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stevend

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 1  

Help needed to install Devuan Beowulf on Asus Mini-PC

Hi,

First time Devuan user here, I have some limited experience with Linux but I am out of practice, so please excuse any silly questions or errors.

Executive summary: I am trying to install Devuan Beoulf on an Asus Mini-PC that will only boot from a USB stick formatted as FAT32, please help me.

I have installed the devuan_beowulf_3.1.1_i386_netinstall.iso image onto a USB stick, and verified the SHA256 checksum is correct.

I have a Asus Mini-PC PN41 with Celeron N4500 CPU. In the BIOS, I have disabled Secure Boot:

• Go to Boot/Secure Boot screen.

• Set OS Type to Other OS.

• Save changes.

I have also disabled the Intel Platform Trust Technology (under the Advanced PCH-FW Config screen) and made sure no passwords are set.

When I plug the USB stick in, the BIOS recognizes it as two devices. I have tried setting the boot order to the first followed by the second, and the reverse (second followed by the first). I have also tried disabling the Fast Boot option.

In all cases, when I reboot, the system goes back to the BIOS without booting from the USB stick.

The BIOS gives me the option to override the boot order and boot directly from the specified device. When I do, I get this warning:

WARNING

The Secure Boot is enabled to prevent untrusted operating systems from loading.

To launch the EFI shell, please disable the secure boot option.

but note that I have already disabled Secure Boot. The system does not boot.

The only help the reseller can give me (they can barely spell Linux) is to tell me that the USB stick must be formatted as FAT32.

On another Linux box, the USB stick auto-mounts on /dev/sdd1 (but not sdd2) and mount shows me this:

/dev/sdd1 on /run/media/stevend/Devuan 3.1 type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,nojoliet,check=s,map=n,blocksize=2048,uid=1001,gid=1001,dmode=500,fmode=400,uhelper=udisks2)

Some additional details:

$ ls -l /dev/sdd*
brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8, 48 Dec 22 12:41 /dev/sdd
brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8, 49 Dec 22 12:41 /dev/sdd1
brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8, 50 Dec 22 12:41 /dev/sdd2

$ sudo blkid /dev/sdd*
/dev/sdd: UUID="2021-03-15-11-46-46-00" LABEL="Devuan 3.1" TYPE="iso9660" PTUUID="361c3565" PTTYPE="dos"
/dev/sdd1: UUID="2021-03-15-11-46-46-00" LABEL="Devuan 3.1" TYPE="iso9660" PTUUID="361c3565" PTTYPE="dos" PARTUUID="361c3565-01"
/dev/sdd2: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="922C-067E" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="361c3565-02"

If I am reading this correctly, it looks like there is no FAT32 partition on this USB stick and this is why it will not boot. Is that correct?

How do I install Devuan on this PC?

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can give.

Last edited by stevend (Yesterday 06:12:02)

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,187  

Re: Help needed to install Devuan Beowulf on Asus Mini-PC

I would say: wrong approach.
1.) Do not use Beowulf, use Daedalus. Beowulf is too old for that hardware and no more maintained.
2.) Do not try i386, use amd64. i386 on a modern UEFI PC may not boot at all.

Forget about this FAT32 formatting of the USB stick, this is nonsense. What you show is basically correct, unfortunately just the i386 version. The iso is loaded onto the bare stick.

Get a Daedalus netinstall amd64 and write it to the stick the same way as the Beowulf version. When you boot from the stick use that entry in the boot menu that has the (U)EFI-Prefix.

Good luck

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,269  

Re: Help needed to install Devuan Beowulf on Asus Mini-PC

Firstly, you have prepared the USB stick correctly. It does present itself as a disk image with two partitions where the first is an iso9660 partition (CDROM format) and the second is a FAT32 partition (also called vfat).

And the vfat partition is also an EFI boot partition that should be browseable with an EFI shell... are you able to do that?

I believe beowulf had a grub setup for EFI boot. Which files do you see in that partition with the EFI shell?

EDIT: yes, follow rolfie's advice..

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn

Member

Registered: 2023-11-27

Posts: 225  

Re: Help needed to install Devuan Beowulf on Asus Mini-PC

what they said...and Welcome to the Forum!

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PedroReina

Member

From: Madrid, Spain

Registered: 2019-01-13

Posts: 273  

Website

Re: Help needed to install Devuan Beowulf on Asus Mini-PC

please excuse any silly questions or errors

No problem with that in this forum. Feel confident.

I have a Asus Mini-PC PN41

It seems a very sleek box. Devuan Daedalus will fly on it.

Just to us to be on the right track: do you plan to dual-boot this computer, i.e.: to maintain the original OS along Devuan?

Camtaf

Member

Registered: 2019-11-19

Posts: 442  

Re: Help needed to install Devuan Beowulf on Asus Mini-PC

If you still find you are having problems, I'd suggest using the 'live' XFCE image, & install from that, it's what I usually do.