Nightmare on boot street...

[AlexOceanic]

Hi All

I'm trying to remove Fedora 36 from a HDD partition and install 37 from a USB ISO over it (not upgrade from within 36) and and am having some tribbles...

Background

- 750 GB HDD with Win 7 resized to 550 GB and installed dual booting Fedora 36 from USB ISO successfully on remaining 200 GB
(all installs were/are to be dual booting for now)
- Overwrote Fed 36/ 200 GB partition when installing Kali (also dual boot) which I used without issue for several months
- Needed to update NVIDIA GPU driver to enable fast rendering in Blender and messed up the install
- Decided I should move back to Fedora as a noob who wanted to install non Kali software and discovered I couldn't boot from USB anymore and encountered a "ldlinux.c32 missing error" each time I tried (BIOS settings were still set to boot USB first etc)
- I tried rewriting the ISO's (although the Fed 36 ISO I used previously had been fine) and the direct "cp" method and an ISO from Balena-Etcher stopped the error message but it still skipped straight to the GRUB/Kali boot screen rather than booting from USB just prior to this stage.
- After various solutions failed, I triple checked the BIOS settings and it seemed that bringing the "USB CD" and "USB FDD" up the boot order above the "HDD" entries and running an ISO of a boot repair utility actually allowed the boot repair utility to boot from USB.
- I immediately rebooted with the Fedora 36 ISO and it worked for some reason
- I've had a nightmare installing a legacy NVIDIA driver for my GT550 (Optimus) where I tried installing the generic NVIDIA driver (notrealising my GPU was out of support for this driver) and even after extensive help from forum members t delete the old drivers and install the now correctly identified drivers has failed
- Each GPU driver install attempt created a new kernel/boot option on the GRUB2 menu and the latest one broke the wifi and ran in low resolution mode
- At this point (and after being advised to move to Fedora 37) I thought it might be simpler to overwrite the Fed 36 partition and install Fed 37 but I've encountered the issue where it won't boot from USB again,even after repeating the steps which appeared to be a workaround beforehand.
- I tried going into the GRUB2 command prompt (pressing c on the GRUB2 bootloader menu) to force it to boot from USB and managed to follow instructions for GRUB1 rather stupidly but I managed to the set the root back to the correct partition and Fed 36 runs again now
- I had another go at identifying the correct root to set (which I finally identified as "hd1") but I couldn't see the "mdosX" part listed like the other hd0 entries ranging from msdos1 to 6 and when I set root to "hd1" it couldn't find /efi/boot/grubx64.efi when running the "chainloader" command
- I managed to boot the boot repair utility again a moment ago (simply moved HDD BD to bottom of boot order?!?) but the Fed 37 ISO didin't boot afterwards this time.
- I inserted the Fed 37 ISO whilst running the boot repair disk and saved the log report this time which seems to have found some issues with the ISO boot targets and MBR being overlapped on the first 32 blocks.

Are there any kind souls out there who might review the attached boot report log and help me resolve these errors please?

(And yes I know I shouldn't have used Kali to start with and should've checked the GPU driver/GRUB version installed etc but non of us are perfect eh)

Many thanks

Alex

(I tried pasting the boot report output below in case anyone didn't want to open this .txt file but hit the 30,000 character limit per post - happy to paste it in another thread and link to it if required and that's acceptable)

 

[Brickwizard]

I do not expect to find windows quick-start[fast-boot] on w7 but just check and if there disable it

 

[AlexOceanic]

I do not expect to find windows quick-start[fast-boot] on w7 but just check and if there disable it

Thanks for coming back to me on this.

I did not see a fast boot or quick start option in the BIOS settings.

Legacy USB support is enabled and UEFI is disabled.

I did change the CMOS battery a couple of weeks ago if that's relevant?

