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Groups > linux.debian.user > #196113 > unrolled thread

Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick?

Started byRick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com>
First post2018-05-27 00:30 +0200
Last post2018-06-03 11:30 +0200
Articles 5 on this page of 25 — 6 participants

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  Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-05-27 00:30 +0200
    Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB  stick? didier gaumet <didier.gaumet@gmail.com> - 2018-05-27 09:10 +0200
      Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-05-27 12:40 +0200
        Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2018-05-27 13:00 +0200
          Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-05-27 13:00 +0200
          Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB  stick? Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2018-05-29 16:50 +0200
        Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB  stick? didier gaumet <didier.gaumet@gmail.com> - 2018-05-27 14:00 +0200
    Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB  stick? Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2018-05-27 12:20 +0200
      Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-05-27 12:40 +0200
        Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2018-05-27 13:00 +0200
          Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-05-27 13:20 +0200
            Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2018-05-28 18:30 +0200
        Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB  stick? Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-05-27 13:10 +0200
        Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2018-05-27 14:20 +0200
          Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2018-05-27 14:40 +0200
            Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-05-31 14:00 +0200
              Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2018-05-31 17:30 +0200
                Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2018-06-02 15:10 +0200
                  Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2018-06-02 22:50 +0200
                  Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-06-03 02:20 +0200
                    Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-06-03 09:30 +0200
                      Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2018-06-03 09:50 +0200
                        Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-06-03 11:00 +0200
                      Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2018-06-03 10:30 +0200
                        Re: Installing Debian on a Minnowboard Turbot with installer on USB stick? Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2018-06-03 11:30 +0200

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#196360

FromRick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com>
Date2018-06-03 09:30 +0200
Message-ID<vWvCF-7WZ-7@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#196359
Well… I have some results.  Just not the kind I was expecting!  (see below)

On Jun 2, 2018, at 5:15 PM, Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> wrote:

> I have a confession to make…
> 
> On Jun 2, 2018, at 6:09 AM, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net> wrote:
> 
>> Rick Thomas reported that the boot process of
>> firmware-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-DVD-1.iso
>> fails with
>> Incorrect CD-ROM detected
>> after it was re-partitioned to GPT.
> 
> On the advice of another comment in this thread, I didn’t use
>    firmware-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-DVD-1.iso
> for those experiments.  Instead, I used
>    firmware-9.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso
> to avoid any possible alpha/testing anomalies.
> 
> I neglected to say that in my earlier report.  I’m sorry for any confusion it has caused!
> 
> 
> This afternoon, I plan to make a comprehensive set of tests: 
>   (a) “as-is” no messing with the partition tables at all; just dd directly to the USB stick.
>   (b) an automatically gdisk-built GPT table deleting partition 1 and leaving partition 2 unmodified except for setting as type EF00.
>   (c) an automatically gdisk-built GPT table based upon the original MBR table deleting partition 1 and leaving partition 2 unmodified except for setting as type EF00.
>   (d) a hand-built (using disk) GPT table with partition 1 having the same start/end as the partition 2 had in the original GPT table and type EF00, and no partition 2.
> 
> I plan to start with
>    debian-9.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso
> because it’s the smallest (to minimizing time spend dd-ing) and has the fewest non-fully-supported features to confuse issues.  In particular, this is not the firmware-9.4 I used above.
> 
> I’ll report back as soon as I have some results.
> 
> Thanks for all the help!
> Rick

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice.

When I tried part (a) — just a simple dd — with debian-9.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso, the minnowboard immediately recognized it as bootable and presented it as part of the EFI menu labeled “EFI USB Device”.  When I chose that option, it booted without incident and ran the installer.  When it came to the part where it looks for a CD, it easily found the USB stick (no intervention on my part required) and proceeded to read modules from it.  I let it go til it got to the partitioning phase.  I stopped it there.

So, I moved on to try the same thing (just part (a)) with “firmware-9.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso”.  With the same results — it gave me the EFI menu offering the USB stick. When I chose that, it proceeded to install, finding and reading the “CD” as usual.

So, I was beginning to wonder if I were going crazy.  In any case, I tried part (a) with “firmware-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-DVD-1.iso”.  And guess what!  That worked too, just the same as the other two.

Conclusion:  Either I’m imagining things, or there’s something flakey about the USB ports on this device that sometimes causes a USB stick to NOT be recognized as a bootable device.

Thomas, If you would like to follow up on the inability of the installer to recognize itself as a suitable installation CD after the partition table has been modified, please let me know and I’ll be happy to help any way I can.

