Administrative, Technology and Society

Computer Weirdness

27 Comments

Since a recent update, my desktop has quit booting. I just says “Loading kernel,” with kernel number, and does nothing else. What’s worse is that I can’t even boot it from an external drive that I boot a Windows laptop with when I want to run Linux on it. The desktop doesn’t even recognize it as boot media, though it continues to work fine with the laptop.

[Sunday-afternoon update]

Patricia’s Windows 10 machine is the same MSI motherboard as mine, and I confirmed that it, too, does not recognize the external drive as bootable. I went back into Windows, and created a live-USB for Fedora, which did boot into both her machine and mine.

So, I decided to just create a new installation. I put it on a spare Samsung 250G SSD that I had. It has no problem installing it, but when I tried to boot from it, at first I couldn’t even see it in the boot menu in the BIOS. I changed from UEFI to CSM, at which point it appeared, and I made it the first boot. But when I tried to boot it, I got the same error message as when I tried to boot from the external drive. The machine continues to not recognize a Fedora boot disk as bootable.

[Bumped]

[Update Monday afternoon]

OK, after talking to MSI, I found out that I had been setting the boot order wrong, and finally got it working. I’m pretty much back to normal, except I need to clone the Samsung over to my M.2. If I didn’t keep /home on a separate drive, though, I’d be in a world of hurt.

[Bumped]

27 thoughts on “Computer Weirdness”

  1. Still using / attempting to use Fedora?

    My suggestion, as before, buy a stable version of RedHat Enterprise Linux and if you insist on sticking with Fedora, run it under a VM like Virtual Box that lets you take snapshots of the existing OS before doing an update. At least you can always go back to the prior version with a mouse click.

    I like Ubuntu LTS. Since my IT department requires Windows 10 on my desktop but I prefer Linux tools and utilities I run Ubuntu Linux under Virtual Box with snapshots. So far so good. 2+ years.

    Honestly I don’t see any benefit you are deriving from attempting to live with Fedora.

    1. David, I’ve found using the Linux subsystem pretty congenial. You can even do moderately crazy stuff like run a Windows X server and have X apps on your desktop.

      1. in order to get a decent shell on the Windows desktop I long ago installed Cygwin/Xterm/bash. In the past I installed the full Cygwin X-Server but the VM/Ubuntu side does such a good job I just didn’t bother this time. And Cygwin/bash gives me a decent shell under Windows which is all I was looking for there .

        I cannot believe what an abomination PowerShell is. Then I thought ok, there some native ports of Linux-like O/Ses like Linux for Windows that Microsoft supposedly supports. So I gave them a shot. Didn’t work. Sticking with VirtualBox/Ubuntu-LTS.

          1. Not to venture down the rabbit-hole side issue to this thread, I’ll just say that I could get WSL version 1 to work, but it was missing some key feature I needed under Linux, so I tried to switch to WSL2, but altering the BIOS to make WSL2 work interfered with Virtual Box’s ability to boot up. Even so, if I remember correctly, WSL2 wouldn’t boot reliably for whatever reason. Not wanting to dither with the machine too much on the Windows side and incur the wrath of my IT Dept. and also afraid that I might lose the ability to use VirtualBox but for good I was successfully able to unroll the changes made for WSL2 and VirtualBox returned to life. I abandoned the endeavor and never looked back.

    2. Since IBM bought them Redhat has been gradually adding more and more hurdles to anybody trying to use a version of Redhat with no subscription… I wouldn’t recommend Fedora at this point.

      Which is not to say I’d recommend switching without a cause, either, but I’d keep it in mind for next time you might need to reinstall.

      1. I would say I have to agree. Ubuntu is a much better option at this point. Red Hat is basically for someone who wants to run licensed server software at this point.

      2. Seems to me RedHat is borderline infringing upon the spirit of the GPL even if not outright violating it. I’d like to see what happens to a RedHat subscriber that incorporates GPL’d RH code into something they subsequently give away for free. If RH tries to take legal “remedy” if FSF or EFF kick into action? It’s happened before. Remember SCO vs IBM? Didn’t end up so well for SCO.

        Probably won’t end well for IBM this time either. Surprising IBM is engaging in these inhospitalities given their history of standing up for the GPL. They also have a record of taking GPL compliance seriously when confronted by the FSF in the past, according to a presentation on GPLv3 given by Eben Moglen I watched way back when.

