Multiple Problems On Installing Debian 7.8 On PowerPC G4

Hi All,

I recently decided to tryout Linux and dual booted my laptop (originally just had windows 8) with Xubuntu. Now I want to try out Kali Linux. So I downloaded Kali and made a bootable USB, the problem is that when I try to boot from the USB it just brings up the grub menu asking me to select Xubuntu, Windows etc. I've changed the boot menu in the BIOS but that has no effect.

I've tried booting into windows and the restarting by holding shift but when I select the usb option it just says:

"system doesn't have any USB boot option. Please select other boot option in Boot Manager Menu"

and then returns to the grub menu. I don't understand because I used a bootable usb to install xubunto?

I'd be really grateful if anyone can help me out with this!

Thanks

I have a Toshiba laptop that will not boot. I get to the grub menu which gives me the option to load Ubuntu, Ubuntu recovery mode, or a couple of memory tests.

If I select Ubuntu I get a black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left corner.

Selecting recovery mode gives me a lot of messages with the last one being "EDD information not available".

The memory test option does not return any errors.

If I try booting Mint from a bootable DVD I get the Mint screen and then it goes gray with a flashing cursor in the top left corner.

Any suggestions?

I clean installed Antergos 64bit (GNOME 3) on my iMac, and now need to boot the OS X DVD that came with the computer to format and restore. The ultimate goal is to keep this machine for dual-booting (which I can take care of) since there are simply things I need from both operating systems. If only Antergos or GRUB would boot from the DVD to kick-off the process.


What have you done so far?

It made sense to install rEFInd on this machine, since that was the program that helped OS X boot the Antergos image from my USB drive in the first place.

I followed the steps laid out in the Arch Wiki. First, by using the refind-install command Then used the refind-install --usedefault /dev/sda1 command to "also install rEFInd to the default/fallback boot path".
I shutdown, and booted the Mac up in hopes to catch rEFInd's splash screen, but to no avail. Only the Antergos/GRUB screen, and then into Antergos as usual.
(This began a hopeless cycle of re-installing, and rebooting which lasted quite some time.)

Afterwards, I tried manually installing rEFInd using the following commands from the Arch Wiki:
Quote:
cp /usr/share/refind/refind_x64.efi $esp/EFI/refind/
efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 1 -l /EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi -L "rEFInd Boot Manager"
Also, I installed the mactel-boot utility from the AUR.

And according to the efibootmgr utility, rEFInd was now first in the boot order:

Quote:
BootCurrent: 0002
BootOrder: 0004,0003,0002,0080,0001,0000
Boot0000* ubuntu
Boot0001* rEFInd Boot Manager
Boot0002* antergos_grub
Boot0003* rEFInd Boot Manager
Boot0004* rEFInd Boot Manager
Boot0080* Mac OS X
Boot0081* Recovery OS
BootFFFF*
After shutdown/power-on, the machine displayed alot of white-colored "clearing node" text, before tragically booting once again into Antergos/GRUB.

I've also read How-to Geek's guide on re-installing OS X on Mac, yet the tutorial never mentions how to restore it from Linux.


Conclusion:

What piece of this puzzle am I missing? Would creating a LiveUSB of OS X be an easier route than this DVD? Is there a GRUB command I'm not aware of that can change the boot order?

I'm almost certain rEFInd is not the only way Linux would be able to boot this OS X DVD, it's just the only way I've known how so far.

I can clearly see the Mac OS X boot option in efibootmgr as Boot0080*, so at least it's being recognized. When Antergos boots to the desktop, the OS X DVD is displayed as "WindowsSupport" if that helps.
I'm out of my element and am at an impasse, your help will be appreciated.

PLEASE & THANK YOU

Hi

My machine was a dual boot debain + W7. The debian had LUKS encryption and LVM.

I had to re-install W7 and now there is no access to the grub menu and of course to the debian installation.

I tried "boot repair disk"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/
, but it couldnt access the encrypted volume. It did generate the following output:
paste.ubuntu.com/10591353

Would appreciate help how to get the boot repair disk to access the encrypted partition and recover the grub menu

Thanks

I am trying to boot Linux Mint from an 8gb Sandisk USB. I changed my boot settings and it boots into what I believe is called grub? I am given two options, Boot Linux Mint, Boot Linux Mint (compatibility mode). When I select either of them all I get is a black screen. I've tried many things to get around this, messing with my graphics card settings (within grub), different USB's (another 8gb and a 32gb), I tried Ubuntu and that just doesn't boot at all I go straight back to my UEFI settings. I'm very new to Linux and I don't just want to hop in, I just want to boot from my USB whenever I want to play around with it. Thank You

Note: I'm running windows 8.1 currently on a ASUS N550JV laptop. I've been using the UUI from Pen Drive Linux.

Hi

I am very suprised! I previously had a Windows 7 desktop, dual boot with Windows Server 2012 R2. I didn't care much about 2012 R2, so I went with a Debian server on another computer.

I wanted to triple boot my computer, so I looked at my BIOS to see if my computer has UEFI support, but it doesnt, so I am not able to boot to GPT. One decision lead to another, and I decided not to install Hackintosh. As part of this process, I had converted it to GPT, and then back to MBR when installing Windows 8.1 Pro. Everything went well.