In any case, I apologize for all the noise.

Rick

PS: One other item that may shed light — the above experiments were performed using an 8GB Generic USB2.0 flash drive purchased thru NewEgg direct from a factory in China.  On the suspicion that there might be something strange about the USB ports on the minnowboard, tried it with a name-brand 16GB USB3.0 flash drive from Kingston DataTraveler.

The minnowboard has two USB ports.  The “upper” port is USB2.0 and is usually used for a keyboard/mouse combo.  The “lower” port is USB3.0 and recommended for attaching mass storage devices, such as the Debian installer.

When I plugged the USB3.0 DataTraveler into the lower (USB3.0) slot, it was NOT recognized as bootable.  So I swapped the plugs, plugging the keyboard/mouse into the lower (USB3.0) slot, and the DataTraveler into the upper (USB2.0) slot.  Guess what!  This time it WAS recognized as a bootable device!

So it appears that the minnowboard firmware (or USB hardware?) has trouble recognizing a USB3.0 device as bootable???  Something to take up with the Netgate minnowboard support folks, I guess.

Enjoy!

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#196361

Fromdeloptes <deloptes@gmail.com>
Date2018-06-03 09:50 +0200
Message-ID<vWvW1-82M-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#196360
Rick Thomas wrote:

> So, I was beginning to wonder if I were going crazy.  In any case, I tried
> part (a) with “firmware-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-DVD-1.iso”.  And guess
> what!  That worked too, just the same as the other two.

I am not surprised by anything nowdays, but I was wondering if you switched
off the device, or just rebooted. 

regards

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#196363

FromRick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com>
Date2018-06-03 11:00 +0200
Message-ID<vWx1L-1uC-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#196361
On Jun 3, 2018, at 12:45 AM, deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> wrote:

> Rick Thomas wrote:
> 
>> So, I was beginning to wonder if I were going crazy.  In any case, I tried
>> part (a) with “firmware-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-DVD-1.iso”.  And guess
>> what!  That worked too, just the same as the other two.
> 
> I am not surprised by anything nowdays, but I was wondering if you switched
> off the device, or just rebooted. 
> 
> regards

I actually tried it both ways.

In one case, I halted the minnowboard but left it plugged in, then I hit the “reset” button and it acted as I described — found the stick and was willing to boot from it.

In the other case, I halted the minnowboard, then unplugged it from the power brick, then reconnected it to the power brick. same results as above.

I’m not sure what it means, but that’s what I saw.

Rick

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#196362

From"Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>
Date2018-06-03 10:30 +0200
Message-ID<vWwyJ-Jd-3@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#196360
Hi,

Rick Thomas wrote:
> Instead, I used
>    firmware-9.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso
> to avoid any possible alpha/testing anomalies.

Normally i'd say that there is no decisive difference to expect.
In any case copying a "netinst" ISO is much faster than a "DVD-1".


> When I tried part (a) — just a simple dd — with
> debian-9.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso, the minnowboard immediately recognized it as
> bootable and presented it as part of the EFI menu labeled “EFI USB Device”.

Normally this difference should not appear. Very strange.

But we can now classify the demand for GPT on
  https://minnowboard.org/tutorials/best-practice-boot-media-selection
as spin-off of the usual rumor that EFI needs GPT.


> it booted without incident and ran the installer.
> When it came to the part where it looks for a CD, it easily found the USB
> stick

This was expectable. As long as the ISO is marked as partition, the
script in the initrd should find the device.


> tried
> part (a) with “firmware-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-DVD-1.iso”.  And guess what!
> That worked too, just the same as the other two.

Hrmpf. At least above "normally"s are not generally put in doubt.
It would be another riddle if one ISO would fail reproducibly while
the other succedds reproducibly.

Maybe you changed a setting in the firwmware ?


> or there’s something flakey about the USB ports on this device

But why did the manual start of “fs0:\efi\boot\bootx64.efi” ran the
boot loader, loaded the kernel, and came far enough to run into the
software shortcomming of device detection ?


> In any case, I apologize for all the noise.

I doubt that this was a hallucination.
If not the hardware (stick and port) makes itself a suspect by failing
in normal operation, then i'd bet on the firmware's settings.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Thomas, If you would like to follow up on the inability of the installer to
> recognize itself as a suitable installation CD

I believe to understand that problem. Let's see whether debian-cd will
find a time slot to discuss it and whether trying the devices found by
"list-devices disk" (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc on my machine) is
harmless enough.

