[SOLVED] Why is USB Installer hanging after booting (Slak64-current)?

bigfoot cascadia · 12-14-2019, 08:22 PM

Hey there. I just got an Lenovo Carbon X1 6th Gen (NOS) with 16 GB RAM and 512
Gb SSD. It has Windows 10 preinstalled which I intend on removing and
having a pure Slackware64 15.0 (5.4.2 kernel) OS. I made a USB Install Stick
frm the 12 Dec 2019 Slackware64-current tree using usbimg2isk.sh script in the
usb-and-pxe-installers directory in the current tree. Here is screen print of
usnimg2disk.sh run:

Quote:

bash-4.3# ./usbimg2disk.sh -f -s /home/usrname/Work/slackware64-current -o
/dev/sdb
/home/username/Work/slackware64-current
/home/username/Work/slackware64-current/usb-and-pxe-installers
/home/username/Work/slackware64-current/usb-and-pxe-installers

# We are going to format and use this device - '/dev/sdb':
# Vendor : LEXAR
# Model : JD FIREFLY
# Size : 3840 MB
#
# FDISK OUTPUT:
# Disk /dev/sdb: 3.8 GiB, 4026531840 bytes, 7864320 sectors
# Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
# Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
# I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
# Disklabel type: dos
# Disk identifier: 0x5f024ddb
#
# Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
# /dev/sdb1 * 2048 34815 32768 16M 6 FAT16

*** ***
*** If this is the wrong drive, then press CONTROL-C now! ***
*** ***
Or press ENTER to continue:
--- Formatting /dev/sdb with VFAT partition label 'USBSLACKINS'...
--- Last chance! Press CTRL-C to abort!
Or press ENTER to continue:
--- Available free space on the the USB drive is 3923452 KB
--- Required free space for installer: 53332 KB
--- Copying boot files to the USB drive...
--- Copying Slackware package tree to the USB drive...
--- Syncing I/O...--- Unmounting volumes and deleting temporary fi]les...
--- Making the USB drive '/dev/sdb' bootable...
--- Done.

Once the install stick was prepared, I then turned off Seceure Boot in UEFI
Settings and set USB Drive as first choice of Boot devices. Here are the
results of the machine boots:

Quote:

Loading kernel \huge.s... done
Loading file \initrd.img...done

At this point, the system hangs. Even after waiting 5 minutes. The only option
available at this time is to reboot through Ctl+Alt+Del or Power cycle.
I think it might be a UEFI Settting I'm oblivious to though I'm not
knowledgable about. Can any one point me in the direction of resolution? I'd
greatly appreciate it.

business_kid · 12-15-2019, 04:59 AM

Quote:

Loading kernel \huge.s... done
Loading file \initrd.img...done

The next thing that should happen is that the kernel should be booted. In fact, there's a lot more going on. It should also echo the grub command line, but it must have got that, if it knew what to load.

This points the finger st the huge.s on your usb key. If you have a linux box available, I'd diff the usb key huge.s with the one online (Which you might have to download. Have you a System.map accessible on the usb key?

bigfoot cascadia · 12-21-2019, 12:59 AM

I got this solved though not in the way Business Kid suggested. I am very grateful that B.K. did respond and made suggestions. I followed his/her suggestions for downloading new huge.s kernel (actually whole new tree as things had progressed from 5.4.2 to 5.4.3 kernel and other upgrades). I also inserted System.Map from new tree, also. No joy. I borrowed a USB DVD Optical Drive and burned a Slackare64-current DVD and attempted a DVD install. Again, no joy.

What worked? I made Kubuntu 19.10 USB stick and installed it. It wiped the Windows 10 (positive result) and installed on the NVME SSD volume. After the install, on reboot, it hung with a black screen. I found a suggestion to press the Space Bar repeatedly during the boot. That did the trick, and I haven't needed to do that again. Once I got Kubuntu working, I was able to edit GRUB to inactivate Windows Boot Manager.

An inelegant solution, and it worked. I'm now investigating editing the NVME volume partitions and if Slackware Install Tools can handle the job. I read that they can and I haven't gotten a clear picture in my head of it yet but that's another thread.

