Error installing Alma 9.5,9.6 from USB: waiting for multipath siblings

Support
1

Hi All. I’m trying to install Alma 9.5 on a new hard drive from a bootable USB, but every time I start up the installer, it quickly times out at “waiting for multipath siblings of nvme0n1”.

I’ve seen some references to this problem in other forums, and answers often seem to involve “editing the installer”, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m fairly accustomed to cloning and installing things from bootable USB, but I’ve never encountered an installer that I needed to debug.

COMPUTER: HP Z4G4 desktop. Originally it was working with CentOS7 on one nvme drive and data storage on a second nvme drive. I replaced the CentOS7 drive with a new nvme drive.

NOTE: The computer will be used to run scientific hardware with software that requires 9.4 or 9.5. The vendor has not approved use of Alma 9.6 yet.

INSTALLER: Bootable USB created from AlmaLinux-9.5-x86_64-dvd.iso. Yesterday I tried one created from AlmaLinux-9.6-x86_64-dvd.iso but got the same failure.

THINGS I’VE ALREADY TRIED:

  • Removed the secondary data drive
  • Used gparted from a bootable USB to format the nvme drive (both as one big partition and again with the three-partition format I’m aiming for)
  • Tried installing Alma without checking the media
  • Installed a new regular spinning disk hard drive as sda, with and without the nvme drive, then tried installing Alma 9.5 on it

What should I do? I keep seeing on various forums that this is a known bug but I don’t see solutions. Help!

Thanks.

2

I “fixed” this problem. It turns out it mattered how I created the bootable USB with the installer on my MacBook Pro
• What failed: unetbootin. While I appreciate that I can actually see files on the USB after creating it as a bootable installer, something in there caused it to hang up at this multipath sibling check. I have no idea what.
• WHAT WORKED: balenaEtcher. After creating the bootable USB from the same .iso file, my Mac gave me notice that it couldn’t read the drive, and I ejected it. But when I used it to install AlmaLinux 9.5, it actually worked!

So if you’re encountering this “waiting for multipath siblings” error, you might want to try a different method for creating your bootable installer USB.