"Install media mount failed" when trying to create bootstrap USB

[Ken_Hansen]

I am attempting to create a bootstrap USB on a PA-200. The Palo site provides pretty good procedure documentation, but not much for troubleshooting. I have managed to create the bootstrap.tar.gz file and upload it to a PA-200 running Pan-OS 8.0.3. I have tried 4 different brands/models of USB sticks, but when running the create bootstrap process every one errors out with the following message:

Server error : Install media mount failed, probably bad media(1)

Searches on the Palo support site and Google don't turn up anything specific to this error, or troubleshooting an externally connected device. I did find the list of officially supported USB devices for this process. I have been unable to find any of these locally so far, so I bought a couple others of the right make and model, but different capacities (larger). 

My first question is whether the Palo appliances are really finicky to the point that only one of the listed USB sticks will work. If so, I will order them, but I'd like to get some feedback from others before buying more USB devices.

My second question is whether results might be different with a different model appliance. PA-200 is all I have available to me in the office at the moment, but we should have a PA-500 coming back in from a remote office in the near future (month or two) that I can try it on.

Thanks.

[reaper]

to which filesystem did you format the USB drive ?

you may want to try FAT32

[Ken_Hansen]

I tried both FAT32 and EXT4, which are the two that Palo supports.

[Sec101]

its the size that is the problem.  try a 1gb flash drive adn it should work like a charm.  has something to do with the timeout value on the box when it mounts it.

[BPry]

I've done 1gb and 2gb without any problem; I've even used a 16gb before and never run into any issue. Not sure of the size you're trying to use @Ken_Hansen

[RommelRebong]

Hi Bpry,

I am also experiencing the same issue. Have tried 2 usb drives, not from the supported list, and 1 supported which is a Kingston SE9 16gb usb 3.0. It is weird as I have already tried preparing the sticks on 2 PA850s. 

Which unit did you do the bootstrapping and which firmware were you running?

[EricGleason]

Anyone ever find a resolution with this?  We just got 15 Kingston 16GB that are on the supported list, this keeps happening.  I'm bootstrapping 220's.

[BPry]

@RommelRebong@EricGleason,

Interestingly I actually realized about a month or two ago after attempting to update our bootstrap files that the same model of Kingston drives that we have always used no-longer functioned correctly. It isn't a big issue for us, so I haven't looked into it at all. 

[EricGleason]

Yeah I'll guess I'll have to get a different model.  Bummer, what are you having success with?

[BPry]

@EricGleason,

Thankfully I have a large amount of the Kingston DataTraveler G4s that I originally setup and kept updated. Since I started running into issues I simply stopped updating them as they still do the job fine, I simply can't update the bootstrap files. 

[BarakGriffis]

I too am using approved Kingston SE 16GB drives, but get failures 99% of the time like this:

admin@PA-220> request system bootstrap-usb prepare from bootstrapcontainer_012801067544_20180928.tar.gz
This will format plugged-in USB and prepare it for bootstrap. This operation may take up to 15 minutes. All the data on USB will be lost. Are you sure you want to continue? (y or n) 

Server error : Install media mount failed, probably bad media(1)

I've created a workaround that seems to ... work.

Put your USB stick in a linux box and find the device name (/dev/sdb in this case)

[root@pan-boostrapper ~]# fdisk -l | grep Disk | grep  dev | grep -v mapper
Disk /dev/sda: 21.5 GB, 21474836480 bytes, 41943040 sectors
Disk /dev/sdb: 15.5 GB, 15500574720 bytes, 30274560 sectors

(re)create partitions:

NOTE: Use your own dev location and size from the fdisk command above

[root@pan-boostrapper ~]# parted /dev/sdb
(parted) mklabel msdos
Warning: The existing disk label on /dev/sdb will be destroyed and all data on this disk will be lost. Do you want to continue?
Yes/No? yes
(parted) mkpart pri ext3 1 15.5GB
(parted) quit
Information: You may need to update /etc/fstab.

 Format the new partition:

[root@pan-boostrapper ~]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
946560 inodes, 3784188 blocks
189209 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=3875536896
116 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8160 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
	32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:

done

Mount it

[root@pan-boostrapper ~]# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

Make directories and put the init-cfg.txt and bootstrap.xml in them

[root@pan-boostrapper ~]# ls -l pan-bootstrap/*
pan-bootstrap/config:
total 16
-rwx------. 1 root root 9016 Sep 30 11:41 bootstrap.xml
-rwx------. 1 root root  243 Sep 30 11:41 init-cfg.txt

pan-bootstrap/license:
total 0

pan-bootstrap/log:
total 0

And copy stuff in there

[root@pan-boostrapper ~]# cp -r pan-bootstrap/* /mnt/

umount and off you go

[root@pan-boostrapper ~]# umount /mnt

[BarakGriffis]

Also... this was on 8.0.7.   Fixed PAN-79317 at 8.0.10