[SOLVED] Mint 16 Mate & Cinnamon ... "Restart" Freezes/Hangs

[rsadix]

Thanx for replying.

. . . because, you say, "the install went well" . . . but then are saying that you want to "partition the drive" . . .

fair enough, reverse those, I went through the install process (which seemed normal) it began with the partitioning. After setting up my partitions, I went to the next step, entered the time zone, my credentials etc. and it appeared to install normally. At the end of the install process it asks to continue or reboot. I selected reboot, the system ejected the media, and the second time for sure I did get some sort of disk write error.... Upon reboot, the system hangs during bios. It begins with the bios version, the RAM count, the media interrogation and displays my DVD-ROM, then the hard drive, and then instead of moving through all the rest of the bios stuff, it doesn't. It just hangs indefinitely at the hard drive where mint was just installed. The machine isn't locked up, as I said I can press the delete key at any time, and a few lines up on the screen it changes to "Entering Bios" just like it normally would if I were to press the delete key during the boot process. But it never does enter Bios, it just hangs, unable to move forward because its waiting for something from the hard drive.

Do you get to the GRUB window when you boot the system?

No, I never get past the bios. Which means I can't boot the system from a cd, DVD, or USB key with the hard drive plugged in. It's just paused in bios land. If I remove the hard drive, the machine boots fine and either asks for boot media or will boot fine from a DVD-ROM or USB key.

Did you set up a partition for GRUB?

Hmm, The live installer doesn't ask for a GRUB partition from what I can tell. Maybe that's it. I can wipe the drive again and try and see. But I don't remember ever having to do this before. See my partition setup below.

update: I was able to remove the drive from the system, install in another machine, boot with a live cd with Qparted and simply remove all partitions from the drive. Then, when I re-installed in the original machine it flies through the bios like normal and then just halts as their is no OS. I booted into the Live CD again, tried to install again, and this time instead of choosing reboot at the end, I selected continue, and then shut down. It did shutdown gracefully. But when I restarted the machine, same exact thing. The system hangs at the hard drive in bios. It's like the install didn't finalize the hard drive or leave it in a proper state. When I look at the drive in another machine, all of the partitions are there and there is data in the partitions.

Here is the partition scheme I'm using. This is a little different from what I've used in the past, but I've always had multiple partitions and I followed the advice of scorp123 on the Linux Mint forums
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... =358#p1949
The setup I used is:
200 MB primary /boot
6 GB primary /
7 GB logical /usr
2 GB logical /opt
2 GB logical /var
4 GB logical /tmp
remainder -2GB (~50 GB) logical /home
2 GB swap

I tried creating this format in Gparted first, and using the disk already setup, but I couldn't figure out how to set the mount points through the live installer, it just wanted me to pick a single partition to install to. So not wanting to do a 3-peat, I quit, erased the disk, and tried again as indicated above thinking that starting from an empty drive might yield a different result than erasing the partitions through the live installer. I did notice, when using Gparted, that even though I picked the same exact sizes for partitions they were slightly different sizes using Gparted vs the native partition tool in mint (I noticed this when I got to setting up /home the remaining disk space is larger in the native installer vs Gparted). In Gparted you create an extended partition for your logical partitions. In the mint partitioning tool you just select primary or logical. I would assume the native installer is intelligent enough to create the extended partition. But their is a difference so it makes me wonder. Also when I put the hard drive in the other machine, ran Gparted, deleted all the partitions, applied the changes and created the exact same partition scheme; when I installed it back in the original machine, it booted past the bios screen (did not hang on the hard drive) but gave me a grub error and went into grub rescue mode. So it seems that GRUB was installed. There is just some issue with the way the installer leaves the disk.

If I've made a mistake in my partitioning scheme please let me know. Maybe / (root) needs to be a logical partition? Maybe since I'm using several partitions they should all be logical?

