Installer sees usb as the disk and tries to install in it

Hello guys, i’ve installed suse in the past but i wanted to change from leap to tumbleweed.

When the installer first loads it says “To use the selected repository a matching boot image is needed. Download it now and restart?”
Now if i don’t the install fails so i click yes and the installer loads properly.

When i reach the partitioning choices though it have the usb partitioned to host the os and the guided setup will only see the usb as a valid option.

Does anyone know why that is or what i could do to clarify my position further?

Any help is appreciated.

Something went wrong. It’s hard to know what.

I have had that happen here. It happened when I booted the computer from an install USB, but I also happened to have an install DVD present on the system, but for a different openSUSE version.

As best I can tell, it loaded the kernel and initrd from the USB, but it found the DVD first when it was looking for the rest of the system. And that confused it.

I don’t know whether something like that might have happened there. But at least check for that possibility.

Yup there is a device called openSUSE-Tumbleweed-DVD-x86_6421 that i thought was my usb so i did not pay attention. Turns out it’s there without the usb too.

Weird thing is that it is sda3 mounted on / and it contains the root file or is a shortcut to it.

I am thoroughly confused. How did it get there. Did i do this at some point?

Also it is non-unmountable from dolphin.

At this rate i’m gonna wipe the ssd just to do an install.

Would like to find a solution though in case someone else runs into this so i’ll keep trying to fix it for a while

Although I haven’t run into your problem,
I’d speculate your problem is based on the following…

  • The openSUSE installer looks for any available free, unpartitioned space to install into. One way to discourage installing on your USB drive might be to partition and perhaps format all free space which should hopefully then leave only the location you want to install into. Or, maybe you made a mistake and didn’t remove the partition where you want to install into?

  • I assume you are using a USB dongle or other USB connected device for your installation source. If not (eg using DVD optical media) a simple solution should be to just disable USB booting in your BIOS.

TSU

Ok so for some reason dell secure data wipe does not work anymore.
That has nothing to do with this forum but it does mean that i have to actually solve this.

I cannot unmout /dev/sda3 from / cause it is busy.

is there a way to wipe my ssd from inside the os so that there is only my usb as an installation media?

EDIT: Also fyi i made the usb with the suse imagewriter

I solved it.
Turns out there was a partition /dev/sda2 that was a bootable iso img with a tumbleweed iso in it. So i just burned it with hellfire and the install went smoothly. This was all my f-up guys sorry for wasting your time.

If anyone else goes through this problem open expert partitioner in the install and look for any other iso partitions. Then go ahead and boot normaly, nuke them and redo the setup through your usb.
Although i doubt that other people are capable of doing such a dumb thing without noticing

I’m glad you were able to fix it. Thanks for reporting back.