Trying to install centos 7 — getting pane is dead error

[homeomorphism]

This is my very first installation of any Linux distribution. I have seen "pane is dead" questions and answers to them, but I don't think they apply to me -- for one thing, I'm not using Kickstart (whatever it is). Also no virtual machine, no Parallels, etc... This is a clean install on a just bought disk (on a newly bought computer, really).

Here's what I did.

I downloaded 7.6.1810 DVD-ISO version from one of the mirrors given on the official CentOS site. Burned it to an USB stick using dd under Linux Mint. I made sure I burned it to USB as a whole (/dev/sdz), not to a partition (/dev/sdz1).

Now I plug the stick into the new computer. It is recognized and I'm greeted by "Install CentOS 7" screen. I choose "install", lines start running, most of which are ok-ed. Two lines are not ok-ed:

[ INFO ] dev-virtio\x2dports-com.redhat.spice.0.device is not active.

[ DEPEND ] Dependency failed for Activation socket for spice guest agent daemon.

Nevertheless, this run of lines successfully ends, after which I get "Starting installer, one moment..." and very quickly after that "Pane is dead".

When I alt-tab to log, I get the message saying something to the effect that log-file can't be found. And that's it.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[TrevorH]

Nice to see that someone actually reads the CentOS Wiki USBInstall page

You can ignore the errors about spice, that's "normal".

Did you check the sha256sum of your downloaded iso image against the list in https://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes to make sure your download was ok?

Is there anything on the disks that you care about? If not I would suggest booting the install DVD again only this time, use the Rescue option off the Troubleshooting menu when you first boot up. There is an option there to drop to a command prompt - in fact 2 of them, one where it tries to mount your system partitions and one where it doesn't. Use the latter. From the root command prompt that you get from that I would suggest running dmraid -E -r /dev/sda (repeat for each physical disk in the machine). Once that's done, have another go at the install.

[homeomorphism]

Checksum is correct.

I tried using the Rescue option, but once I select it and press "enter" lines start running again and it gets stuck after [ OK ] Reached target Basic System. I waited may be 10 minutes -- nothing.

[TrevorH]

I think I'd be tempted to try a different USB stick if you haven't already.

[homeomorphism]

Looks like it's the stick. I tried to re-burn it with an image from a different mirror, and now BIOS can't even tell what kind of USB it is (says Generic something, previously said Transcend), disk management in Windows barely sees it, and mkusb in Linux when I attempt to restore it says no suitable device is found or something.

It's a new stick though. 6 months old. Could it be a I did something to it on my first dd-burn of Centos ISO? What should I specify for bs-option in dd-command? Is 512k ok? It was 16 gb-stick.

[TrevorH]

They appear very hit and miss. I have some that are 10 years old and still going and others that just broke after very little use.

[homeomorphism]

So it was the stick. It's fine now -- I'm now looking at the "choose your language during installation" screen...

On the way to this I did bump into another issue though. When the lines start running immediately after you hit "Install Centos" I was getting stuck at [ OK ] something dracut initqueue something. I have a jumper on the motherboard that controls the onboard VGA controller. I set it to disable and everything is fine now. Just in case someone gets stuck at the same point -- looks like it has something to do with graphics like in my case.

EDIT: Bumped into another issue. When choosing an installation media during setup this new USB-stick was not verified, so I couldn't install from it. Luckily, I managed to hook up to an online repository, but somehow I can't believe that I'm so unlucky with USBs that another one (and brand new at that) dies on me in the scope of 2 days.