It would be interesting to study the history of cdrom-detect.postinst
(package "cdrom-detect", 1600+ commits in
https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdrom-detect/commits/master).
cdrom-detect/blame brings me to some forth and back, which probably
does not tell the reason for the decision not to look for "disk".

I'd need a comfortable method to look at the revison _before_ a commit
in order to get the next older blaming.
Or a method to see only commits which affect the interesting code parts
   devices="$(list-devices cd; list-devices maybe-usb-floppy)"
and
   devices="$(list-devices usb-partition)"
   ...
        if try_mount $device $CDFS; then

Any GitLab experts here who could help me navigate ?
Or git experts who can augment my knowledge beyond "clone", "add",
"commit", and "push", so that i can inspect a clone locally ?


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

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#196364

FromRick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com>
Date2018-06-03 11:30 +0200
Message-ID<vWxuN-1Ti-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#196362
Hi Thomas,

On Jun 3, 2018, at 1:26 AM, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Rick Thomas wrote:
>> Instead, I used
>>   firmware-9.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso
>> to avoid any possible alpha/testing anomalies.
> 
> Normally i'd say that there is no decisive difference to expect.
> In any case copying a "netinst" ISO is much faster than a "DVD-1".
> 
> 
>> When I tried part (a) — just a simple dd — with
>> debian-9.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso, the minnowboard immediately recognized it as
>> bootable and presented it as part of the EFI menu labeled “EFI USB Device”.
> 
> Normally this difference should not appear. Very strange.
> 
> But we can now classify the demand for GPT on
>  https://minnowboard.org/tutorials/best-practice-boot-media-selection
> as spin-off of the usual rumor that EFI needs GPT.
> 
> 
>> it booted without incident and ran the installer.
>> When it came to the part where it looks for a CD, it easily found the USB
>> stick
> 
> This was expectable. As long as the ISO is marked as partition, the
> script in the initrd should find the device.
> 
> 
>> tried
>> part (a) with “firmware-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-DVD-1.iso”.  And guess what!
>> That worked too, just the same as the other two.
> 
> Hrmpf. At least above "normally"s are not generally put in doubt.
> It would be another riddle if one ISO would fail reproducibly while
> the other succedds reproducibly.
> 
> Maybe you changed a setting in the firmware ?

In the previous experiments (where I modified the partition tables on the stick after dd-ing) I did try some different setting in the firmware.  But for the above described experiments, I reset the firmware to factory defaults before starting the process and made no changes thereafter.


>> or there’s something flakey about the USB ports on this device
> 
> But why did the manual start of “fs0:\efi\boot\bootx64.efi” ran the
> boot loader, loaded the kernel, and came far enough to run into the
> software shortcoming of device detection ?

I’m not absolutely sure that the manual start was necessary.  I may have gotten used to never seeing the “EFI USB Device” menu entry.  So when the stars aligned and the stick *was* seen, I didn’t notice.  So, maybe, the fact that I got it to work from the command line was just because it would have worked anyway that time from the EFI menu.

>> In any case, I apologize for all the noise.
> 
> I doubt that this was a hallucination.
> If not the hardware (stick and port) makes itself a suspect by failing
> in normal operation, then i’d bet on the firmware's settings.

I’m pretty sure that everything I’ve been seeing can be explained if we assume the minnowboard firmware has trouble recognizing a USB3.0 device as bootable.


> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>> Thomas, If you would like to follow up on the inability of the installer to
>> recognize itself as a suitable installation CD
> 
> I believe to understand that problem. Let's see whether debian-cd will
> find a time slot to discuss it and whether trying the devices found by
> "list-devices disk" (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc on my machine) is
> harmless enough.
> 
> It would be interesting to study the history of cdrom-detect.postinst
> (package "cdrom-detect", 1600+ commits in
> https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdrom-detect/commits/master).
> cdrom-detect/blame brings me to some forth and back, which probably
> does not tell the reason for the decision not to look for "disk".
> 
> I'd need a comfortable method to look at the revison _before_ a commit
> in order to get the next older blaming.
> Or a method to see only commits which affect the interesting code parts
>   devices="$(list-devices cd; list-devices maybe-usb-floppy)"
> and
>   devices="$(list-devices usb-partition)"
>   ...
>        if try_mount $device $CDFS; then
> 
> Any GitLab experts here who could help me navigate ?
> Or git experts who can augment my knowledge beyond "clone", "add",
> "commit", and "push", so that i can inspect a clone locally ?
> 
> 
> Have a nice day :)
> 
> Thomas
>

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