Debian Installation :: Found A Bug In The Installer \ Enough The Boot Sector Showed As Blank?
Jun 26, 2011
I had ubuntu studio installed ( for the record I hated it and every ubuntu flavor I have ever used. ) After backing off all the stuff from my home dir I started to install testing from a dvd. ( Is there a net install for testing? I couldn't find it) Don't ask me how it happened but some times I would have two grub graphical boot menus. One would chain to the other. I suspect that happened from one of the very friendly updates ubuntu did. Well when I tried to install testing I got a red screen telling me that grub wouldn't install so I tried lilo. Well it wouldn't install either. Back in the old days when I was a slackware guy installing from a stack of floppies I had a trick to wipe out any boot loaders or other stuff that gave me a problem. I would dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<drive info such as hda with no partition number> .
This would write zeros over the drive and it would look like a new drive. So I did this trick. But still no joy ( this is a clue, dd was also thinking that the beginning of the drive was after the boot sector.). I suspected that the installer wasn't doing it's job right. So I got a PCLinuxOs disk and started that installer. The PCLinuOS installer has a cutesy visual bar that shows the partitions. Well sure enough the boot sector showed as blank. This was what the Debian installer had done. It left the boot sector blank and tried to install the boot loader right after it. This won't work. Now I consider when some version of Linux falls on it's face and another version does it right that the version that fell on it's face has a problem.
One might even call it a bug. But I don't know what to do about it. I don't think the problem is with grub or the installer itself. I think how the drive was looked at was faulty. That's why dd didn't blankout the boot sector. So what do I do to help get the Deb people to fix this? The more I think about it the more I think the problem is with udev ( what a surprise) I think this because I suspect dd looks to the info set out by udev to find the beginning of the drive.
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Aug 20, 2010
I just installed squeeze from a usb key. Installation went flawlessly but now I need the usb key to boot. Nothing happens if I let the bios boot from the HD or if I force it to do so. When it boot up from the usb key, the HD is read and the boot up sequence continues. Grub seems to be installed in /boot/grub. I imagine that I have to copy the usb key boot sector to the HD but how?
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Feb 17, 2011
I recently installed 11.3 on an external drive. After adding some software in yast (searched Kernel and checked every option), I was prompted to reboot but the no boot sector found error came up. Tried reinstalling with the same result. Grub is boot loader
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Jul 5, 2015
I've installed Ubuntu lots of times on my UEFI computer without any troubles. The last few days, I've been trying to install Debian Jessie on my computer. I do the steps bellow:
- Download the corresponding iso (amd64).
- Create a UEFI bootable USB drive with Rufus.
- With Safe boot, Fast boot and CSM disabled, I boot to the USB drive.
I expect to see something like this:
But what I get is this:
I'm using an Asus PC. GL550JK. The UEFI version is 205 (from Asus Support website).
Things I've tried:
- Booting with CSM on => Same behaviour. It's not my intention to install debian with CSM on, though.
- Using Wheezy instead of Jessi => Same behaviour.
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Mar 6, 2010
I tried to boot the net installer (debian-504-amd64-netinst.iso) from a flash drive (installed with dd). When I tried to boot that, my BIOS skipped the flash drive, which I had set the flash drive as the first boot device. So, I put it on a CDRW, and got the same result. I also tried the offline installer (debian-504-amd64-CD-1.iso) using both of those methods, with the same results. I verified the MD5SUM of this download. I am installing on a computer with a 64 bit Pentium 4 Prescott, if it matters. I have no other working OS on the computer. What other options do I have? Or am I doing something wrong?
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Jan 2, 2011
I installed ubuntu with the windows installer. while installing in windows, multiple error messages showed up, but installation still proceeded.it rebooted, and ubuntu finished installation.on the next reboot,when i chose ubuntu from the windows boot manager, it loaded grub.however,there was no option for booting ubuntu in grub, and you are forced to go back to the windows boot manager.
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Nov 2, 2010
My PC configuration is as follows:
CPU: AMD Athlon II 245 X2
RAM: 2GB DDR2
MB: ASUS M2A74-AM
SATA DVD-Writer
WD 320GB SATA HDD.
SATA Controller is in AHCI mode in BIOS.
