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kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 341  

Beowulf installer broken?

Hello,

i had fair share of Devuan installs over last couple of hours (on no-ssd system)
and am wondering if Beowulf installer is broken, as it constantly fails on the system.

500 GB HDD
Windows 7 installed (first side of HDD)
second side HDD for Linux

....
first i delete the partition in Devuan installer, then let the partitioner choose "biggest freespace" for automatic partitioning;

installation succeeds,
but after finishing everything,
and reboot,

there comes just

Grub window

"GNU Grub Version 2.02-dfsg1-20+deb10u4"
grub>

or similar...
very frustrating.

This happens with Netinstall.iso and also with full DVD installer.

Then i tried to circumvent by installing Debian Stretch, from there to Ascii (so far , so good),

and then from Ascii to Beowulf.
everything seems fine, but after re-boot (into BEOWulf),

the same grub error as above.

Please indicate were wrong.

Thanks, richard

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

The grub> prompt indicated that either GRUB cannot find the configuration file or that the configuration file does not have any menuentry stanzas.

Use this command from the prompt to find where it is looking for the file:

set

You're looking for the configfile parameter, which will be given relative to the root device (defined elsewhere in the list).

Once you know the location you can check the file.

If this is a UEFI system then use this command from any live ISO image to check the boot entries:

efibootmgr -uv

EDIT: that GRUB version is from ASCII (or Debian buster) so you're probably booting from an old boot entry. Change the boot order with efibootmgr's -o option; see the man page for details.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2021-11-18 07:21:48)

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 341  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

hello @head_on_a_stick, thank you very much for reply, very helpful, thoughful.

the question remains, why only the Beowulf would make this error?

devuan jessie, ascii, debian stretch, would insert the correct grub entry (or otherwise said, boot correctly after installation, with the same installation routine (automatic partitioning on largest freespace available, around 228GB). however, when installing devuan beowulf Straight, it would fail, as would updating from ascii (booted correctly with grub in place) to beowulf ?

hint: had previously installed chimaera, but that should not mess up things that way.
in BIOS Boot Manager next to pyhsical drives and Windows Boot Manager is shown entry for "Devuan" and "Debian" and both produced the same error.

EDIT: sorry but i cannot troubleshoot your method above as i am currently on ascii; but should i upgrade once again, i might have the opportunity to, thanks.

Last edited by kapqa (2021-11-18 11:22:02)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

the question remains, why only the Beowulf would make this error?

The error is almost certainly caused by your motherboard's UEFI firmware. I've seen *many* cases of defective firmware in the various forums I visit, the manufacturers seem to be farming the job out to the lowest bidders with the quality that entails.

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 341  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

Hello, IAM using a Thinkpad T440p, so I wonder were i made the error:

After updating to Beowulf, promptly the same error: grub bash instead of boot.

Tried several fixes, rescatux, refund , super grub disk, manual removal of grub entries and re- install, so far, no luck.
The grün-Installer would somehow always try to boot
\EFI\devuan\grubx64.efi from EFI system partition
Which fails
Instead

\boot\vmlinuz-4.19.0-18-amd64 from 212GB ext4 Volume would boot
Would boot

But grub-install always reinstates the Boot EFI from system partition option.

Sorry if this is confusing but I am sure the error is not entirely my fault, it seems a pattern with Beowulf grub package or how it handles the Dualboot.

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 341  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

i have also checked with EasyBCD on Windows 7 (which apparently is installed in EFI/UEFI mode, but iam not so sure about it)

and among the  23 entries, the one for devuan states

Entry #22
Name: devuan
BCD ID: {197a451f-4891-11ec-9acc-806e6f6e6963}
Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Bootloader Path: \EFI\devuan\shimx64.efi

wonder if i should manually change it?

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,187  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

shimx64.efi is the boot loader for the Secure Mode, I would guess that grubx64.efi would be the better choice (under the assumption that Secure Boot is disabled).

rolfie

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 341  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

thanks rolfie, yes the secureboot was disabled, but somehow things still got messed up.
however, got tired, and disabled the UEFI entirely, and ta-raa, now the Beowulf installer boots correctly.
Only thing, seem to have to -reinstall windows 7 again, but will check that later.
Thanks everybody for the help.

