(solved) 3 days in and everything is really slow - has evolved into an installation conundrum

[MatrixOpal]

I am not the one who put the iso on the stick.. I bought it..

Please post the inxi -Fxxxrz from the live session and paste the results within the code tags.

I am taken to grub when I try to boot without the stick, after unsuccessful installs.

What options do you see in grub?

Also, what boot options are available in your UEFI?

code results below.
when I get to grub..it says (I wrote it down)
GNUGRUB ver 204
Minimal BASHlike line editing is supported.

Then it says to hit tab for all available commands; there are quite a few of them.
The one I use is reboot, after putting the usb back in.

UEIF was either Saturday or Sunday, when I went through that to set it to USB first. I haven't gone back in there since. I think there were 5 choices to rearrange but all the new information I'm trying to absorb.. I can't be sure what all of them were. I think the CD drive was an option.. usb, the hard drive.. maybe network? Next time I reboot, I'll try to catch it - and write them down.

drum roll
code bracket test

Code: Select all

mint@mint:~$ inxi -Fxxxrz
System:
  Kernel: 5.4.0-58-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.3.0 
  Desktop: Cinnamon 4.8.5 wm: muffin 4.8.0 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: HP product: HP Laptop 17-by3xxx v: N/A 
  serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: HP model: 868E v: 65.12 serial: <filter> UEFI: AMI v: F.03 
  date: 03/20/2020 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 40.3 Wh condition: 40.3/40.3 Wh (100%) volts: 12.9/11.3 
  model: Hewlett-Packard Primary type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Full 
  Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse M510 
  serial: <filter> charge: 55% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes 
  status: Discharging 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-1035G1 bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Ice Lake rev: 5 L2 cache: 6144 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 19046 
  Speed: 1000 MHz min/max: 400/3600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1000 2: 1000 
  3: 1000 4: 1000 5: 1000 6: 1000 7: 1000 8: 1000 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: i915 v: kernel 
  bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:8a56 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa 
  resolution: 1600x900~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics (ICL GT1) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.0.8 
  direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Smart Sound Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1f.3 chip ID: 8086:34c8 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-58-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 4000 bus ID: 01:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:8168 
  IF: enp1s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: N/A port: 3000 bus ID: 02:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:c821 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 945.93 GiB used: 2.36 GiB (0.2%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: MQ04ABF100 size: 931.51 GiB 
  speed: 3.0 Gb/s rotation: 5400 rpm serial: <filter> rev: 2U temp: 43 C 
  scheme: GPT 
  ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Kingston model: DataTraveler 2.0 
  size: 14.42 GiB serial: <filter> rev: PMAP scheme: MBR 
RAID:
  Hardware-1: Intel 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] driver: ahci 
  v: 3.0 port: 5060 bus ID: 00:17.0 chip ID: 8086.282a rev: 30 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 3.74 GiB used: 471.2 MiB (12.3%) fs: overlay source: ERR-102 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 46.0 C mobo: 0.0 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  1: deb cdrom:[Linux Mint 20.1 _Ulyssa_ - Release amd64 20210103]/ focal contrib main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com ulyssa main upstream import backport #id:linuxmint_main
  2: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal main restricted universe multiverse
  3: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
  4: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
  5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
  6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
Info:
  Processes: 240 Uptime: 3h 37m Memory: 7.47 GiB used: 1.73 GiB (23.1%) 
  Init: systemd v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.3.0 alt: 9 Shell: bash 
  v: 5.0.17 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.38 
mint@mint:~$ 

[MatrixOpal]

well.. rebooted
the system said to pull the usb and hit enter

it took a long time to actually shut down and come back up.. to Grub again. Sadly, the only thing I know how to do there is reboot, with the stick.. which is how I'm back again.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong either.. most errors seem to have something to do with existing partitions.

This is why I never select " restart now" at the end of any Linux mint installation wizard...and instead I select " continue testing" ...
This way I can shut down the system via the gui icons. and when it's completely turned off..I know when it's done at the appropriate point to finally remove that Linux Mint installation media thumb drive, then push the power to power it back on ( and if needs be manually tell it to boot from that storage drive I installed Linux Mint into)

Xfce has been good about giving you the correct prompts/timings about when to remove the usb thumb drive " installation media" at the end of the install process,but I've noticed depending on if it's UEFI or legacy mode install going on...that it's a guessing game on Cinnamon as to when is the right time to remove the thumb drive

So I always stay in the habit of selecting " continue testing" and shut down either via terminal command " shutdown now" or clicking gui buttons for it. If you disconnect the installation thumb drive too soon, you'll boot into a goofy grub prompt..if you do it too late..you'll boot right back into the installation wizard from the thumb drive.