Partition Table:
1. Pri. (Windows 7 Ultimate)
2. Log. (Data)
3. Log. 15GB free space (want to install Linux in this partition)
I want to install Debian 5.0.4 from DVD. But the installer is not showing any partitions, it says entire hard disk is blank. But I ran 'fdisk -l' in the console, it shows the partitions correctly.
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Jul 16, 2015
I'm making some tests with Debian Setup.
As reported by the docs [URL] .... there are some boot parameters available for the Debian Installer.
I would like to try a setup setting the base-installer/install-recommends to false.
This can be done via preseeding, but I'd like to try it out setting the boot parameter.
I've tried several combinations but no one has been effective.
What is the syntax for setting the base-installer/install-recommends parameter to false at boot time?
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Dec 10, 2010
I am trying to install Debian 5 on an Everex NM3500W Stepnote with a VIA chipset and integrated S3 graphics. The initial screen comes up, but when I click "install" it just prints the "booting..." message and sits there with the DVD spinning. Are there any particular problems know for this model? Any particular commands that might let the installer boot?
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Jan 3, 2011
I recently installed meego on an asus eee pc, neat l ittle os. i had originally had grub set up booting into ubuntu netbook remix. win xp and the system restore partition. when i installed meego i was allowed to select what i wanted as far as boot options in the new boot loader (extlinux). windows and meego boot just fine but when i try to get into my already configured and homey install of ubuntu nbr it gives an error of
"boot sector signature not found (unbootable disk/partition)"
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Jan 18, 2015
I'm trying to reinstall Debian on one of my machines after an unsuccessful install of FreeBSD (it didn't jive with my ssd). Debian installations have never been a problem before on this particular setup before but now for some reason it won't get past the "Debian GNU/linux installer boot menu". The USB goes into idle mode and the menu does not respond to keyboard strokes. I've tried several debian images to no avail. Ubuntu seems to work just fine though but I don't want to install Ubuntu just because Debians having some problems. I booted ubuntu live and reformated the SSD I had tried to install FreeBSD on because there were no partition tables on it but that didn't work either. I'd like some expert input before I go do another `dd`.
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Jul 23, 2010
I'm trying to set up a PXE Boot Installer for Linux. The problem I'm having right now is that our standard repo that was have set up [URL] doesn't seem to be working as an install point (I keep getting "no repository found"), even though it works great as a means for a software repo (Its used by several hundred other servers). Is there a difference between a software repository and an installation repository?
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Sep 11, 2015
I have an system that d8.2 appears to install correctly. On first (or subsequent) boot, I get the DB8 load screen, then a quick fsck, then nothing. I appear to have some sort of environment running as I can move a mouse pointer, but nothing else.
CTRL-ALT-F2 results in the mouse pointer vanishing, but nothing else. I expected to end up at the CLI.
I have tried different installs and options, always the same result. This machine ran an earlier version with issues.
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Dec 4, 2009
when I fired up the installer, after asking to test the media (which I skipped) and starting up the actual installer (anakonda, akonadi, whatever the name was, can't remember now and too lazy to look it up), it seemed to start up fine, except I couldn't get the wizard to show up. I did see the cursor, and occasionally I would get the "searching for storage devices" message (I restarted it a few times to see if I would get it working), but nothing. I also tried random key presses (namely F12,F1-F4), and after some time got a message saying that I had to enter the root password, so I presumably got to the root password screen blind...? (meaning that the installer apparently is ther, I just don't see it?)
After several restarts, though, I managed to get the wizard visible (just luck?), so I went ahead with it, but apparently I messed it up, when I rebooted I didn't get the screen visible again, after some random keypresses I got to the login prompt but I obviously hadn't created any accounts, so :/ I tried booting from the DVD to the rescue mode and manually adduser-ing from the console, but when I tried logging on, it would just come up with some kinda bluetooth-related error message and then hang on there with only the background image on the screen. I didn't try the basic video driver thingy yet because this didn't seem like a video driver issue (well, not entirely anyways), and I need my 3D acceleration, so...
Basically, I'd be glad if anyone knows what's up with the installer, and if it's not fixable as such, would installing with the basic video driver and then installing the proprietary drivers afterwards be all right? Sorry for the wall-of-text, though, it's just one of those days, it's bedtime and I get carried away...