 

[Brickwizard]

When you take out the CMOS battery the capacitor discharge's, this usually causes the bios to lose any user defined options,
check your settings or better still use the factory setting to re-set it and start again if needed to make modifications

 

[AlexOceanic]

Bugger - I changed the battery quickly to try to avoid that

I'm not sure how to reset the BIOS to factory settings.

I found the below page which has the attached intel chipset driver for this model (Clevo W170HN) - would that be the BIOS file to install do you think?

CLEVO Driver Download

Ironically it also has the NVIDIA Optimus drivers for Win 7 too - would Linux/GNU need that installed for any of the drivers it uses for the GPU and may explain the recent issues I've been having updating the GPU driver on Kali and Fedora perhaps?

Interesting that the first item under section 10. Troiubleshooting in the Chipset Readme file is as follows...

Issue:
USB devices no longer work correctly after you
install the Intel Chipset Software Installation
Utility in Windows XP or in Windows Server 2003.

Solution:
A recommended fix has been provided by Microsoft
in Knowledge Base article(921411). For additional
information, please refer to the KB article located
at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921411/en-us

https://web.archive.org/web/20100908064336/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921411

States "This problem occurs because of a timing conflict between Windows File Protection and the Setup program."

Looks like the hotfix isn't available:

This hotfix is no longer available - Microsoft Support

Alternatives to discontinued hotfix.

support.microsoft.com

And the Wayback machine hasn't archived the hotfix itself or its getting confused with the EULA:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100809143111/http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=921411&kbln=en-us

 

[Brickwizard]

first open your bios [by pressing whichever key/keys open the full bios [not the quick boot menu]] as you switch on.
then carefully look through each section, somewhere you will have rest to factory defaults [or similar] open and use to reset, you should not need to do a bios update from the internet.

 

[redwhiteandblue]

Which BIOS is it?

On mine, Award BIOS (trust me I'm becoming quite familiar with it with my issue) it's the Del key to get into it, and once in it's F6 to load default "safe" values, and F7 to load default "optimised" values. But there's a gotcha here - the default safe values turn off USB peripherals. Which is all fine until you realize your keyboard is a USB keyboard so now you can't type anything anywhere and you can't use the Del key to get back into the BIOS to turn it back on.

Fortunately in my case I had this a long time ago and made sure that one of my many keyboards I have in my posession is a PS/2 one.

 

[Brickwizard]

I have in my posession is a PS/2 one.

always one in my workroom also ps/2 mouse, can be very handy

default "safe" values, and F7 to load default "optimised" values.

Optimised values

 

[AlexOceanic]

first open your bios [by pressing whichever key/keys open the full bios [not the quick boot menu]] as you switch on.
then carefully look through each section, somewhere you will have rest to factory defaults [or similar] open and use to reset, you should not need to do a bios update from the int

first open your bios [by pressing whichever key/keys open the full bios [not the quick boot menu]] as you switch on.
then carefully look through each section, somewhere you will have rest to factory defaults [or similar] open and use to reset, you should not need to do a bios update from the internet.

So I found "load setup defaults" under the "exit" bios menu tab, loaded the default configuration, hit f10 to save and exit and rebooted.

It seems to have disabled the Ethernet card or something as Fedora went into airplane mode and i was unable to switch it off or enable WiFi. Even plugging my phone in directly via usb c doesn't give me a network connection.

Discovered i couldn't get to linux.org with current version of mozilla on my phone (cloudflare sends you round in circles) and that finding a browser supporting android 7 is pretty hard these days where most seem to be android 9 and above and i won't use Google play. Finally found an apk of Brave hence being able to write this reply:

Download Brave Browser APK - Latest Version (Free)

Download and install Brave Browser APK 1.64.116 for Android / Windows PC - App: com.brave.browser by Brave Software - Free

apkflash.com

I didn't find any other advanced options for optimised boot but my usb mouse still works.