I've used Slackware almost exclusively since 1993 and have had several dedicated desktop and laptop Slack machines. I want to thank Patrick and Eric and all other developers for their years of effort and dedication. I hope for their sake that the Slacker Community can keep up documentation of installation with new hardware tech so that other Slackware newbies can become 26 year veteran users. I have intentions of documenting the NVME partition project and bringing a new kernel 5 machine online.

ricky_cardo · 03-07-2020, 09:43 AM

WOW - I got this thinking about starting a new thread...

-Don't know the why yet but here are the facts:

Code:

sh /banana/Slackware/slackware64-current/usb-and-pxe-installers/usbimg2disk.sh -f -s /banana/Slackware/slackware64-current -o /dev/sdb

**Jump drive good on 2 computers tested(able to reach setup etc.), failed on a new MB w/ hung exactly as indicated above.

Fix: (thought I'm not loving it)
used unetbootin and a DVD.iso

The only difference I see so far is the unebootin version is using grub

My suspicion is somehow the /dev/sdx are changing between bootloader handover to OS "Maybe"
- could be unetbootin is calling by UUID

both the grub.conf on the unebootin version an the elilo.conf on the usbimg2disk.sh seem the same.

unebootin (grub)

Code:

set default="0"
set timeout="30"
set hidden_timeout_quiet=false

#if loadfont /EFI/boot/unicode.pf2; then
#  set gfxmode=800x600
#  load_video
#fi

#terminal_output gfxterm

menuentry "Slackware 15.0 huge.s kernel"{
  echo "Loading huge.s kernel and installer initrd.  Please wait..."
  linux /kernels/huge.s/bzImage vga=normal load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 ro printk.time=0 nomodeset SLACK_KERNEL=huge.s
  initrd /isolinux/initrd.img
}

menuentry "Slackware 15.0 huge.s kernel (use KMS console)"{
  echo "Loading huge.s kernel (with KMS) and installer initrd.  Please wait..."
  linux /kernels/huge.s/bzImage vga=normal load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 ro printk.time=0 SLACK_KERNEL=huge.s
  initrd /isolinux/initrd.img
}

# Detect installed operating system and allow booting them from GRUB:
menuentry "Detect/boot any installed operating system" {
  configfile "/EFI/BOOT/osdetect.cfg"
}

usbimg2disk.sh

Code:

chooser=simple
message=message.txt
delay=300
timeout=300
#
image=/huge.s
        label=huge.s
        initrd=/initrd.img
        read-only
        append="vga=normal load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 ro printk.time=0 nomodeset SLACK_KERNEL=huge.s"
image=/huge.s
        label=kms.s
        initrd=/initrd.img
        read-only
        append="vga=normal load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 ro printk.time=0 SLACK_KERNEL=huge.s"

pchristy · 03-09-2020, 01:21 PM

Just stumbled across this thread, and it sounds like exactly the same problem I had here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...op-4175667012/

Basically, when UEFI booting, the graphics framebuffer is efifb, not vesa. Newer graphics devices use 64-bit addressing for the efifb, and (e)lilo is NOT 64-bit efifb compatible!

This causes nothing to be written to the screen during the initial phase of booting, and the system hangs when at some point after.

I solved the problem (eventually!) by creating a very basic boot disk that uses GRUB. Grub is 64-bit efifb compatible!

Basically, I took an old 256MB USB key and repartitioned it using a GPT partition table and a single FAT32 partition. I then copied the EFI, kernels and isolinux folders from the slackware 64-current top folder onto the USB key. You will get some messages about not being able to create symlinks, but ignore these.

Boot from that USB key.

It will do a GRUB boot, you will get the initial boot screen (with the penguins!) and the command to log in as root. You can then run the setup program and tell it which partitions to use for what and where the slackware install tree is located. (You will need to have partitioned your HD first. I use systemrescuecd for this!)

Basically the problem is that elilo doesn't support 64-bit framebuffer addresses, and is no longer supported. Pat will either have to patch elilo himself, or switch to GRUB for the install media in future.

Hope this helps!

--
Pete