Somehow I missed your post in the fray this afternoon.
The last 3 or 4 attempts to install have stalled.. they never finished.. longest wait was 5 hours before throwing in the towel and rebooting. Maybe I should have waited longer? It seems to stop in the partitioning process.. just going by what it says in the little box at the bottom.. where the progress is being displayed. It's starting to feel like more than one problem now.

[SMG]

The information from inxi on the stick is what I would expect to see, so I think the stick is just fine.

However, this data is showing there really is not much of anything installed on the hard drive (which was different from what you wrote down from GParted). So it appears grub may not be able to find an operating system because the necessary files are not there to find. A default install of Mint is approximately 7-8GB. It can vary, but it is definitely more than 2.36GB.

Drives:
Local Storage: total: 945.93 GiB used: 2.36 GiB (0.2%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: MQ04ABF100 size: 931.51 GiB
speed: 3.0 Gb/s rotation: 5400 rpm serial: <filter> rev: 2U temp: 43 C
scheme: GPT
ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Kingston model: DataTraveler 2.0
size: 14.42 GiB serial: <filter> rev: PMAP scheme: MBR
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 3.74 GiB used: 471.2 MiB (12.3%) fs: overlay source: ERR-102

Note: The source: ERR-102 is normally seen on the live session media and not a cause for concern.

You can check with Gparted again to see if it is still showing what you noticed earlier given the inxi output for the stick indicated something different.

Code: Select all

The GParted stuff:
/dev/sda1 EFI System Partition fat 32, size 512 MiB.. used 8.85 Mib, unused 503.15 MiB Boot,esp
/dev/sda2 ext4 931.01 GiB, used 11.60 Gib

For reference, here is a video of installing with UEFI HOW TO INSTALL LINUX MINT 20.1 "ULYSSA" UEFI MODE + GPT 2021. You do not have to create the separate root and home partitions, but if you want to give that a try, the root partition should be at least 30GB (not 20GB as in the video).

At this point, I am not sure what is happening, but I would suggest attempting to install again.

[motoryzen]

The last 3 or 4 attempts to install have stalled.. they never finished.. longest wait was 5 hours before throwing in the towel and rebooting

Every time I've seen this problem that I've personally encountered it has always directly involved a storage drive problem of the drive that is either the installation media ( thumb drive) or the storage drive I'm trying to install the Linux Mint version into.

Do you have another hdd or ssd you could possibly try out?

Even when I've installing LM 20.1 Cinnamon into a good health 5400 rpm laptop hard drive into my old 2015 purchased Dell inspirion laptop ( has broadwell cpu), the installation never takes longer than 22 minutes worst case and never hangs.

[newlyminted7]

Ok, let me see if I have this straight. You're trying to figure out why your computer is slow when running Mint. But you haven't installed Mint yet, and are just using it off a usb stick. You had (still have?) Win10 on the hard drive. Yet you gave us data that shows one of your existing drives (/dev/sda2) has a Linux ext4 formatted partition on it. Correct?

[MatrixOpal]

Ok, let me see if I have this straight. You're trying to figure out why your computer is slow when running Mint. But you haven't installed Mint yet, and are just using it off a usb stick. You had (still have?) Win10 on the hard drive. Yet you gave us data that shows one of your existing drives (/dev/sda2) has a Linux ext4 formatted partition on it. Correct?

so close..

Friday, windows 10 refused to start.. I went out and bought a bootable Mint USB that day. Rural Ga, hour drive, one way.

My first time installing was lovely... I already knew I wanted to leave windows 10 behind so that's the option I went with. Erase.. clean install. It went very well, I thought.

It was fairly late for me so after the install, I powered down

Saturday, I did the updates, installed some software, tweaked some things.. colours, text size.. even managed to get palemoon on the machine... all by myself.

I had other (non computer) things going on but mostly, that day's non admin surfing was glorious.. fast, I started getting to know the terminal.. I started introducing the sites I'm registered with to the new log on configuration.. new pass phrases all around.. each new one got saved as text file and copied to a different USB.

I have several USBs with various pictures, text files, a few saved youtube videos that I started copying to this machine.. all of them just plugged and played.

Something asked for a reboot.. that reboot took a long time - applying updates I assumed. After that reboot, things started slowing down. By Sunday, several reboots later and after shutting it down for the night.. Monday morning's boot time was outrageous.. everything I tried to do was horribly slow and that's when I showed up here.

Several re-installs have been attempted, all the stuff in this thread and somewhere along the line, an install that was erasing and starting over, I'm guessing, wrote over the viable boot and didn't complete a new boot process install and right now, yes, I'm running from a live boot usb

The other usb.. the one with my photo and txt files I backed stuff up on.. will not mount to retrieve my passcodes now.

the drama continues..

Do you think I should change the title of the thread to something else?