Current version of bios now reported as 1.01.05 and i didn't see any changes when reviewing each menu other than the boot order which went to:
Usb hdd
Sata odd
Sata hdd
Usb cd
Usb fdd
Pci lan - jmc25x gigabit ethernet control
Not sure if this was because I'd left the fedora usb iso plugged in just in case it was able to boot.

Any other ideas please?

It seems there might be recovery options from within windows but leaving that as a last resort.

Update

Grub reports the following in case it helps narrow down whether its possibly a config file that needs updating to a new IRQ or something since resetting the bios to default settings?

net_ls_cards reports nothing at all (no error and no output)
net_bootp reports
error:../../grub-core/net/bootp.c:1596:no network card found
and yet lspci lists
08.00.0 10ec:8176 (0280) Network Controller
09.00.0 197b:0250 (0200) Ethernet Controller

 

[AlexOceanic]

Which BIOS is it?

On mine, Award BIOS (trust me I'm becoming quite familiar with it with my issue) it's the Del key to get into it, and once in it's F6 to load default "safe" values, and F7 to load default "optimised" values. But there's a gotcha here - the default safe values turn off USB peripherals. Which is all fine until you realize your keyboard is a USB keyboard so now you can't type anything anywhere and you can't use the Del key to get back into the BIOS to turn it back on.

Fortunately in my case I had this a long time ago and made sure that one of my many keyboards I have in my posession is a PS/2 one.

Thanks for the tips - i had Award on one of my desktops previously.
Glad you had a ps2 kb and jack for it, that would be an interesting situation on more modern pc's without the ps2 input jacks!

Mine is Phoenix SecureCore Tiano and the only keys that seem to function are f2 to enter the bios menu and f12 which gives a high level summary of the system (cpu, ram etc).
I seem to recall f11 brought up an advanced bios menu when it was just a win 7 machine with uefi enabled but that doesn't do anything now that it's a dual boot system or due to another reason I'm not aware of - maybe enabling uefi might bring it back but will see what those who know their onions say first before i break anything else.

 

[AlexOceanic]

first open your bios [by pressing whichever key/keys open the full bios [not the quick boot menu]] as you switch on.
then carefully look through each section, somewhere you will have rest to factory defaults [or similar] open and use to reset, you should not need to do a bios update from the internet.

ok so I put on some heavy duty rubber gloves and booted into Windows (ptah!) and amazingly the network card and graphics card are both working normally!

When I was trying to upgrade the NVIDIA driver on Fedora, the latest kernel? (the top entry of three Fedora kernels available on the GRUB2 boot menu) broke the internet connection (and display) but I found it was fine again when I selected the previous kernel.

I'll try booting into the first kernel to see if that can still detect the NIC...

Update

So the first kernel seems fine and the network is working normally as far as I can tell - very strange...

I'm still left with the inability to:
- boot from USB
- wipe Fed 36 by installing Fed 37 and deleting that partition in the process
- remove the broken kernels from the GRUB2 menu
- set the GPU drivers back to default so I can break them again install the correct drivers now that I actually know what they are!

I guess its a case of keep burning ISO's with different methods/applications/USB stick and forcing GRUB2 to boot one if it ends up listing a filesystem I can set as root and chainload it (only had a HD1 rather than a HD1,msdos1 recognised as the USB with ISO on it so far and I think it needs those last three letters or I might be able to use its UUID (if I can figure out where to find it) looking at another guide.
I'm guessing by the time GRUB2 recognises the fs properly then it will boot from USB before the GRUB menu fires up anyway but I'll check if I do manage to get an ISO burnt that is recognised and boots first in the normal way.

Found the UUID's (see image) although just got an "Unexpected system error" on second reboot of this first kernel 5.17 with functional NIC.

I wonder if its worth updating/rebuilding this vmlinuz file as it seems to be a bit confused hence the "NVidia failed to load - reverting to Nouveau" messages on the log in screen at start up on all three kernels.