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 341  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

ok, today tried again,
changed back to UEFI *to save existing Windows 7 installation,
and installed Debian 10.11 (aka Buster), and with automatic partitioning, it would regularly install
(GNU GRUB version 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u4)

apparently it is same or similar version as with Beowulf ("GNU Grub Version 2.02-dfsg1-20+deb10u4"(+)+)

but please somehow explain me why Beowulf would not boot properly? (everything else functions, Devuan Jessie, Ascii, Chimaera, Debian Stretch, Buster)?

EDIT: the upgrade from Buster to Beowulf finally succeeded, and booted succesfully.

Last edited by kapqa (2021-11-19 11:31:29)

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 341  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

another question:

why does automatic partitioning with 8 GB RAM lead to 1 GB Swap partition?
shouldnt it be 1,5x? for hibernation etc.?

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,187  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

Addition to my remark in post #7: The Secure Boot mechanism in Debian & Devuan is fixed to support Debian with a fixed entry called debian in the efi-variables called efivars. The installer (no matter if Debian or Devuan) installs 5 files in this directory, two of them being the already mentioned shimx64 and the grubx64. As explained shimx64 is meant to be starting the SB mode but also can start the non SB mode, grubx64 the normal mode. Per default, shimx64 is written into the starter for the efi mode. shimx64 seems to have issues when the base directory isn't called debian.

These boundary conditions cause problems when you want to set up an efi multi distribution setup as you have. I been through all the problems with this, here is my cook book. I have set up my current workstation (AMD X570, Ryzen 3700X, Sapphire xt5500 graphics) 18 months ago with Arch, Beowulf and Chimaera. Initially Beowulf was the main working spot, early summer this year I moved to Chimaera for daily work.

1.) Disable Secure Boot in the Bios and delete all signing keys.
2.) No CSM, pure EFI setup.
3.) Install the distro, reboot, setup sources.list ....
4.) Remove SB files: apt remove grub-efi-amd64-signed
5.) Reinstall bootloader into individual directory (only installs grubx64), example for Beowulf: grub-install --bootloader-id=devuan3 --no-uefi-secure-boot
6.) Check setup with efibootmgr: efibootmgr -v
7.) Cleanup /boot/efi/EFI: remove residual files from directories called debian and devuan.
8.) Cleanup efivars with efibootmgr: efibootmgr -b 000x -B

Set the boot order to the desired option with efibootmgr, or use the Bios Boot Override to boot one of the other possible options. All my 3 options are clean, os-prober never gave me such an option. I like it this way, since I normally boot one distro for working purposes.

My opinion to the automatic partitioning: when I read about all the issues with /boot being too small /root being to small in various Debian/Devuan forums and see what the SW is doing there, I must say: Forget it, that was ok 10 15 years ago, and has not been adapted in any way to today's disk sizes. It sets up sort of a bare minimum size that very often struggels when you add a kernel or a bit more than the bare minimum SW. I am used to use only manual partitioning, even in a VM, even if it is a bit more cumbersome. I usually get what I want and never ran into partition too small type of problems.

HTH, rolfie

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 341  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

Thank you Rolfie, this thread might come in handy another time.
On my Ryzen PC I have no problem because there the small SSD is for Ubuntu and Beowulf,now Chimaeira and the NVME for Windows 7 Pro, and to install Windows 7 on Ryzen I need CSM activated ( from my shallow understanding)

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 341  

Re: Beowulf installer broken?

Have filed a bug report because ASCII clearly on the same machine Thinkpad automatically partitions to 8.5 GB for 8GB RAM (which sounds about right provided I have enough space), however Beowulf + allocates via Guided partitioning the Swap to only 1GB which clearly seems a bit undersized, at least for hibernation, but maybe swap is not so important after all, iam not so knowledgeable on those technical sides