  2. Are you sure the boot order is set correctly in the BIOS?

    If so, might you have a dead USB host controller so the BIOS isn’t even recognizing some of your USB ports, and thus not seeing that your thumb drive is plugged in?

    1. The boot order is correct, and I’ve tried it in two different USB ports. I get that my installation is probably FUBAR, and I may just have to blow it away, but that doesn’t explain why the machine won’t boot from a known good drive. I guess the next step is to see if I can boot from a live USB for a reinstall.

      1. Usually there will be multiple USB ports coming off one USB host controller. I’ve had that problem (still do for one of host controllers on my motherboard, so I bought a multiport USB card).

        A quick way to tell might be to unhook your normal boot drive and see if BIOS complains about no boot drive being found when your USB is installed.

        There’s no way a bad OS install should be able to affect a boot to another drive, but it would also be quite a coincidence for you to have a hardware USB failure immediately after an OS update.

        Unless perhaps your OS update was initially okay and then the hardware error occurred, and the OS failure is actually due to a hardware failure.

        1. The board clearly sees and recognizes the external USB drive by name, because it shows it to me in the boot section of the BIOS…

          The problem arises when it actually tries to boot, at which point it says it’s not bootable media, even though I can boot my laptop from it.

          1. Hrm… When my host controller died, it still showed up, as did the USB ports it controlled, and they would work intermittently. They were fine during the boot because the problem was intermittent, and I had to manually disable their host controller to keep Windows device manager from constantly binging, thinking a device was found, not found, found, not found. Of course each hardware failure is going to be rather unique.

            Could it be possible that your desktop doesn’t know how to boot from a particular type of USB drive? As I recall, initially only the smaller ones worked, and it depended on

            *looks it up*

            If your server platform supports Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), you should format the USB flash drive as FAT32 rather than as NTFS.

            That is probably more likely than a USB failure. If so, you could format a different thumb drive with a format your desktop can boot from.

        2. I don’t know if this is relevant (if the external drive *used* to work on the desktop, probably not), but frequently on desktop motherboards, only certain USB ports will let you use bootable media.

          1. Reply, since there’s no edit function: never mind, I see a later comment most likely means this isn’t the case here.

  4. So you’ve made good progress, which is the important thing, and are pulling in more available resources to resolve the issue you didn’t know you had until you started troubleshooting the original problem.

    *Goes back to writing motivational posters*

  5. I’m really tempted to say play with stupid operating systems, win stupid prizes. But I won’t….

  6. I’m almost willing to bet that if you set your BIOS settings for a UEFI directed boot and install RedHat Enterprise Linux off a live network install, it’ll probably just boot. Almost.

    But since you prefer suffering, I might suggest that the install/update process may be broken for your version of BIOS. How old is this desktop? Get a release number for you BIOS and check it against the Fedora Release Notes to see if any special handling is required.

    What is strange is that the BIOS is seeing it as bootable in CSM mode but not UEFI. And that is the crux of your problem. I suspect this new release of Fedora removes backwards compatibility with the old BIOS boot method. They threatened to do this last year. Looks like they made good on that threat. You need to find out why your install appears to be setting it up the old way. You might need to reformat or partition the disk especially for UEFI boot before installation. Check your version of Fedora and ask in the web forum for details on how to do that.

    As Zippy would say – Are we having fun yet?

  7. So what was it about the boot order? Was it giving preference to CSM over UEFI? Why wasn’t the UEFI drive showing up in your boot list? Something else in the way?

    If I didn’t keep /home on a separate drive, though, I’d be in a world of hurt.

    Yep. Somehow we missed a reformat in there somehow. This time.
    ^_^

    1. The place where it was obvious that it was the place you should change the boot order was not in fact the place to change the boot order, even though it was marked “boot order.” I had to go to “Advanced,” then “Settings,” then “BBS boot order.”

      2. The BIOS should probably make a note of that on the screen. It’s probably on somebody’s to-do list for years.

  8. I like how Rand keeps his mind sharp as he ages by using a computer that creates endless puzzles for him to solve. Some people just play sudoku.

  9. “If I didn’t keep /home on a separate drive, though, I’d be in a world of hurt.”

    A separate drive which you back up… right?

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