"BOOT_IMAGE=(hd0,msdos5)/vmlinuz-5.17.5-300.fc36.x86_64 root=UUID=8ac06d2b-e04d-43ac-be22-4b147c4b1a29 ro rootflags=subvol=root rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau nvidia-drm.modeset=1 rhgb quiet initcall_blacklist=simpledrm_platform_driver_init rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau nvidia-drm.modeset=1"

Just burnt Fed 37 ISO onto a new USB stick using another laptop running Fed 36/Fed Media Writer and set BIOS to have all three USB entries above the HDD entries in the boot order but it still failed unfortunately.

Its interesting looking at the file systems in the "system monitor" app (see screenshot) which shows sdb1 (USB stick) as /run/media where I wonder if it should be boot like sda5 (the currently installed Fed 36)

 

[MikeWalsh]

.....and folks wonder WHY I stick with "oddities" like Puppy, Slax & Porteus.

Simple, really. They're dead simple to install.....they're easy to boot/get running.....and when they DO go wrong, they're a piece of cake to fix.

Bugger having to run all these complicated command-line tools just to get your OS running at all. I always did maintain there's too many devs that seem to love complexity for its own sake.....


Mike.

 

[AlexOceanic]

.....and folks wonder WHY I stick with "oddities" like Puppy, Slax & Porteus.

Simple, really. They're dead simple to install.....they're easy to boot/get running.....and when they DO go wrong, they're a piece of cake to fix.

Bugger having to run all these complicated command-line tools just to get your OS running at all. I always did maintain there's too many devs that seem to love complexity for its own sake.....


Mike.

Well to be fair, this situation might be more my making a relatively simple process complicated due to my rushing certain things and not listening to several warnings to not use Kali as a beginner (although it seems to run Blender a lot quicker than Fedora and the whole system was very quick/smooth for months despite my adding non Kali software and with a really customizable desktop).

Having said that, I've always loved how tiny Puppy is, the persistent usb storage "pc in your pocket" concept and have tried slackware, pop and tails - I might well revisit if things don't start going smoothly soon on Fedora!

Is there any particular build or flavour of Puppy you'd recommend for graphics apps, video editing with a clean desktop?

I've just seen that GPARTED can only see a single 29 GB "free space" partition on this 32 GB USB stick whereas Gnome Disks can see 3 more partitions containing Fed 7, Anaconda and "Unknown" which might not be helping matters...

 

[MikeWalsh]

@AlexOceanic :-

Having said that, I've always loved how tiny Puppy is, the persistent usb storage "pc in your pocket" concept and have tried slackware, pop and tails - I might well revisit if things don't start going smoothly soon on Fedora!

Is there any particular build or flavour of Puppy you'd recommend for graphics apps, video editing with a clean desktop?

Graphics apps, video editing.....'kay; can you be a bit more specific?

Recommending a Puppy would normally be easy, but ATM, the current 'flagship', Fossapup64 is being spun-off in half a dozen different directions. It's difficult to know just what TO recommend..!

You could always take a look at the new 'project' Puppies, the 'Kennel Linux' series. These have been under development for well over a year, and the most developed build, the Void Linux-based KLV "Airedale" - sporting the XFCE/Thunar combo - could well be what you want insofar as a 'clean' desktop goes.

You can find the current thread of this here. It's currently at rc10.1 - rc11 is in the works - so almost ready for 'prime-time'.

KLV-Airedale-rc10.1 with Void Linux Kernel 6.1.8_1 - Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

forum.puppylinux.com

Just a suggestion, like. The best bit about them, from MY point of view, is that almost the entire range of 'portable' browsers & other apps I've developed for Puppy itself also appear to be fully functional here, too. Which makes it super quick'n'easy to populate with apps and get fully-functional in very short order.