[Code]....
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May 17, 2009
I currently have XP installed on a NetBook (Samsung NC10), and would like to run Fedora on it. I'm currently looking at putting Fedora onto a flash memory card to test it works OK on the hardware, before installing it to the hard disk. The problem I've got is that the boot sector is occupied by WDE software (TrueCrypt). Will this pose a problem for dual-booting XP with Fedora, or will GRUB move the boot loader in the usual way?
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Mar 7, 2010
I'm running 9.10 off of a 4 GiB CF card. I keep running into space issues with updates, so I purchased an 8 GiB replacement card. I've cloned the 4 GiB card to a .IMG file using DD.I've then copied the 4 GiB image back to the 8 GiB card using the Ubuntu startup disk creator program. Once done, I'm able to properly boot off of the new 8 GiB clone.Unfortunately, the clone ends up with 3.67 GiB of unallocated space at the end *see attached). I tried deleting the "extended" partition that the swap is located at after booting from a Live CD and the system was unable to boot after this. I was thinking that I would delete the swap entirely and create a swap file after I merged the existing partitions, but I was unable to do this.
best way to do this (e.g. get one large 8 GiB partition with my old image on it)? I still have the original untouched 4 GiB card and also have an external CF drive if I need to redo the cloning. I've also used Clonezilla before, so perhaps there's a way to do this that allow me to grow the image as it's being cloned.
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Jan 1, 2011
Im trying to do a frugal install off the hard drive (no usb,cdrom) with unetbootin. It installs grub and then will boot the installer but is still tries to find the removable media. Whats going on????
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Feb 19, 2015
I have just installed Debian 7.8.0 powerpc on my imac G3 (400Mhz, 256Mb Ram). I had repartitioned the drive with the view of having a dual boot machine, had OS9 installed on partition 1, linux installed on partition 2 and a ext4 data partition and a 1Gb swap partition. After I installed OS9, I ran Debian Installation CD and was successfully installed. Rebooted, got through the on screen text past file system check, then screen went blank. I searched Google and forund that if I ran ctrl+alt+f1 and logged in, then ran lspci, I could get the ID of the graphics. So I did, and:
Code: Select alllspci
...
0000:00:10 Display Controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Rage 128 RL/VR AGP
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May 8, 2010
I've had Windows XP Home installed on my netbook (Toshiba NB205) and I've just tried to install squeeze via net install. In particular, I installed grub. Everything seemed to go ok during the installation, but when I boot up, all that appears is a blank screen with nothing but at "j" and a cursor. One thing I can think of that might offer a clue, is that when asked to installed grub, the installer said it recognized two operating systems: Microsoft Windows XP Home, and Windows NT/XP. The latter is not really an operating system, but the backup partition.
I don't know how this might affect grub's functioning. What does this "j" mean? Looking at this: [URL]. Could this have some thing to do with boot flag? Should I switch it to my NTFS partition instead of my root partition? Doing that at least let's me boot into Windows. But that's not what I want. I've never dual booted before. So I booted back up with my USB, intending to reinstall Debian, and it loaded grub instead. So apparently grub is now on my USB. Then it booted me into Debian.
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May 11, 2010
I have a rather puzzling error. I recently purchased an usb external hard drive with the intent of installing Ubuntu on it. I have had great success with installing various linux flavors on usb thumb drives but I need a little larger space for engineering applications that I use. Anyway, I removed my laptop's internal hard drive and installed ubuntu 9.10 on a recently formated external hard drive. Everything worked fine at first. Upon restarting I get an error that says "no boot sector" and it asks to hit either f1 to retry. When I hit retry, Grub loads most of the time. Occasionally it does not work. Is Grub just not installing correctly? I searched for this error but I found nothing that directly applied.
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Dec 19, 2010
My old Dell Inspiron 9300's CD Rom is no longer working. I've written the files to my 8GB USB device, and attempted to boot from it. Whenever I try, I get this "No boot sector on USB device". I'm also using Mac OS X to make the USB drive.
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Apr 21, 2011
I have been running a dual boot system with Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit with the dual boot selected by Grub (placed y an Ubuntu install).
