GRUB and Nothing Else

[este.el.paz]

Just following up on the OPs experience reporting the blinking cursor and black screen. On my third or fourth restart into LMDE watching the dmesg showed many "OKs" . . . then three "Fails" . . . and rather than going to GUI it went to an "emergency TTY" that I entered password, but trying to run "apt update" errored out, "We don't know 'apt'" (something like that). I entered "shutdown" and the machine shut down.

On cold boot I again selected LMDE from the grub menu and dmesg showed many OKs and one "Fail" but continued on the GUI, and I'm typing this from LMDE now . . . .

So, something to "monitor" . . . going back many moons when I first started playing with Mint and went with LMDE it was "finicky" then, is it still so now?? Is this a "we can't restart to LMDE, we have to cold boot into it?" kind of a thing??

[edit] PS: After updating the new install with 293 some package upgrades, restarting from the grub controller system (to bring in the new LMDE 6.1 kernel) . . . selecting LMDE brings me back to a working GUI. Is the system now "good to go" or will it be a hiccup every few boots?? Time will tell. If it's working, it is working; if it isn't working, then, it isn't, etc. [/edit]

[dedraconis]

Something is clearly going wrong. I had it up and running for a bit, but it only ran so long as I put it into Suspend mode when I was done for the night. The first time it was necessary to do a full shut down and restart, it once again failed. This time I got "GRUB" twice and then nothing.

Anyways. Reinstalling again right now. Fortunately, since my intention is to use the SSD for nothing but the OS, and I only download like 3-4 things from the Software Manager each time, it's easy to configure. All my data is elsewhere. I guess reinstalling the OS every two weeks is just what Linux is like? xD Or maybe LMDE is not for me and I should look at some other Distro. I dunno.

Regarding the other drives it's showing - I honestly have no idea what the hell those are. Monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse are the ONLY things hooked up to the computer. Well, and the flashdrive with the Live install. I unplug my headset and the USB fan on my desk, which are the only other things that are plugged into it anyways. I am completely uncertain where those phantom drives are coming from.

Anyways, thanks for the help y'all.

[este.el.paz]

@dedrraconis:

OK, just to be sure, once you have installed you do remove the live usb installer, yes?? That MAY or may not cause some issue for Grub . . . ???

But, to answer your question, no, you should not need to be re-installing an OS to keep a working system running . . . it's either working for you OR, it isn't. After your fresh install did you shut down the machine OR reboot it, as asked before?? Once you shut it down,on cold boot are you running a "sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade" of the system to bring in the up to date packages??

If you are "getting Grub twice" where is it going after that??

After I posted my above problem where it went to an ER TTY one time, since then I've updated it a couple of times via apt and all is well. It is essentially a Bookworm install with the Cinnamon DE stacked on top???

From my experience installing a fair number of linux systems, if you can boot the live iso and it runs OK, it should install and run properly. But, as we used to say in the construction industry, "It is, what it is." If you can't get it to run properly on your machine try another system until you find one that does work. The up and the down of LMDE is that it is not the main channel Mint system, hence, less users, hence less commentary and guidance on how to get it running.

If you have this "grub" problem again after installing it this time, i.e., it doesn't boot the installed system, see if you can get the proper Super Grub2 iso flashed to a usb drive and try to use that to boot the system?? It is an **external** grub bootloader. OR, boot the installer again and select "repair system" or something like that, it is included with the installer.

If all of that fails then either try a main channel Mint option, or a generic Ubuntu system, something where there are more users on the forum to give you some commentary on where your error may be occurring. Did you check the checksum on your iso?? It could be if the iso is corrupted then it is installing a corrupted / on your machine???

[dedraconis]

@dedrraconis:

OK, just to be sure, once you have installed you do remove the live usb installer, yes?? That MAY or may not cause some issue for Grub . . . ???

But, to answer your question, no, you should not need to be re-installing an OS to keep a working system running . . . it's either working for you OR, it isn't. After your fresh install did you shut down the machine OR reboot it, as asked before?? Once you shut it down,on cold boot are you running a "sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade" of the system to bring in the up to date packages??

If you are "getting Grub twice" where is it going after that??

After I posted my above problem where it went to an ER TTY one time, since then I've updated it a couple of times via apt and all is well. It is essentially a Bookworm install with the Cinnamon DE stacked on top???

From my experience installing a fair number of linux systems, if you can boot the live iso and it runs OK, it should install and run properly. But, as we used to say in the construction industry, "It is, what it is." If you can't get it to run properly on your machine try another system until you find one that does work. The up and the down of LMDE is that it is not the main channel Mint system, hence, less users, hence less commentary and guidance on how to get it running.

If you have this "grub" problem again after installing it this time, i.e., it doesn't boot the installed system, see if you can get the proper Super Grub2 iso flashed to a usb drive and try to use that to boot the system?? It is an **external** grub bootloader. OR, boot the installer again and select "repair system" or something like that, it is included with the installer.

If all of that fails then either try a main channel Mint option, or a generic Ubuntu system, something where there are more users on the forum to give you some commentary on where your error may be occurring. Did you check the checksum on your iso?? It could be if the iso is corrupted then it is installing a corrupted / on your machine???