Mike.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Sounds like a mess

- I've had a nightmare installing a legacy NVIDIA driver for my GT550 (Optimus) where I tried installing the generic NVIDIA driver (notrealising my GPU was out of support for this driver) and even after extensive help from forum members t delete the old drivers and install the now correctly identified drivers has failed
- Each GPU driver install attempt created a new kernel/boot option on the GRUB2 menu and the latest one broke the wifi and ran in low resolution mode

Sounds like a mess, it's kind of hard to get a full picture of your situation as an outsider even with the attached boot-info.txt. Looks like you have several Windows installations, you know that Windows 7 and 8 are out of support aka End of Life? What I would do is make a backup of all of your personal data in Linux and Windows, then remove all the partitions using gparted live. Afterwards first install Windows again, a version which is still supported and then install Fedora again or whatever distribution you would like to use.

 

[AlexOceanic]

@AlexOceanic :-



Graphics apps, video editing.....'kay; can you be a bit more specific?

Recommending a Puppy would normally be easy, but ATM, the current 'flagship', Fossapup64 is being spun-off in half a dozen different directions. It's difficult to know just what TO recommend..!

You could always take a look at the new 'project' Puppies, the 'Kennel Linux' series. These have been under development for well over a year, and the most developed build, the Void Linux-based KLV "Airedale" - sporting the XFCE/Thunar combo - could well be what you want insofar as a 'clean' desktop goes.

You can find the current thread of this here. It's currently at rc10.1 - rc11 is in the works - so almost ready for 'prime-time'.

KLV-Airedale-rc10.1 with Void Linux Kernel 6.1.8_1 - Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

forum.puppylinux.com

Just a suggestion, like. The best bit about them, from MY point of view, is that almost the entire range of 'portable' browsers & other apps I've developed for Puppy itself also appear to be fully functional here, too. Which makes it super quick'n'easy to populate with apps and get fully-functional in very short order.


Mike.

Thanks Mike

Re: Graphics apps, video editing - I'm getting into 3D modelling (Blender) and 3D printing (slicing tools to convert 3D images into gcode files for the printer), I do video editing now and then too and anything to improve response time when using the applications and reduce the file processing times on these kind of apps is a bonus.

Where I found Kali ran Blender much better than Fedora (even from CPU without full GPU functionality), I don't know if this is because Fedora may have more bloatware running in the background than Kali perhaps and wondered if Puppy (which I understood to be a very "bare bones/vanilla" distro might have established a good reputation for graphics and video editing due to it allowing all possible system resources to be allocated to the graphics apps having so few apps running in the background from startup?

I'll take a look at the distro's you mentioned and give them a go once this partition/USB booting situation is resolved - I just seem to keep coming up against brickwalls at every turn at the moment.

Out of interest - would you say Puppy/Slackware is one of the distro's out there that remains closest to the original GNU ideology/goals?
I know I'll probably end up using non free apps/code but want to keep it to a minimum whilst retaining my data and online activity privacy as much as is possible these days.

Debian seems a bit dodgy, as does Ubuntu and was another reason I wanted to move from Kali when I saw it was Debian based.
Having read a couple of articles it looks like certain parties are trying to destroy or make GNU/Linux difficult to maintain and use e.g. this DEP-5 machine-readable copyright file business below - I would say "unsurprisingly" but Ubuntu seem to be complicit and I wonder how many other distro's might have been compromised now...

Disguised Work -- Frans Pop Debian Day suicide, Ubuntu, Google and the DEP-5 machine-readable copyright file

Volunteers have scoured the debian-private (leaked) gossip network looking for further evidence about the Frans Pop

suicide.fyi

This history overview of Puppy reads well and at least I get to choose which distro it's built on:

Puppy Linux History

puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io

After seeing what "big tech" did these past 3 years (and much longer when you look at the attacks on user privacy/data, internet censorship, huge EULa's giving them ridiculous rights over your data which they know 0.01% of users actually read and have little choice but to accept much of the time, search engine misuse etc over the years), I'm very distrustful of most things tech related now (which is a real pisser as I loved tech previously) and is yet another amazing tool for humanity that's being twisted into something bad.

