The Omarchy install died halfway — blame the SD card, not the hardware Draft
The goal
Get Omarchy (Arch-based) installed on a 2017 27" iMac to turn it into the always-on homelab server. Simple enough — or so it seemed.
Hardware and cost
- 27" iMac (2017)
- USB install media for Omarchy
Software stack
- Omarchy — the Arch-based distro being installed
What broke and how it was fixed
The installer choked about 5.8GB in with bad package reads. The first instinct was the scary one: the machine's memory got flagged as suspect, and the natural move was to start thinking about reseating RAM.
But the failure signature didn't fit hardware. Bad package reads — the installer failing to pull files off the medium — points at the medium itself, not the machine. The real culprit was a corrupt ISO or a bad flash on the install media.
The lesson: before you open the case and start touching hardware, verify the ISO checksum and reflash the drive — or try a different USB stick entirely. The cheapest, dumbest part of the chain is usually the guilty one.
Verdict
If your Linux install dies mid-flight with read errors, suspect the install media first. Five minutes reflashing a USB stick beats an hour of RAM surgery. Every time.