Questions before installing Salix

[Themis]

@mimosa I’ll try, but from where I was (did not shut down the computer and let it where it was), it seems that I cannot reboot with the reboot command. But again, since I don’t master the CLI yet, that may be normal. Maybe because of the “mount /dev/sda2 /mnt” command?

Code: Select all

[…]
4 warnings were issued.
root@salix64:/# reboot
WARNING: could not determine runlevel – doing soft reboot
  (it’s better to use shutdown instead of reboot from the command line)
shutdown: /dev/initctl: No such file or directory
init: /dev/initctl: No such file or directory
root@salix64:/#

Made an hard reboot, and well, still the same. Boot Menu… This laptop runs my nerves a little bit, now.

Is there a safe way to go back to MBR? Maybe that could prevent it to look for EFI or whatever…?

[mimosa]

You have successfully installed lilo - so this is a BIOS problem. Make sure everything is set to legacy (as suggested and described above) and try again ...

[gapan]

GPT should not be a problem. But if you'd like to try that too:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... -mbr#61143

Oh, and you couldn't run the reboot command because you were inside a chroot. You could have typed:

Code: Select all

exit

and then you would have been out of the chroot and able to reboot.

[Themis]

@mimosa Everything is set to Legacy… And it just keep printing this Boot Menu. I’m looking for information over the Internet. I’ve found things like this (even though it doesn’t concern my model, which is a T420): https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comme ... i_on_t520/

At this point I’ll just give Ubuntu a try, since I have a LiveCD. That way I’ll see if by any chance I can boot on a Linux distro (but I doubt it). If so, then I’ll have to figure out what the problem is with Salix. If not… well… great.

@gapan Thanks. I’ve read this already, but wasn’t sure whether it was a good process or not. Since you’re suggesting it, I’ll do that. Also, while the Ubuntu (Mate, 16.04LTS) LiveCD was loading, I’ve seen some “pcr” related error messages, but couldn’t note them. Could that have anything to do with the original problem, too?

Well, I’ll first try to go back to MBR and reinstall Salix. If I still get nothing, I’ll try to install Ubuntu, just in case it might work…

[Themis]

It’s finally working! I was about to give up… So this is definitely a BIOS issue because of GPT/EFI.
Now I can boot on Salix without any problem!

For now, I’ve installed it with only two partitions: the swap and the Linux one. That was the first time that I did all this in CLI, and I couldn’t figure out how to add a /home partition before installing the distro. I mean, in cfdisk, I couldn’t find an appropriate type for the /home, so for tonight I let it with 2 partitions, but I’d be happy if I could use 3. How could I do that (I’ll probably reinstall Salix tomorrow)?

Thank you very much, guys. You’ve really been nice.

[gapan]

Great! So how did you fix it? By changing GPT to MBR?

BTW /home should be of type 83 as well.

[mimosa]

One thing, if you are going to reinstall, you probably don't need such a large swap. I don't have it at all myself. The old rule of thumb used to be that swap should be equal in size to memory (RAM) - and the less memory you had, the more necessary swap was. In modern machines it probably isn't needed in most cases, but you probably don't need 16 GB. I suggest a smaller power of two.

I'm glad you got it to work! Sometimes with a complex problem like that, results can be unpredictable because of small inconsistencies you may not even notice. That's why it can help to take a calm and very methodical approach.

[Themis]

@gapan Yes, I changed GPT to MBR, then deleted a remaining “ee-thing” EFI partition, and reinstalled in Legacy Only mode. What a journey!
Thanks for the info. So it doesn’t matter if there is no “/home” printed somewhere on the screen? Salix will know that it has to use the 83 type partition with Boot option for the system, then the other 83 type partition for the user data?

@mimosa Indeed. I’m always pretty calm. Less by the end, I admit, but after two or three days, I’d ended up a bit demoralized.

[gapan]

The installer will ask you which partition you want to use for / and then if more partitions are available it will also ask you if you want to have a mountpoint assigned to any of them, in which case you can just point /home to the other partition.

[Themis]

I’m trying to reinstall Salix with a /home partition.
Once I’ve selected the one which has to contain /, it indeed tells me that other Linux type partitions have been found, but it actually doesn’t ask me to choose one for my /home. It only asks for /etc/fstab, but also tells me that I should select a partition that is not already in use (which is the case for /, on /dev/sda2). So I didn’t select anything and chose to continue. Then the installation went on and… that’s all. Now for what I see, it apparently doesn’t take the big partition into account, and thinks there’s only 50 Go for root and home.
I guess I’ve missed something, but right now I can’t figure out what.

Here is what I have:

Code: Select all

    Device    Boot       Start           End         Sectors     Size    Id Type
>> /dev/sda1              2048       4196351         4194394       2G    82 Linux swap
   /dev/sda2   *       4196352     109053951       104857600      50G    83 Linux
   /dev/sda3         109053952     468862127       359808176   171,6G    83 Linux