[MatrixOpal]

The last 3 or 4 attempts to install have stalled.. they never finished.. longest wait was 5 hours before throwing in the towel and rebooting

Every time I've seen this problem that I've personally encountered it has always directly involved a storage drive problem of the drive that is either the installation media ( thumb drive) or the storage drive I'm trying to install the Linux Mint version into.

Do you have another hdd or ssd you could possibly try out?

Even when I've installing LM 20.1 Cinnamon into a good health 5400 rpm laptop hard drive into my old 2015 purchased Dell inspirion laptop ( has broadwell cpu), the installation never takes longer than 22 minutes worst case and never hangs.

I don't have any back up hardware for this machine. I don't think I've seen the inside of a laptop.. and evidently there are several form factors for laptop hard drives. I do have a pretty substantial size external drive.. probably not the best place to try and install an OS though.

[MatrixOpal]

I went back and re-watched that video about creating the proper partitions while installing.. so now I'm installing, again.

Right now I'm in an error loop of sorts at:
Unpacking libreoffice-help-common (amd 64)
Server returned error NXDOMAIN, mitigating potential DNS violation DVE-2018-0001.
Retrying with reduced feature list level UDP..

it's on it's 8th cycle of doing that.

this time was not the charm.. this just popped up

We're sorry, the installer just crashed. After you close this window, we'll allow you to file a bug report using the integrated bug reporting tool. This will gather info about your system and installation process. The details will be sent to our bug tracker and a developer will attend to it as soon as possible.

Well.. nothing popped up to report a bug when I closed that window.

[deepakdeshp]

Boot from live USB . Test disk
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools
Are you installing to internal or external drive?

[DAMIEN1307]

I went back and re-watched that video about creating the proper partitions while installing.. so now I'm installing, again.

OK...in your situation, this is what i would do right now....Let's keep it simple to start off with since things seem overly complicated at present, and make sure it is actually plugged into the wall and not doing this just under battery power.

First off, stop trying to create "proper partitioning"...Let the installer choose to erase/replace everything on that drive, it will just use the entire hardrive.

In the installer section choose erase/replace option or however that is worded...Do Not choose anything thats says LVM...Also dont choose "something else".

DO choose to install any third party drivers or whatever that says.

DO NOT choose to download updates while it is trying to install the initial operating system...Do that after its installed.

Make sure that ALL external drives are totally disconnected from the computer before doing the installation.

Once it is all installed, follow instructions to unplug the USB from computer and THEN reboot system.

Once rebooted, download all updates that the update manager shows that need updating...DO NOT try installing other software until at least all of this is done first and then report back if it now works or not...DAMIEN

[MatrixOpal]

Boot from live USB . Test disk
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools
Are you installing to internal or external drive?

Internal.. I didn't know external was an option

I will start that hard drive thing after this current installation process does whatever it's going to do.

[MatrixOpal]

I went back and re-watched that video about creating the proper partitions while installing.. so now I'm installing, again.

OK...in your situation, this is what i would do right now....Let's keep it simple to start off with since things seem overly complicated at present, and make sure it is actually plugged into the wall and not doing this just under battery power.

First off, stop trying to create "proper partitioning"...Let the installer choose to erase/replace everything on that drive, it will just use the entire hardrive.

In the installer section choose erase/replace option or however that is worded...Do Not choose anything thats says LVM...Also dont choose "something else".

DO choose to install any third party drivers or whatever that says.

DO NOT choose to download updates while it is trying to install the initial operating system...Do that after its installed.

Make sure that ALL external drives are totally disconnected from the computer before doing the installation.

Once it is all installed, follow instructions to unplug the USB from computer and THEN reboot system.

Once rebooted, download all updates that the update manager shows that need updating...DO NOT try installing other software until at least all of this is done first and then report back if it now works or not...DAMIEN

I read your post and started the installation almost an hour ago. There are a lot of those DNS error messages again... it's retrying many operations... some failing.

[motoryzen]

The last 3 or 4 attempts to install have stalled.. they never finished.. longest wait was 5 hours before throwing in the towel and rebooting

Every time I've seen this problem that I've personally encountered it has always directly involved a storage drive problem of the drive that is either the installation media ( thumb drive) or the storage drive I'm trying to install the Linux Mint version into.

Do you have another hdd or ssd you could possibly try out?

Even when I've installing LM 20.1 Cinnamon into a good health 5400 rpm laptop hard drive into my old 2015 purchased Dell inspirion laptop ( has broadwell cpu), the installation never takes longer than 22 minutes worst case and never hangs.

I don't have any back up hardware for this machine. I don't think I've seen the inside of a laptop.. and evidently there are several form factors for laptop hard drives. I do have a pretty substantial size external drive.. probably not the best place to try and install an OS though.

