Mint 19 install on Btrfs hangs

[DennyOX]

Hi, I'm attempting to install Mint 19, hardware Gigabyte mb with old I7, 250SSD, using btrfs. Tried several times several variations & it loads for hours & never finishes. where is the log? what am I doing wrong? tried ext4, ext2, EFL for bootloader partition, none work. Have 3 partitions: boot, swap & root. thank

[rui no onna]

Define old. Does the motherboard use Legacy BIOS or UEFI? What partition table (MBR or GPT)?

Note, iirc /boot/efi needs to be FAT32.

[DennyOX]

Thanks. I tried fat32 but I'll go try it again. I bought it in 2014, Gigabyte motherboard. I was booting into UEFI with my old SSD before it crashed & burned. I've lost 3 drives, two SSDs & one HD using ext4 & don't want to go back to it. gpt partition table. I don't want to deal with logical partitions again.

[DennyOX]

Also can someone post more explicit install instructions on the install doc page for those setting up partitions & doing other than the default install. Esp w btrfs.

[rui no onna]

For EFI, it needs to be formatted as FAT32. You also need to explicitly change the flags to esp (and maybe boot? i know there's one flag that gets automatically selected when you enable esp) on GParted. If the flags are not set, boot loader will fail to install.

[DennyOX]

Actually when I tried fat32 it exit w an error msg.

[rui no onna]

Actually when I tried fat32 it exit w an error msg.

Again, did you set the esp flag in GParted? What error message? Also, what installer are you using? Iirc, there was an issue with the LM19 v1 iso.

Note, when I did my "Something else" install, I didn't even bother manually setting up /boot.

Just had the ff:

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Device      Type    Mount point     Size
/dev/sda1   fat32                    1 GB
/dev/sda2   btrfs   /               20 GB
/dev/sda3   swap                     1 GB


Device for boot loader installation:
/dev/sda1

[DennyOX]

No, I didn't set any flag. Also only 512MB boot partition. Seems way enough.

[rui no onna]

No, I didn't set any flag. Also only 512MB boot partition. Seems way enough.

You need to set the boot,esp flags otherwise, boot loader will fail to install. 512MB is probably more than enough. I'm planning on multiboot (and from research, it seems other distros/OS need more) that's why I had mine set to 1GB.

[fabien85]

Well you could first try a default Mint install. Let the installer make its magic and see if it works.
If it doesnt work, it means you have a problem higher up. If it works, the EFI partition (if you boot in EFI mode) will be set up as needed, so leave it, delete the other partitions and reinstall with "something else".

Note that if you boot the live USB in BIOS/Legacy mode, then you cannot install in EFI mode but only in Legacy mode. Reverse is true.
To find out your current boot mode, use the following command in a terminal

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[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo "EFI mode" || echo "Legacy mode"