Installing Parrot OS (Debian Derivative) From USB - Booting Issues
 

Well, I'm a bit frustrated. So I have this laptop that I had been using for a while, not that great. Well, I recently got a desktop that is much more powerful so I don't need the laptop anymore. I decided to put Parrot on it (the laptop) since it uses much less resources than Windows 10 so it should run much better. Well, I made the boot drive for it and everything, it booted and I "completed" the installation process, it said. It asked me to remove my USB from the machine, since it was going to reboot and it didn't want to boot from the USB again. So I did this and as soon as the laptop turns on it comes up with "Dell SupportAssist" <-Dell is the manufacturer, obviously, and it says no boot drive detected, yet I had just installed it! Any help at all would be greatly appreciated as I don't want to have to set up a Live USB to use every time. Thanks in advance.

Also I forgot to mention I'm a noob to linux, but not a noob to computers, explain it in relatively simple terms if at all possible.

slayer351,

Welcome to LQ.

What is your laptop make/model?

How old is it roughly?

How much RAM does it have and what CPU is inside?

It is a Dell Inspiron 14, the link to the official product is here: http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-14...05h&l=en&s=dhs

I have upgraded my RAM to 4GB, but nothing else. I fell that the issue might be the "eMMC" drive, as the bios doesn't recognize it as a boot option.

Any help is appreciated!

Parrot OS is a penetration testing/reverse engineering distribution for computer forensics.
I don't recommend this to anyone new to Linux unless this is the type of enterprise your in professionally.
https://www.concise-courses.com/linux-distros/parrot/

If that Celeron is a single core you could go with a more lightweight distro.

Lubuntu, Puppy Linux, Slitaz and others you can find on distrowatch.

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lubuntu
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slitaz
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=puppy

-::-No boot drive detected-::-
Did you install to the MBR and disable the secure boot?

slayer531,

You should have bought this Dell model instead:
http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-14...05h&l=en&s=dhs

Only joking!

Installing Debian on an Asus T100TA with eMMc 32GB looks like fun:
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/T100TA

Somebody had success with Ubuntu on eMMc:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/70815...-in-emmc-flash

Extract:
“The key to solve the issue was not to use a newer release like Wily (Ubuntu 15.10), but to have a newer version kernel, but to go back a little bit and use an older release. What I did:
1. Disable compatibility support module in the bios (CSM),
2. Boot Ubuntu 14.04.1 from USB drive in UEFI mode,
3. Installation is smooth and no issues at all, no i/o errors, no need for any grub fix or boot-repair although in my case it took a while to finish the installation, probably some bandwidth issues,
4. Once the system is up I did an upgrade and it works fine, 14.04.3”.

I second Ztcoracat's comment about Parrot/Kali.

To Ztcoracat, yes I do understand what it is and that it should take a bit of learning. A friend has introduced me to pentesting and I became interested in it. He used Kali linux but I chose Parrot to try something else. I have learned the basics of Debian and Ubuntu before doing this, as I don't want to be a complete noob. And yes, I believe I did install to MBR and secure boot is disabled as well.

To beachboy2, thanks for the tips! I'll try that and report back to you!

This bios has option for Secure Boot? Then is it set to UEFI or Legacy? Becaues if set to UEFI, you'd need to install to the EFI partition /boot/efi instead of the MBR. If UEFI is disabled, then installing to MBR is correct.

Since you have an interest here's some tools for pentesting. Good luck.
http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/p...testing-tools/
http://www.imagix.com/
https://www.hopperapp.com/

Secure boot is disabled.
However he can't boot what he just installed because no boot device is detected.

So how would OP install to EFI partition?

Secure boot =/= UEFI. It is only a very small part of the UEFI standards. If the bios is set to operate in UEFI mode, installing to MBR would indeed give a "no boot devices detected", as there would be no bootable device.

While not the most likely scenario, I have seen this if Debian derivatives are booted in a UEFI environment with legacy roms enabled. The OS disk will boot in legacy mode, and attempt to install in legacy mode due to it not needing grub2-efi, but you'd have to manually boot into a recovery console and install grub2-efi (and have an EFI partition to be able to) to allow it to boot with the UEFI which is default. The alternatives is completely disabling UEFI (legacy mode), or disabling legacy roms to force OS to boot UEFI, and see that it must install UEFI.

Thank you for the clarification.-:)

Clearly OP installed while in UEFI mode.

With some of the new click BIOS UEFI and Legacy are joined together and can't be separated.
Not sure if that is what OP has going on or not?

No, if Legacy mode is active (fully active), then UEFI functions are fully disabled. The problem comes in (from what I've seen) when UEFI is enabled, BUT legacy roms are enabled. IMO, "enable legacy roms" is the absolutely most awful setting because it causes major issues with most linux OS's.

No, I was aware that I didn't want UEFI and I did change it to Legacy. And thanks for the links Ztoracat.

You're Welcome-:)