time (i.e. it connected to the network at boot).

Anyway thanks for the help - will be sure to give osmc a go when it has either a working installer or a working method to preconfigure.

Many thanks

9

I’ve just tested this and it worked for me on a Pi 3 B +.

Without further details it would be hard to work out why this didn’t work for you.

I’m glad LE is working for you however

Cheers

Sam

10

hmm that is most odd, I am using the exact same board - happy to try and provide any information that could help…would much prefer to use OSMC over LE as I really like the idea of having a full OS to work with - LE is fine for the “MC” part but has real limitations when it comes to running other software alongside it.

Will give it another go over the weekend and see if I can’t get it to work. Again for clarity - I am writing the image to SD with:

sudo dd if=/Users/fraser/OSMC_TGT_rbp2_20191118.img of=/dev/disk2

I am then creating the file preseed.cfg at the root of the SD card.

nano /Volumes/NO\ NAME/preseed.cfg and write the following information to it.

d-i target/storage string sd
d-i network/interface string wlan
d-i network/auto boolean true
d-i network/ssid string MY_SSID
d-i network/wlan_keytype string 1
d-i network/wlan_key string MY_PSK

Where MY_SSID and MY_PSK are the correct SSID and passphrase for my wifi WPA2-PSK network.

I then eject the SD card from the mac and pop it into a Pi 3 B + and power it up (this device has nothing connected to it other than the power lead).

I waited for 15 mins or so - but there is no activity on the router and no new devices, no osmc, appears on the network.

Really not sure either what I am doing wrong or how I can debug this further…

11

A typo with the preseed2.cfg?

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12

Yeah, just here though - 100% preseed.cfg on the card :slight_smile:

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13

Is there a way to quickly run a network cable, then connect to WiFi via SSH and remove it? That’d probably be the easiest way to solve it.

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14

Ended up doing just that - although finding a cat5 cable was tricky…found one in a old router box!

As an aside - osmc is superb - nicest looking “kodi” I’ve seen…I have it running on a rpi 3b+ with a 24bit IQAudio Pi-DigiAMP+. With a wee bit of tinkering I have it outputting the audio via my speakers - and have Airplay working so I can output from my phone, pad, laptop, etc. This is a superb feature and it blows my sonos out of the water for sound quality.

Really don’t know what the issue was with the preseed.cfg - probably user error - but I did try it a number of times and double checked everything each time :man_shrugging:

Anyhow, thanks for the help and hopefully an installer fix is forthcoming - other people might not persevere as I did - and it would be a shame for them to miss out :slight_smile:

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