I'm also installing Cinnamon 64 bit.

did you check the md5sum number for the iso?

yes the md5sum is the same (well the tool I used uppercased all the letters, but other than that, the same)

[este.el.paz]

If you are only going to have one system on the computer, try the "automatic" installation choice for the whole install, whichever choice that is, "use whole disk" or "install next to" . . . and let the installer pick all the partitions, including installing GRUB . . . and see if that works.

If not, quickly looking over your partitions I don't see "bios_grub" designated anywhere . . . it can be small but if you are doing the "manual" way it has to be there . . . I forget what I used 10MB, might be too much . . . .

But, if you aren't worried about running windows or whatever, then just let the installer run the whole thing and see how it goes.

e.e.p.

[rsadix]

Update: Well, letting the installer do what it wanted to do, gave me a working system. It chose 1 large primary ext4 partition for root (and everything else) and 1 extended logical 2GB partition for swap. There is no GRUB partition.

Fortunately I'm just messing around with this install until the LTS version comes out in a few months. I hope they fix the partitioning issue. I've never had this issue before, and its pretty brutal, rendering your machine completely useless until you physically remove the drive and load into another machine to wipe it and try again. And the option to create your own partitions is right there in the installer. It's not like I hacked it. I may experiment with less aggressive partitioning schemes, to see where it does and doesn't break, but I really shouldn't have to that. Not now in 2014. Maybe 5-10 years ago.

Oh well, a little disappointing and a lot of time wasted, and potentially a lot more time to be wasted trying to figure it out.

[este.el.paz]

Cool, glad it worked out . . . but indeed it does seem like this latest version was a little more unwieldy on the install than 15 was. Not sure if they have been putting their attention into the USB install . . . wasn't able to follow the details of your install vis requiring removal of HD, that is pretty extreme . . . even if a drive is wiped the computer should still recognize the install DVD??? No?? Also not sure why GRUB wasn't installed, maybe it doesn't need it if there is only one system installed . . . but obviously if it's working you are getting to the LM16 splash window before the log in window, but without the GRUB boot window?? I'm not really up on the technical details, I've just done a fair amount of Linux installs in the last few years. I'm also looking forward to the LTS version as the probable last install that I'll have to go through for awhile. Good luck, welcome to LM.

e.e.p.

[rsadix]

. . . wasn't able to follow the details of your install vis requiring removal of HD

Just for clarity, before installing mint 16, the machine boots normally into another OS or from the Live CD or a USB key. The machine is "normal". I choose to boot with the mint 16 live cd and install mint onto a single hard drive and plan to let mint have the entire hard drive. During install, on the partition screen, I choose the last option "Do Something Else" to set up my own partitions (like I have done with every other install of Linux). In the mint 16 installer, there is no opportunity to create a GRUB partition, the only choices are (/, /boot, /var, /usr, /opt, /tmp, /home, /srv and a few others but no /grub) I would imagine that GRUB is installed in the /boot partition as that's where alternate kernels reside, and these are where the "choices" that GRUB picks from live.

Anyway after completing the install, upon reboot, the machine hangs during the bios post sequence at the hard drive (it lists the hard drive, but then nothing else happens). Normally you hardly notice this stuff, when you boot a "normal" machine as you usually see some white text on a black screen for a few seconds (going by so fast you can hardly read it) and then you are into GRUB or your OS splash screen. The mint 16 install has rendered the hard drive useless, and therefore the entire machine useless. The machine will not proceed past the bios boot sequence. The machine in this state is dead. You can not boot from CD, or USB, you can't enter bios to make any changes because the machine will not complete the bios post process. The machine is literally dead. The only way to recover the machine from this "dead" state is to physically unplug the hard drive. Then the machine is fine and boots normally, but has no hard drive. You can boot off a cd or USB key, just like you would expect. But if you plug the hard drive back in,the machine hangs during the bios boot sequence at the hard drive and there is absolutely nothing you can do (except press the delete key and attempt to enter the bios which never happens because its perpetually hung on the hard drive). The hard drive is in some sort of funky state that confuses the bios and it will not proceed. And then as I described before, if you take that mint 16 hard drive and put it into another machine (for whatever lucky reason it doesn't kill the other machine) and run a partition tool and make changes, you can then reinstall it into the "dead" machine and the bios will complete it's boot sequence and you can do whatever you want, because the hard drive is no longer hanging up the bios. Letting another partition tool make changes to the hard drive seems to put the hard drive back into a normal state that the first machine now accepts.

even if a drive is wiped the computer should still recognize the install DVD??? No??

