New to Linux. Need help booting from USB
 

Hello, I'm just starting my Linux Journey and have decided to to give Linux Mint Cinnamon a go. There is no particular reason I selected that distro other than it seems to be fairly popular.

I downloaded the Linux Mint Cinnamon x64 ISO and created a USB boot drive using Rufus 4.2 with FAT32, GPT and Non-CSM.

I also tried MBR.

My goal is to install Linux on a portable drive. I 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus installed in an Orico M.2 NVMe enclosure. Windows sees this as a hard drive, not as a USB drive.

I burned the ISO to a Sandisk extreme Go 128GB USB drive. I boot, press F11 to get to boot menu, select the Sandisk drive I've formatted with the Linux ISO and the screen goes blank for a second, then re-displays the boot menu.

(Prior to burning the ISO used diskpart on the Sandisk and deleted all partitions with "clean").

I followed step 2 from here: https://itsfoss.com/install-linux-mint/

Looked at several posts on various sites, but all of them seem to have gotten to at least the boot starting.

Hardware: MSI Z790 Meg ACE mobo, Intel 13700KF CPU, 64GB DDR5-6600, RTX 3080 Ti, ASUS XG-C100C NIC,

thanks
joel

Could you post the exact name of the Mint iso here? Or at least indicate if you got it from the official Mint site? Did you verify the download was not corrupted before writing it to the usb? Did you get any indication that writing it with Rufus was not successful? Do you have access to another computer you can use to test boot the usb to eliminate that as the problem?

Did you try "Start Linux Mint in compatibility mode"

I would create a Ventoy device using a blank USB key, copy the ISO file(s) of interest onto it, and select what I want to boot into form the Ventoy menu. IF I liked it, I would follow the instructions at the Ventoy site for setting up persistence for the one I want to use most often.

Hi, thanks for responding.

The ISO is linuxmint-21.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso

I downloaded it from https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=311 and selected a local Australia mirror (Internode).

There were no indications it did not download successfully. I've not had any download issues for years since being on Fiber Internet.

Rufus appeared to work correctly. There were no errors messages. (I tried the ISO burn mode and the DD burn modes. That latter download 2 extra files).
Neither method works for either GPT or MBR. Or with 16k/32K cluster size with FAT32.

Yes, I have an old X299 10940X system. Exact same symptoms there. Also tried on a different Z790 with a 12600KF CPU.

@colorpurple21859 How do I do that? I press F11 to get into boot menu, select the USB drive with Linux on and press Enter. Persistence? I'd like to install mint on the external SSD so I can have a portable install. Restart, F11, Select the drive with Linux installation and away we go...

@wpeckham I've never heard of Ventoy. Will look it up.

A linux mint boot menu doesn't appear after doing this?

Correct. The screen goes blank for a second then re-displays the boot menu.

I've also tried turning off Secure Boot and also updated my BIOS to the latest stable version. Also, set all BIOS settings to default.

Tried Ventoy as well - same deal

This goal can be achieved as long as you don't install machine dependent proprietary drivers, essentially just do a vanilla installation and you should be good and golden.

So you have tried the flash drive with Mint on more than one machine with negative results. Often this type problem is due to graphics cards but that seems unlikely unless you have the same graphics on both machines. I would do the simple test of verifying the download explained at the Mint site as it is quite simple and eliminates a potential problem. May not be the problem but it is simple to eliminate it as a possibility. You are not likely to get any message about a bad download, it's simple to check.

In your initial post you indicate you used 'diskpart'. Did you create a new partition table? MBR? GPT? Tried both? Is the Sandisk on which you have written the iso new? Has it been used previously? If I understand, you created a new partition table on the device so there is nothing on it and you formatted it to vfat, correct?

Okay, we need a lot more detail. When you booted from the ventoy device did you get the menu or did something go south BEFORE the menu came up?

That CPU has a ton of security options: so you will have to try to turn off any of those that you can that might prevent booting from a criminally proprietary operating system that encourages lockin.

@yancek:
4 Machines now;

1. 13700KF, RTX 3080 Ti, 64GB DDR5, Z790
2. 12600KF, RTX 2080 Ti, 32GB DDR4, Z790
3. 10900X, RTX 2070 Super, 32GB DDR4, X299
4. 10940X, GTX 1660 Ti, 32GB DDR4, X299

The Sandisk Extreme GO SDCZ800 has been used before, hence why I deleted all partitions from it. I've run chkdsk across it.No errors.

The disk was partitioned/formatted by Rufus - by no other means- when "burning" The Mint ISO to the drive. Both MBR and GPT were tried.

With the Sandisk drive created by either Rufus or Ventoy it "goes south" before anything is displayed. The PC displays the boot menu, I select the drive with Mint on it, press Enter and it re-displays the boot menu again.

I will do the "simple test" to verify the download and get back to you. I expect it to be fine.

@wpeckham; I'll go through the options that I can disable and let you know how it goes. I'll start with the oldest hardware first, rather than the latest.

certutil -hashfile;
5aa24abbc616807ab754a6a3b586f24460b0c213b6cacb0bf8b9a80b65013ecc

sha256sum.txt from mint site
5aa24abbc616807ab754a6a3b586f24460b0c213b6cacb0bf8b9a80b65013ecc

The hashes match.