When I went to install Debian 7, it was not recognizing anything on that drive. I found out it was a backup GUID partition table left over. I used fixparts found on rodsbooks.com, and I fixed the disk partition table.

Now this is where things get weird. Before installing, I created a primary partition for /, and an extended partition with 5 logical partitions inside it. I installed Debian 7 from a live install DVD, and I manually created the partitions. I created a 4GB /, 16GB /usr, 4GB /var, and 64GB /home. Then I left a bunch of free space (~145GB) and then 16GB swap space. (I have 8GB ram, and I plan to hibernate sometimes).

After a successful installation, installation of packages, reboots, and frustration with PCI card problems, I rebooted to Windows 8.1.

Upon opening diskpart gui, I was greeted with the picture attached.

WHAT IS GOING ON?

Hello.

I am a newcomer to Linux, coming from Windows, desktop PC user. I already have a few months' experience with Ubuntu and Mint. I can handle some basic terminal commands, but I prefer the GUI whenever possible.

I'm not an IT specialist, far from it. Just a normal average computer user who can read a few things if they are understandable enough, and wants a decent operating system. So please speak to me in simple human terms, I can handle high tech jargon only so much. Thanks.

I have 2 main questions:

1. I've encountered problems when booting from LiveCD (written to USB) with both Mint and Lubuntu. The boot menu appeared but when I pressed any of the “try live” or “install” options, the screen froze with garbled checkerd pixels. Web searching for solutions, I found the thing with accessing special boot options and adding kernel parameters like 'nomodeset' and 'noaccel' and doing that I could proceed with installation. Then, after installing proprietary drivers, everything was fine.

This is not the first time this happened. As far as I understand this is related to the nouveau driver.

Does this happen only with some distros, like, for example, Ubuntu and its derivatives, or is it a larger problem from the main Linux kernel? From what I've read on some forums, such problems happened with other graphic cards as well, and it seems to be an old problem as old as 2011 if not older.

Why nothing could have been done to fix these issues so far? Couldn't all distros use some option from boot menu to either go with simple safe vesa graphics mode or a text based helpful install that might guide the user afterwards in downloading the proprietary drivers if s/he desires?...

And what is the main cause of the problem? Nvidia not doing FOSS drivers? Nouveau not being flexible enough? Linux kernel not keeping up? Particular distros that don't care about adding an extra boot option? A combination of all these? What is to be done? Would switching to other distro help in this regard? how would I know which distros use nouveau and which don't?

2. I'd like to look into other distros as well. What I need is stability, meaning as bug free as possible, as few apps hanging or crashing as possible, while still being user friendly. But no rolling realeases, please. I want to update the system without fear that I won't boot into desktop – again!

I need distros that come with multimedia codecs, Flash and stuff out of the box and also an easy option to install the proprietary video card graphics driver. I am all for FOSS, but for now I'm also being realistic, and unfortunately have to go with proprietary drivers.

What recommendations do you have?

Thank you.

Hello All. This is my first post here. I am worse than a newbie; I'm a PC dinosaur! Not joking either.
Recently got a Dell Inspiron 3048 with Windows 8.1 pre installed. As I am a die hard XP user (my other PC is a Dell Dimension 2400), and seeing that PC's days may be numbered, I want to start using Linux, and decided Mint 17.1 would be first on the list.
Ordered a Linux Mint 17.1 boot disk and went to install it. At the option for a dual boot with Windows, I got lost, and did not understand the "other" choice versus making Linux the only OS on the PC. I wound up wiping my HDD and lost contact with Windows 8.1. Fortunately, the Dell Tech I got at Dell Support was able to walk me through getting Windows back up, but the only way I can now access Mint 17.1 is with the boot disk, but there is no set up options as it is already set up, even though incorrectly for a dual boot.
How do I wipe out Linux without losing Windows 8.1 as well so I can re install Linux and this time make the correct selection for a dual boot?
Anyone willing to respond please do so small and slow so I can follow.
TIA.
BTW, I have tried installing Zorin OS 9 Ultimate on my XP machine via DVD and USB, but I can't get past the f1/f2 loop, even though I have reconfigured my boot sequence according to the drive I'm installing from. Zorin support has been MIA on this. Anyone having a similar problem?
Cheers

Hi guys/gals.

I installed Debian Jessie with LXDE as my default desktop environment, no problems, except I can't play most games. So installed the Meta Package of the Gnome Desktop environment. Everything appeared to be ok, but when I went to reboot, all I get is a black screen.

I went to the Grub and typed in "nomodeset" to get me back to a desktop.
I uninstalled Gnome (not full removal), but still have the same problem.
When I restarted in safety mode, Gnome was still a desktop option that I could load, which I did. I'm confused. Do I need to do a complete removal?

I tried installing the nvidia graphic card driver as per the Debian manual, and that left me with only a root terminal and no GUI.

I've got about 2Gigs of ram and a 2.4 GHz Pentium 3 processor with an ASUS motherboard. (yes, it's a 12 year old computer, but not used for the past few years)

Any help would be great.

Thanks in advance,

Joe

I have tried to instal Debian 8 from USB stick on my SONY Vayo (VGN-NR430DT) but it wouldn't work even though I set up bios to boot first from usb stick. Instead it would go to the hard drive directly into old debian 7. The bootable usb stick is fine as it worked to install on my other computer with an ASUS Z87-A motherboard. Any ideas how to fix this?