The manual partitioned mint installed hard drive isn't "wiped" it is in some sort of funky state, and no the machine never gets to a point to recognize the install DVD because it never completes the bios post because of the funky state of the hard drive hanging the machine. Once I remove the hard drive, put it into another machine and "wipe" it, and then put it back, then yes the machine makes it through bios post without problems and it can read the install DVD.

Also not sure why GRUB wasn't installed, maybe it doesn't need it if there is only one system installed . . . but obviously if it's working you are getting to the LM16 splash window before the log in window, but without the GRUB boot window??

Yeah, I don't know what's up with no GRUB, I normally install on a machine with an existing OS and GRUB or LILO in the past was just automatic and there. This is my sixth or seventh install of mint starting back with mint 7 in all kinds of flavors, from gnome, XFCE, even the Debian rolling release version, and always choosing my own partitions. But in this case, no GRUB. I've never experienced anything like this before. I guess it could be some weird combination of hardware going on, but it seems pretty standard: MSI motherboard, AMD chip, WD hard drive. I mean its running fine now with no hiccups, just a crappy partition setup and no GRUB.

It seems to me that the partition tool in the mint installer has an issue, or the installer has an issue with my partition scheme (which I don't think is that outrageous) as its leaving the hard drive in some sort of funky state that the machine bios can't reconcile. Regardless you should be able to setup whatever partition scheme you want with as many OSs as you want. That's what GRUB and LILO are all about. And *nix is all about server side flexibility and setting up partitions on one disk or across multiple disks. I'm surprised I can "break" linux with a partition scheme.

[este.el.paz]

rsadix:

It would be nice if someone with some technical chops woulld read through your posts and try to sort out any issues they might find--like perhaps hardware compatibility, etc; another ***opinion*** of mine is that MATE or especially XFCE are more stable in nature and I've confined myself to those choices--for my Mac.

But, I think other people would be on board about something being "rough" with the installer in 16 . . . a little bit more "Borg-ian" perhaps in how it handles the system . . . more fussy, as I said, I also have done a number of linux installs, many times there are "issues" but this one was most finicky--caveat, so far, there is always the next one to show how easy the last one was.

Main thing is, it is running at this moment for you, don't know if it's worth it to go back and try to re-partition the HD for the next few months, just wait until the LTS comes out. One item I did find useful in the past was the "SuperGrub2" . . . what, .iso?? burned to a CD, it finds and boots OSs that aren't booting . . . comes in handy, might be some updates to it. Leading me back to the "No GRUB" choice on the install, no time right now to get the DVD out and run it, but in my choices of 16 install I had "bios_grub" in the drop down menu when I 2x clicked on the partition line I set up for it in GParted/installer . . . there was some other detail like needing to "format" and/or "flag" the home partition that, if not done, messed up the install . . . but, if no "bios_grub" then perhaps "/boot"??? anything with "boot"????

e.e.p.

[My "issue" is similar to the OP of this thread, continue to have the problem of "restart" freezing/hanging . . . today, tried to "sudo reboot" from a terminal window, and "we" dropped into the black-ness . . . keyboard still lit up . . . but nothing. Same thing, trying to use the "restart" button from the Log in window commands . . . seems to work sometimes, but often it will go to a TTY window and I'll have to re-enter my password two times to get "sudo reboot" typed in . . . supposedly someone mention this might be handled with kernel upgrade, but, so far, no kernel upgrade has come down the pipes . . . .]