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juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

[SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Good afternoon people.

I am a former Debian user, until the Lenny putsch happened and I decided to move to Devuan.  Over the years, except for some small fights with Nvidia cards, Devuan has been very kind to me and I have lurked around this forum many times to find out the news.  A week ago my AMD Sempron motherboard with new capacitors (wink) decided "no more", so I had to buy a new one with the new and powerful Ryzen 3 (sarcastic smile). This is my first motherboard that only boots with UEFI, so I had to add a fat32 partition to the hard drive. After several installations with the Desktop ISO I only managed to reach:

             GRUB loading.
             Welcome to GRUB!

             error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found.

And the prompt:

             grub rescue>

Having tried several solutions found on the network without result, I decided to install from Netinstall, which is faster and do the installation without including GRUB, since this machine only has Linux. After installing with success from the Netinstall ISO, without GRUB I got to:

             GRUB loading.
             Welcome to GRUB!

             error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found.

And the prompt:

             grub rescue>

It looks like an episode of "The Prisoner"

  Looking from a Devuan Live, with which the machine starts and works fine, I have seen that there is no directory  /grub/i386-pc/. Which would seem reasonable, given that this is a 64-bit machine. If anyone on the forum can help me with this mystery I will be infinitely grateful, in the last 20 years I have never been there for a whole week without a working computer and using a laptop with windows.

    Best regards and thank you for your attention...

              juancho

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Yes, thats the typical symptoms of a legacy installation on an Uefi motherboard.

When you boot your installation stick, you will find the stick twice in the boot menu. Make sure you boot the one that is marked efi/uefi. Then select "Rescue mode" and follow that until you get a chroot into the system. There do a

# grub-install 

without further parameters.

That should fix the issue.

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Thanks Rolfie for your attention, when I choose the UEFI option to boot from the pendrive the screen goes black, the machine freezes indefinitely and does not respond to any key, you can only turn it off.

Cheers...

juancho

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Whats that? Is the latest bios installed on the mainboard?

Which Ryzen3 are we talking about? Which mainboard?

Maybe running inxi -Fz from the live iso could give us the required info.

Last edited by rolfie (2024-08-17 20:38:22)

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

The motherboard is Biostar B450M, socket am4

The data shown in the bios screen are

compliancy:       AMI UEFIx64 2.7
Project Code      AB45N-M4S
Model Name       B450MHP
Bios Version       B45NS905.BSS
Build Date          09/05/2023

Total Memory      16384 MB (DDR4 2667)
XMP  Profile 1      None
XMP  Profile 2      None

The processor packaging says:

AMD Ryzen 3 3200G
With Radeon Vega 8 Graphics
4 Core, 4 Thread Processor
4 GHz Max Boost, 3.6 GHz Base

Any other information that would be useful, just ask

Cheers...

juancho

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Me myself never had such an experience. There shouldn't be any difference in graphics for the installer between legacy and efi mode.

Looking at mainboard and CPU, both are somewhat older and should be mature, i.e. any installation should be a nobrainer without difficulty.

Well, on the other hand, there is one newer bios available if I am not mistaken. I would load that in any case.

Then reset the bios to defaults, and switch off secure boot. Then give it another try, first of all boot a live cd in efi mode, then with the netinstall also booted in efi mode.

Last edited by rolfie (2024-08-18 11:27:37)

Andre4freedom

Member

Registered: 2017-11-15

Posts: 174  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

rolfie's last comment is absolutely right and perfect.
I would just add, as a measure to make sure it works: erase the disk beforehand and let the installer do a fresh partitioning. Meaning the installer will decide what disk-layout architecture to choose. Most probably it will be GPT.
You can do it manually, if you know what you do and what you should do.

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

A few words to partitioning and file system:
Allow for GPT partitioning. Its the modern way and painless together with Uefi.
You will need an ESP, FAT formatted. 100MB is enough for normal operation. My personal recommendation is to use 512 or 1024MB because sometimes firmware updates want some space on the ESP and if that is just enough for the OS files firmware updates may fail.
If you want to use Suspend/Hibernate, allow for a swap partition that is about twice the size of your RAM.
And I recommend to use a separate /home partition.

To the boot stick: how was that generated? The method might be another trap if done by some Windows tool.

Last edited by rolfie (2024-08-18 11:28:44)

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Thanks Rolfie and Andre for your attention.

Rolfie, I just updated the BIOS with the latest available, from July of this year I think, the "secure boot" has never been enabled
since I started with this new BIOS (it is not clear to me for who the boot is more secure).

Andre, since I started using Debian, I have always used the "expert install", not that I think I am an expert or anything like that but I have always installed with the /home partition separated from the rest. To create a FAT32 partition and extend the swap partition I used GParted, a good foolproof program.