The hashes of the image match, but the usb won't properly boot.
I would suggest recreating (rewriting the image) the usb then try again.

It seem fairly certain that the image was not properly written to the usb for booting.


You said you used rufus to create the usb. Did you copy the iso in dd mode or did you simply write the content of the iso to the usb?
The ISO should be bootable, and normally the usb will boot if the image is written directly to the usb device, exactly as writing the iso to a CD or DVD would be done.

IF it "goes south" before even displaying the Ventoy menu, then it is not even getting to the ISO file for Linux. I think the issue is either hardware related, or one of the security processes shutting down boot from that external media before it gets to display. I could be wrong, but that is what it looks like to me. I will be watching here to see what happens.
You might add some other ISO file or files to that Ventoy device just to see if it ever gives you the menu if THAT ISO file is not the only option, but I suspect that will not help.

Yes, I tried DD mode as well as the (recommended) ISO mode. I tried Rufus and Ventoy.
I will try a different drive.

If your system has Intel® Boot Guard, did you disable it along with secure boot?

I'm working through the list of security features. So far I've tried all combinations of virtualization, VT-D and secure boot.
Will update once I've completed all the combinations.
Note that on the X299 systems I have no "boot guard" BIOS settings that I can find.

Most of these are not in bios of X299 systems

groan... There are so many resources that suggest different ways of creating the USB. For a noob like me, I just followed the various methods as suggested.

What I should have done is referred to the Mint site. It says to use a program called "Etcher".

Sure, enough, it now boots X299 system. I'll now try it on this Z790

Nope, Boot manager doesn't even see the drive on the Z790. I've tried Cinnamon, Mate and XFCE

I've gone through the various BIOS options. No combination I can find will boot on the Z790

SUCCESS!!

It seems Mint v21+ be it Cinnamon, Mate or XFCE just doesn't like my hardware

Mint Cinnamon v20.3 boots fine after using Rufus with GPT to create the drive.

Go to the part where it wants to know where to install. I don't want to run it along side windows, so I selected something else. \dev\sdc looks to the the external drive I want to use, but I panicked and was worried it would break my Windows installation. Time to do some reading.

thanks for your help all.

Joel.

Thought I should share this, which I accidentally came across...

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=396318

It seems the issue with Mint 21+ is a known issue. See second post on the above thread.

It was hoped that the issue would be resolved in 21.2, but appears to be still present even in 21.3, and as the post states "20.3 is the last version that supports secure boot".

Even though I disabled everything I could find related to secure boot in the BIOS, nothing worked for 21+

Well, THAT is a pain! Try the MintDE version?

If it "goes south" before the Ventoy menu appears, that means it is not even reaching the Linux ISO file. Either a hardware problem or a security process that stops the boot from that external media before it reaches the display could be the culprit. I could be completely mistaken, but that is how it appears to me. geometry dash lite

That was exactly the thought that prompted me to make comments #10 and #14.

It appears to be a known issue since v21.0. I'm not privy to the in's and out's of Linux, and probably wouldn't understand any of it even if I was.

Despite disabling secure boot, and a bunch of other options, until I went back to 20.3 nothing was successful.

20.3 booted and installed on my X299 system
If I tried to boot the live drive I got garbled colors on the screen and nothing happened. Booting in compatibility mode enabled it to boot up successfully
However, after installing Mint on my SSD and trying to boot, it would not - it did the same thing the live drive did - messed up colors on screen and nothing further.

That same SSD was not even detected on my Z790, with Secure boot enabled or disabled.

I suspect I may find that I just can't create an installed SSD that I can use on multiple machines :(

Or perhaps you can, but Mint may not be suitable for that specific and unusual purpose.
You can get somewhat the same effect, a portable system the way you like it, by using a VENTOY device with a single ISO copied onto it with the setup for persistence. IT runs live from the USB device, but retains the changes you make (that is the persistent part) as if it were installed. The live boot allows it to properly detect and adjust for changes in hardware as you move from one hardware platform to another.

I have never tested Mint or MintDE for that purpose, so I cannot attest that Mint would work well for that.

You only registered last month, and all of your 10 posts are in this thread, so welcome to LQ if someone else hasn't welcomed you. I suspect you're not a first time user, though.

You should try something like Alien Bob's liveslak live usb system. You can make a live usb which you can take to any system and keep your configuration, and your data. I use them myself. Head over to http://liveslak.org and start reading. You create the disk using the iso2usb.sh script, and choose as many of the extra .sxz files as you want. I use Multilib, and wine myself. Multilib gives 32bit libs on a 64bit system for running 32bit windows programs under wine.

Hi, and thanks for the welcome. The response and the people who made them have been very supportive.


Lol, what makes you say that?

I have quite a bit of Windows experience, but by no means an expert. I literally have no Linux experience to speak of. Other than perhaps a little technical prowess. At times I have trouble getting started, but once pointed in the right direction things start to fall into place.

I have been doing a lot of reading before biting the bullet and giving it a real go.

I will surely give the liveslak and ventoy suggestions a go. I'm going to be absent for a little while as I have some personal matters I must attend to.

If I haven't said it already, many thanks to everyone who has help me out here.

You see to things, & report back with results or issues.