 

[AlexOceanic]

Sounds like a mess

Sounds like a mess, it's kind of hard to get a full picture of your situation as an outsider even with the attached boot-info.txt. Looks like you have several Windows installations, you know that Windows 7 and 8 are out of support aka End of Life? What I would do is make a backup of all of your personal data in Linux and Windows, then remove all the partitions using gparted live. Afterwards first install Windows again, a version which is still supported and then install Fedora again or whatever distribution you would like to use.

It certainly feels like a mess...

Main goals:

- To move away from the Windows spyware OS completely - haven't used it for months and just keeping in case there's a Windows only app I really need to use or to find some important info that I might have forgotten was there (I guess I should really go through system and doublecheck)
- Fix MBR issue of initial 32 sectors overlapping error I saw reported
- Fix inability of USB live images to boot at startup or confirm this is an issue with Fedora (37?) ISO's created via both the "cp" command, Balena-Etcher and Fed Media Writer (where Fed 36 created via Balena Etcher in Kali did finally work hence this install of Fed 36 on the HDD) - where the "boot repair" ISO boots from live USB I'm thinking this might be a Fed specific issue
- Resize the Windows partition to 300GB - Windows only allowed me to reduce it to 550GB as a minimum previously and saw warnings on forums about using other apps to force the resize
- Delete all non Windows partitions (sda's 3 - 6?)
- Install Fedora 37 as dual boot with Windows (for now)

My understanding of the system overview:

- There is one version of Windows 7 installed
- sda1: MBR (with boot flag)
- sda2: Windows 7
- sda3: Spare 1 GB I left for some reason
- sda4: overarching Fedora partition containing sda5 and 6
- sda5: Fed 36 boot partition (why no boot flag?) or another duplicate partition of sda3
- sda6: Fed 36 itself
- sdb: Live Fed 37 image on USB (why no boot flag?)

I seem to recall not being able to manage the flags to change the USB partition to "boot" in gparted although looking in Gnome Disks I'm seeing a "legacy BIOS boot" option and perhaps the USB partition was mounted and hence uneditable when I tried previously (Disks says it'll auto unmount to perform operation).

I find it strange that gparted only see's a single, 57.99GB partition on the USB drive (options greyed out other than "resize/move", "copy" and "format to") whereas Disks see's all four partitions (see screenshots) and seems to have more available options to unmount and perform other actions on the partitions.

Possible ways forward:
- Use Fedora Image mounter to mount existing Fed 37 ISO on USB and run installer from there (deleting sda's 3-6 during the install process) - I'm guessing Fed 36 won't allow itself to be deleted whilst running and if the installer is clever enough to reboot the system thinking it'll boot from USB it'll probably fail and skip to the GRUB boot menu as before
- See if there's a live distro of Disks that runs as live USB to either:
-- change flag of USB Fed 37 ISO partition to "boot" in case this step is being missed when creating for some reason
-- delete sda's 3-6 then run an MBR fix tool and/or Windows boot repair to restore HDD to original state then try installing linux/gnu from USB again
- Try to find a more robust/less finicky linux distro ISO than Fedora 37 that boots from USB and delete sda's 3-6 during the install process - still concerned about the MBR record error I saw that the first 32 sectors are overlapped or something

 

[Brickwizard]

Out of interest, when you installed Fedora, did you tick to encrypt the installation?

 

[AlexOceanic]

Out of interest, when you installed Fedora, did you tick to encrypt the installation?

No but think I did do for the previous Kali installation...
(and can't remember if I did on the Fed 36 install prior to Kali)

 

[Deleted member 108694]

Discovered i couldn't get to linux.org with current version of mozilla on my phone (cloudflare sends you round in circles) and that finding a browser supporting android 7

Try DuckDuckGo browser works well on my Android 6