There is only one form factor that I've ever heard or or read about involving a laptop hard drive, and that is 2.5" size and most often they have the same mm thickness...where as ssd's, on the other hand, have had multiple thicknesses of mm ( 9mm, 7mm for examples), and if it's a sata ssd still 2.5 inch in width, or if it's an nvme ssd..there are easily more than two sizes that could fit many laptops depending on make and model and the ssd itself.

I wouldn't recommend trying to install an OS into an external storage drive. The os needs to be installed into a drive that the operating system will always automatically "view" as permanent storage media that has the boot loader, etc,etc. I've seen some weird things happen to those who have tried installing any Linux distro into an externally connected drive here and there.

[motoryzen]

And DAMIEN1307, chances are, is correct btw. It's usually best to let the installation wizard of Linux Mint handle it. That " something else" option is really meant for more advanced users, no insult meant.

Follow DAMIEN1307's instructions..but don't choose " restart now" when the install is finished...

Instead choose " continue testing". Then shut down that machine using the more manual way via clicking the Linux Mint icon at the bottom left on the panel , and selecting the power off icon and " shut down" or " turn off" or do it via terminal command of " shutdown now" or " shut down now".

This way you will know...100% when it's completely ready to unplug the installation thumb drive as you'll be able to tell all fans are done spinning and everything is powered off. Unplug the thumb drive then....THEN...power it back on and if needed hit whatever hotkey to tell the machine to boot from that storage drive you just installing LM into.

[DAMIEN1307]

I read your post and started the installation almost an hour ago. There are a lot of those DNS error messages again... it's retrying many operations... some failing.

The only other thing that i didnt even think of before was this.

Did you make sure that in the bios/UEFI of your lappy, that you disabled both "fast boot" and "secure boot" before attempting your installations ???

If not, than do so, those two functions in the bios can, and do, interfere with a proper linux installation as they are Microsoft Windows way of doing things...DAMIEN

[SMG]

Did you make sure that in the bios/UEFI of your lappy, that you disabled both "fast boot" and "secure boot" before attempting your installations ???

If not, than do so, those two functions in the bios can, and do, interfere with a proper linux installation as they are Microsoft Windows way of doing things...DAMIEN

Windows is no longer installed on the hard drive, so "fast boot" can not happen. Fast boot is a function within Windows; it is not in the BIOS/UEFI.

Secure Boot is in UEFI, but lots of people have installed Mint with it enabled.

[DAMIEN1307]

Windows is no longer installed on the hard drive, so "fast boot" can not happen. Fast boot is a function within Windows; it is not in the BIOS/UEFI.
Secure Boot is in UEFI, but lots of people have installed Mint with it enabled.

That would be incorrect, at least as far as my computer is concerned.

Im using an ASUS motherboard with this home made computer of mine, its NEVER had Windows installed, only Linux OSs and it DOES have a "fast boot" enable/disable toggle as well as a "secure boot" enable disable toggle automatically built into the bios/UEFI...DAMIEN

[SMG]

Windows is no longer installed on the hard drive, so "fast boot" can not happen. Fast boot is a function within Windows; it is not in the BIOS/UEFI.
Secure Boot is in UEFI, but lots of people have installed Mint with it enabled.

That would be incorrect, at least as far as my computer is concerned.

Im using an ASUS motherboard with this home made computer of mine, its NEVER had Windows installed, only Linux OSs and it DOES have a "fast boot" enable/disable toggle as well as a "secure boot" enable disable toggle automatically built into the bios/UEFI...DAMIEN

I just did a check and apparently there is more than one process with the "fast boot" designation. One is in BIOS/UEFI and skips over some of the checks normally done on hardware during boot. The other is the Windows functionality which puts the Windows into a quasi hibernation/sleep state instead of shutting down it completely.

Fast boot in Windows is known to cause problems if it is left on and one tries to either install Mint or boot into an already installed Mint. I do not know if the fast boot to skip the BIOS checks can cause issues.

[DAMIEN1307]

I just did a check and apparently there is more than one process with the "fast boot" designation. One is in BIOS/UEFI and skips over some of the checks normally done on hardware during boot. The other is the Windows functionality which puts the Windows into a quasi hibernation/sleep state instead of shutting down it completely.

That would be correct.

I only want to see the bios/UEFI "fast boot" disabled in this particular case, and thats if the OP can successfully install Mint, so as to ascertain whether or not there may be hardware issues that may or may not exist that could be complicating his issues...DAMIEN

[MatrixOpal]

Well.. that installation process was running so long I had to make a quick run to the store.. when I got back, the installation window had closed.
I checked gparted and it's not even seeing a hard drive any more.
It must have been on it's way out .

It's good that it runs on the usb stick or I'd have tossed it in the pond by now.

It's going to be a few days before I can deal with a hard drive replacement.

Should I mark this solved now? Or maybe suspended?