Recently I have installed Window 7 Home on a spare disc. My Bios allows me to select which disc to boot.
The Win7 installation has overwritten the boot sector on the WinXP/Ubuntu dic so that it is now not bootable.
I can sse all my Ubuntu files with a Live Linux Disc, so I can get all my files back.
Is there any easy way to re-install Grub or should I just do a clean install of Ubuntu, perhaps to a blank partition?
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Jul 12, 2011
I installed Fedora 15 on a primary partition and expected the install to create a partition boot sector, but it didn't. Did I do something wrong or is this not supported?
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Nov 21, 2010
I am a complete noob at this and I need a hand. I was about to throw my computer out of the window when I decided to throw the windows out of the computer so to speak. So, I downloaded Ubuntu 10.10 and tried to install. I had a grub rescue after the installation (file system unknown), which I have seen discussed here. Being the noob that I am I decided to try 10.04 because it said it had full support. With this install I get a similar error during installation: grub cannot be installed in boot sector.
So, basically there is an issue with grub and the boot sector. I checked in my BIOS options to see if there was an option that prevented the writing of a boot sector or something, but I have not been able something like that. So, I am wondering if it is possible that Ubuntu does not really erase/format the selected disks or something, leaving any difficulty there.
Does anybody know? Or better yet: what exactly do I need to do a manual grub install?
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Apr 30, 2011
Been away from linux for a few years thaught id come back and give it a try again. I have Win7 on sda and installed 11.4 Ubuntu on sdb. Grub2 Over wrote the boot sector for windows so windows wouldnt show in the boot menu. I repaired that after some research and then tried it again with 10.4 LTS version of Ubuntu. Same thing. Now I've fixed windows boot sector a second time and im ready for round 3. Any hints on how to get grub2 to boot both OS's? Ubuntu 10.4 is still on sdb I think I should just need to re-install grub2 But how to do it without Killing the windows boot sector?
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Jun 7, 2010
I have a toshiba notebook with Windows XP and Ubuntu studio. I removed Ubuntu partitions with the idea to install classic Ubuntu, but... grub don't recognize Windows to boot. I formatted the hard disk as slave from another PC. I installed Windows again trying to delete the grub, but, it is already there. I am trying to repair grub from Windows with: FIXBOOT, FIXMBR, fdisk /mbr from MS DOS, but that is not working.
Any suggestions:
- To delete the hard disk complete and start again everything. (deleting grub also)
or
- To repair boot sector for Windows
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Sep 16, 2010
I tried to help my friend install Ubuntu 10.04 side-by-side with Windows XP on his Acer Aspire One netbook.Unfortunately, the installation process came to a standstill and it quit due to "unexpected errors". The second time I started the installation, I realized that the option for installing side by side was gone and that I could not mount the C: partition on Ubuntu. The error message is listed below:====================BEGIN ERROR MESSAGE======================Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 12: Failed to read last sector (299982847): Invalid argument
HINTS: Either the volume is a RAID/LDM but it wasn't setup yet,
or it was not setup correctly (e.g. by not using mdadm --build ...),
or a wrong device is tried to be mounted,
[code]...
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Aug 6, 2011
when i try to boot the 11.04 64-bit alternate.iso i get the following message, after it says that isolinux blabla is loaded: EDD: Error 8000 reading sector 2855 and when i remove the cd it says: gfx.c32: not a COM32R imageand then there is a grub-shell.
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Apr 8, 2011
I am trying to install Ubuntu to an external usb hard drive (WD Elements SE). I am also choosing to install the grub bootloader to this disk (/dev/sdb) because I do not want anything modified on the internal drive. The installation appears to go okay, but when I try to boot to the usb drive, I get the error, "no boot sector on usb device" and it immediately falls back to my interal drive. I have tried this installation with both 10.10 (amd64) and 11.04 (amd64). How can I fix this?
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Feb 13, 2011
upon adding the installed VL on the existing LILO.. (btw i have not installed its LILO on the installation setup) since i know that i will just add it to the "existing" LILO the error above arises upon doing the lilo run command.$adding Vector6.0 etc.FATAL : Boot sector of /dev/hdc13 doesn't have a boot signature.i have tagged the /dev/hdc13 bootable via CFDISK. but same problem arises..
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