Installer doesn't detect HDs

Having been a long time Linux user, decided to try out Clear Linux, created a USB installation media and booted it. Pleasantly surprised to see it boot remarkably fast, faster than my BLFS system !

Wanted to install it an existing partition on my internal HDD, but the installer (both GUI and ncurses based installers) fails to see my HDD or the USB drive, the drop down is empty. I wanted to ask if it is a known issue, before I go about debugging it.

The installer is quite primitive, reminds me of the 90ā€™s Red Hat days, even those days the installers provided more control and options. Iā€™m quite disappointed with the installer.

Anyways, is these a work around for the part where the installer doesnā€™t find any HDDs and displays a message ā€œWarning: No media found for installationā€ ?

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@mhorn can you help with this question.

Thanks. I do not see any option to PM @mhorn.

Do you see your media under the ā€œDestructive Installationā€? That would be the full list of media the installer could use; but it would wipe the drive and create a new partition table to install Clear Linux.

The ā€œSafe Installationā€ is media for which is either unallocated (no partition table) or has a ā€˜gptā€™ partition table and has enough free space to install Clear Linux. If the disk has a mounted partition, it will also be excluded from possible install targets.

Can you share the output of lsblk?

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Thanks. I donā€™t have my laptop with me right now, which is what Iā€™m trying to install Clear Linux on.

I have tried both Safe and Destructive options and neither sees the HDDs.

lsblk can see both the internal HDD and the USB drive that is used to boot Clear Linux.

I have 5 GPT partitions on the internal HDD. EFI, Win10, 30GB ext4, 64GB ext4 and 60GB NTFS. I intend to install it on /dev/sda3 which has my BLFS system.

The installer cannot see the HDD, even if it did, it probably wonā€™t list /dev/sda3 as a candidate, since you said it would only list free/unallocated space which, is strange and unexpected. You are assuming that every user would have either a free unused partition or have an entire disk drive to use for installation, which I donā€™t see as a very smart decision, no offense. One should be able to choose an existing partition, the installer should provide the option to either format it or install to it anyways, at least under advanced options.

If I can get the installer to detect my HDD, I could delete the partition and make it available for the installer as free space. That step should have been unnecessary, but whatever it takes.

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The ā€œSafe Installationā€ will only use free space, hence the ā€œsafeā€ part. :slight_smile:

Adding Advanced Disk configuration to the graphical installer is in the backlog, but not currently available. The current workaround would be to launch ā€˜gpartedā€™, delete the existing partition you plan to use for Clear Linux OS install, and relaunch the installer (or use the Rescan button). The newly freed partition will be listed under the ā€œSafe Installationā€ choice.

If the ā€œDestructive Installationā€ is not seeing any disks, then there is some other problem. But without the output of lsblk and maybe dmesg it will be difficult to provide any direction on how to proceed.

The text-based installer does allow under the Advanced Configuration to select the partitions to overwrite, but it will still require you identifying partitions for ā€˜/bootā€™ (which must be VFAT), a swap, and the partition for ā€˜/ā€™. But again, if there are no media listed under ā€œDestructive Installationā€, this method will not help either.

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A safe installation is any that does what the user wants and doesnā€™t execute the commands right away, but then again viewpoints may vary.

I am going to try and debug the installer. Does the installer have a debug option ? Does the installer force the use of /boot and swap ? If yes, do you have the source code for the installer available, a URL please ?

I do not want a swap partition and as for /boot, I intend to use EFI partition. A separate partition for /boot would be a waste, I can always use a live CD or USB for rescue.

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We get lots of people who found our first installer too complex. You canā€™t really satisfy everyone!

Thatā€™s not what we need. We need to see the exact output of lsblk. If you can give that to us, we can probably fix the issue with your HD detection.

A reboot seemed to have fixed the HDD detection. The installer is written in Go language, which Iā€™m not familiar with so, Iā€™m not going to attempt to modify the source code to fit my needs. I went ahead and installed successfully. I didnā€™t like the installer creating a swap partition and another EFI partition, it could have very well have given me the option to omit swap and use the existing EFI partition.

Uninstalled Gnome and installed KDE, it seems pulseaudio is forced as well, regardless of the DM used, which isnā€™t a very smart move either. I donā€™t need yet another set of tools to achieve something that ALSA is very much capable of by itself.

Now, I need to figure out how to pull in only the packages I need, rather than pull in all the packages a bundle brings in. If that is not possible, Iā€™d rather stick with BLFS.

I hope you guys donā€™t turn Linux into Windows, taking away the freedom of choice and control.

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Though itā€™s not recommended, if you know which CL package you want to install without bringing in other packages in the included bundle, you can download that specific RPM package (and its dependencies) from the release server [1], and cd / && rpm2cpio <RPM> | cpio -idmv to extract that RPM package at /

[1] for example, for release 29490: Index of /releases/29490/clear/x86_64/os/Packages/

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Thank you for the info, seems useful, will check it out.

In case you came here trying to install via virtualbox 6.1, this was the only page I found in my search even close to what I was looking for. I downloaded clear-32350-live, and tried to install it, but it would state, ā€œno media found for installationā€ and never detect the hard drives via the installer, no matter what type of driver I used. The dropdown box would just have a down arrow, with nothing to select.

Eventually, I found the installer /usr/bin/clr-installer-gui was what was running using the xconsole (command window). I checked for command line options with ā€œā€“helpā€ and found a ā€œā€“tuiā€ mode (text UI). I ran that, and THAT detected my hard drives.

$ sudo /usr/bin/clr-installer-gui --tui

Tx, GrigLars! Had the same problem with latest Virtualbox, HDD was not detected although the GPART could allow editing the partition. The shell installer worked as you stated

sudo /usr/bin/clr-installer-gui --tui

Hi , I have the same problem as described - I have a windows 10 installation on my 480GB Nvme drive. Made a USB live boot with clr_iso I can boot with but when i try to install onto 25GB partition on the same drive I see no harddrive only usb with Clear Linux loop.
What do i do to be able to see drive to install?


Acer laptop
Windows 10 build: 19042.685
Processor: IntelĀ® Coreā„¢ i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz, 16GB RAM.

I am very new to Linux - have only tried Linux Mint :slight_smile:

https://docs.01.org/clearlinux/latest/tutorials/multi-boot/dual-boot-win.html

I did follow these instructions, but still no hddrive :slight_smile:

Try to make the partition unformatted

I started with no formatted partition and then tried formattin with FAT32 still no drives to see.

Secure Boot disabled ?