1. Yes, I remove the live usb installer after installation is complete.
2. Yes, I did a full shut down and boot up after installation to give it a chance to do all of its things. I am further capable of turning it all the way off and back on as needed when I'm doing all my initial set up stuff.
3. Yes, I do the sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade, and go to the Software Manager and have it install every update it feels inclined to install. A reboot is usually required after this step, too, and I do a full shut down for this one as well.
4. When I got that Grub appearing twice and nothing else happening, I let it sit for fifteen minutes and nothing happened. I did not try to investigate it, I was too frustrated, I just re-installed.

So far things are working OK. I've re-downloaded all the apps I want which are just a few other browsers, Wine, Webcord, a video game and a macro program. But I'm still opting for Suspend when I go to bed at night, and it's up in the air if the next time I need to do a cold boot if it'll work. If it doesn't, eh? It feels so far like that's just how Linux do. At least the re-installation is fast.

If it becomes a major issue, I will look into that external grub bootloader, thanks for the recommendation.

5. I did check the checksum when first making the live usb. It is old now though, I should probably re-flash it later so safe myself some update time.

Thanks much.

[este.el.paz]

@dedraconis:

OK, sounds like it should be "go time" for awhile. As far as "suspend at night" sure; that would be in comparison to what?? Just let the machine run all of the time??

It all depends on what you are doing, in my own case I use "suspend" for when I'm stepping away from the machine for lunch or something, but when I'm done for the day I shut down. On cold boot the system does some checks on the system, which might help with keeping it going properly.

Keep in mind that as "open source" material sometimes "stuff happens" and indeed it is easier to just run a fresh install of the "/" system, if you keep the /home directory in a separate partition, you can just use the same user name and /sdaX location for it, select "do not format" that partition, and all of your files will be preserved . . . and you can be back in the biz.

Debian does a pretty good job of keeping problems to a minimum . . . you should be OK for a tad bit. : - 0

This **might** be the right link for SuperGrub2 iso, or it might be the right one for my Mac, but it should be a Sourceforge location. https://sourceforge.net/projects/supergrub2/

[george7-cal]

...
This **might** be the right link for SuperGrub2 iso, or it might be the right one for my Mac, but it should be a Sourceforge location. https://sourceforge.net/projects/supergrub2/

Yes, run that Boot-repair from a live disk session and then make sure the disk with that GRub has boot priority.

[este.el.paz]

Okay, so you have no (efi)-boot partition on your first drive and thus grub-install will always fail.
You can amend this with a partition manager (like (g)parted) by moving the existing paritions and creating a FAT partition at the beginning of the drive and set the boot flag for it.
But TBH, I think it would be just easier to run the installer again and maybe unplug the 2nd drive so you dont confuse yourself.

@dedraconis:

So I was just re-reading through a few of the posts, including the posts where you have your lsblk data posted, and there it appears that you have "sad1" flagged as "swap" . . . which, generally Swap goes at the end of the disk. If you haven't made the suggestion above of formatting usually sda1 as FAT and flagging it as the /efi/boot location, the bootloader might be looking at sda1, seeing that it is "swap" and then not finding which partition to install into as "flagged" .. . it won't know where to install itself???

And then, perhaps you might be getting "lucky" sometimes, if there is only one system installed, it will boot up and perhaps sometimes you get the flashing grub cursor??

So, as the other early poster suggested, if you are doing "custom" or "advanced installer" you need to create the roughly 300 MB partition, formatted as FAT, which is then flagged as "bootloader," or "/efi/boot" (from the drop down menu) in what usually is "sda1" of the SSD . . . . Then a large 50 GB or so partition formatted as ext4 or whatever you want, flagged as "/" and then set off what used to be a "1.5 - 2x" GB of the system RAM as "swap" at the end of any of your drives in the machine . . . .

The HDD you can flag as where you want the "/home" to go if you want your personal user files in a separate partition, which is what I do . . . .

Actually these days in ubuntu they use a swap file somewhere in /?? so technically you wouldn't even need a swap partition . . . to have a working system.

Alternatively, as another poster suggested, you could wipe the SSD drive yet again, or, just "format" it in the installer to remove all of the many partitions??, and either pull the HDD and just run a basic install into the one partition, in which you aren't creating any partitions, and just let the installer set everything up, and run the install. Or the installer might ask if you want to install into the HDD, for the simple install generally you pick one drive or the other.

Then, after the install you could look in GParted and see how it cut up the drive . . . and use that as your model for the next time. It seems like right now with the various partitions that are or were there, the installer isn't getting the idea of where to put grub????????????????????

It seems like you have some working knowledge, but seemingly enough to get into trouble . . . which is possibly that you aren't formatting sda1 as FAT and then flagging it so that the bootloader "knows" where to put itself?? If there still is no proper grub partition then you can't "repair" it.. . but, you might be able to retroactively install it?? I haven't had too much luck with that, but you could try it?

I'm assuming that the reason you don't want to shut down, and just suspend is because there is no grub partition???? In that case, the / and /home systems probably are installed, you could test using the SG2 external to boot the grub-less system . . . ???????????