Rolfie, The FAT32 partition came out a bit "fat", 15Gb, so in the new installation I am going to reduce its size, I say new because it still does not work, the machine boots perfectly from the Live CD and from the pen drive, the problem only occurs when I want to boot from the hard drive. The swap partition is more or less the size of the RAM memory, I never use suspend or hibernate modes so that should work fine, I think.

Thanks for your advice guys, I'm still fighting...

     juancho

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

... the problem only occurs when I want to boot from the hard drive ...

Maybe just firmware-amd-graphics is missing? Requires non-free-firmware in your sources.list.

Last edited by rolfie (2024-08-18 19:58:40)

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

... the problem only occurs when I want to boot from the hard drive ...

Maybe just firmware-amd-graphics is missing? Requires non-free-firmware in your sources.list.

Last edited by rolfie (Today 14:58:40)

  Can the firmware be included from the Devuan installer?, I've never done anything like that, that's why I'm asking.

   Cheers...

            juancho

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Sort of:

* Boot your installation stick in efi mode.
* Select the Rescue Mode. You will get asked some basic questions about language, keyboard, network like during installation. Make sure you give similar answers. You will need internet access.
* The Rescue Mode should be able to detect the existing installation, and offer amongst other options a chroot into the installed system. Select that option.
* Edit the /etc/apt/sources.list to read something similar like: deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ daedalus main contrib non-free non-free-firmware.
* Run an apt update.
* Then run an apt install firmware-amd-graphics.

This should be it. Leave the installer and let the system reboot. I hope that fixes the black screen.

Last edited by rolfie (2024-08-18 21:08:43)

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Thanks Rolfie, I resized the FAT32 partition and now the installer crashes after defining the partitions, I'm going to try the rescue option and see what happens.

Cheers...

juancho

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

I found out that when I resized the EFI partition I forgot to format it as FAT 32, that's why the installer was stuck on partitioning, that's fixed. Now the installer is stuck on <grub-install dummy> "This is a fatal error". If anyone has any idea what's going on, please let me know.

Cheers...

juancho

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

You are using expert install and manual partitioning, if I am not mistaken.

When the installer fails during grub-install dummy then maybe the ESP isn't mounted where it is expected to be present? It has to be mounted to /boot/efi and used as Efi System Partition or ESP.

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

482 / 5.000
Thanks Rolfie, since I used Debian, I've always used the "expert install" and manual partitioning. Apparently the installer doesn't have an option to create an EFI directory inside the boot partition, in these last installations it has created an EFI partition where it found a FAT 32 partition that I previously made, using Gparted, since the system used the usual BIOS before, maybe that could be the problem?
heers

Cheers...

juancho

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn

Member

Registered: 2023-11-27

Posts: 190  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

may/may-not help but found this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/m5acph/comment/hbxq9ym/

---

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Do unto others as you would have them do instantaneously back to you!

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Does the FAT32 partition have the boot and esp flags assigned in gparted?

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Indeed Rolfie, both flags are present on the fat32 partition.

In another post you say:
The first partition on the target drive should be the ESP, FAT32 formatted, I do recommend at least 512M, better 1024M. If you use manual partitioning, make sure its mounted to /boot/efi and used as ESP. Essential to successfully install grub.

In my installation the EFI partition is not the first one in the list but the fourth one.

   Cheers...

         juancho

Last edited by juancho (2024-08-19 16:09:54)

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

64 / 5.000
Thanks Stargate, the pendrive is put into a USB 2.0 connector.

   Cheers...

          juancho

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Apparently the installer doesn't have an option to create an EFI directory inside the boot partition, in these last installations it has created an EFI partition where it found a FAT 32 partition that I previously made, using Gparted, since the system used the usual BIOS before, maybe that could be the problem?

Such an option isn't there with reason. The ESP has to be a FAT32 partition on its own and will be mounted to /boot/efi. And per default it is never formatted or overwritten to save previous boot loaders for other OSes on the disk (multiboot).

In my installation the EFI partition is not the first one in the list but the fourth one.

How far out is that? Outside the 2T border?

Last edited by rolfie (2024-08-19 18:28:30)

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

Does 2T mean 2 terabytes?, the hard drive is only 1 terabyte.

    Cheers...

     juancho

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

1T is small enough normally. Nevertheless I would recommend to use gparted to start from scratch. GPT partitioning scheme, and create the ESP as P1 with 1024M, FAT32, boot and esp flag set only for this partition.

juancho

Member

Registered: 2024-08-16

Posts: 18  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

This is what my partition table looks like according to Gparted.

   https://i.postimg.cc/NfMwQzTZ/DSC00010.jpg

Should i put sda9 where sda1 is?

        Cheers...

                juancho

Last edited by juancho (2024-08-19 19:38:57)

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,173  

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan 5 not booting.

No, redo your partitioning completely.

You are using oldfashioned MBR legacy partitioning. That is causing problems. Start with creating a GPT partition table.

Then create the ESP, and then the other stuff as you like.