Live USB drops me into ash. Can't reproduce anymore. Should I file a bug?
Hi
The following is a question I was going to post. Since then, I can't reproduce the problem anymore. I decide to post it anyways in case anyone finds it useful.
ORIGINAL MESSAGE BEGIN
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I have trouble booting up Debian's live USB.
Unfortunately, I can't find any meaningful information to help resolve the problem. Because of that, I have not filed a bug report yet.
Any suggestions please?
To elaborate:
- The image was 12.2.0, amd64 MATE flavor (debian-live-12.2.0-amd64-mate.iso), downloaded from debian.org on 2023-12-09.
- SHA-512 good. Signature good.
- The machine was Dell Precision 5530 (laptop)
- 1 SSD, 1 spinning hard drive. Logitech dongle plugged in one of the USB ports, live USB plugged in another USB port. Nothing in Type-C USB port.
- Step 1: wrote it to a flashdrive: sudo time dd if="$DISK_IMAGE_PATH" of="$DEVICE" obs=1MiB status=progress
- Step 2a: plug it in, select the flashdrive in so-called “BIOS”
- Step 2b: I have tried both “UEFI” and “Legacy External Device Boot Mode”. Both times with Secure Boot turned off.
- Step 3: Once I press Enter, the following logs show up for about 2 seconds before GRUB menu:
Failed to open \EFI\BOOT\� - Invalid Parameter
Failed to load image ��: Invalid Parameter
start_image() returned Invalid Parameter, falling back to default loader
Please note that these logs may not be exact, because I had to capture it with mobile phone camera and type it by hand
- Step 4: “Welcome to GRUB!” shows for a blink of an eye, then GRUB menu shows up along with 2 short beeps.
- Step 5a: If I choose “Live system (amd64)”,
- what appears to be a terminal window shows up for about 4 seconds. Blank black rectangle, no text.
- Then the graphical-menu-with-black-rectangle goes away and some “ACPI BIOS Error”s show up in a textual interface for about 2 seconds. (These errors have always existed in my on-disk Debian installation, but I have always been able to boot and use my system without noticeable issues.)
- Then a graphical interface shows up. It's not frozen, I can see a glowing circle getting brighter and dimmer, brighter and dimmer, ... But other than a simple “wallpaper”, I don't see anything else. It stays like this for a long time before erring out. In hind sight, maybe I should have pressed F5 and found out what was going on. If I have time, I will try that later.
- Graphical interface replaced by (presumably the same?) “ACPI BIOS Error”s for a brief moment, then I was dropped into BusyBox ash, along with some error messages.
- /boot.log is an empty file. /var/log does not exist.
- Step 5b: If I choose “Live system (amd64 fail-safe mode)”, the whole thing gets stuck at the graphical-menu-with-a-black-rectangle. CPU fan is really loud, but nothing happens for several minutes (until I powered off the laptop)
Here are the ACPI BIOS Errors:
[ 0.240488] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object [\_SB.PCI0.X
HC.RHUB.SS08._UPC], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20220331/dswload2-326)
[ 0.240493] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog (202203
31/psobject-220)
[ 0.240498] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object [\_SB.PCI0.X
HC.RHUB.SS08._PLD], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20220331/dswload2-326)
[ 0.240503] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog (202203
31/psobject-220)
[ 0.240532] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object [\_SB.PCI0.X
HC.RHUB.SS09._UPC], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20220331/dswload2-326)
[ 0.240537] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog (202203
31/psobject-220)
[ 0.240542] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object [\_SB.PCI0.X
HC.RHUB.SS09._PLD], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20220331/dswload2-326)
[ 0.240547] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog (202203
31/psobject-220)
[ 0.240576] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object [\_SB.PCI0.X
HC.RHUB.SS10._UPC], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20220331/dswload2-326)
[ 0.240581] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog (202203
31/psobject-220)
[ 0.240586] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object [\_SB.PCI0.X
HC.RHUB.SS10._PLD], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20220331/dswload2-326)
[ 0.240591] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog (202203
31/psobject-220)
Here is the screen when I was dropped into ash:
BOOT FAILED!
This Live System image failed to boot.
Please file a bug against the 'live-boot' package or email the Debian Live
mailing list at <debian-live@lists.debian.org>, making sure to note the
exact version, name and distribution of the image you were attempting to boot.
The file /boot.log contains some debugging information but booting with the
debug command-line parameter will greatly increase its verbosity which is
extremely useful when diagnosing issues.
live-boot will now start a shell. The error message was:
Unable to find a medium containing a live file system
BusyBox v1.35.0 (Debian 1:1.35.0-4+b3) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
(initramfs)
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ORIGINAL MESSAGE END
What happened afterwards:
I noticed the tip about booting with the debug command-line parameter (which was carelessly overlooked twice) and decided to try it out before posting. I was hoping to see some stuffs in /boot.log, but instead, the whole thing worked. After a minute or so, a functioning MATE session showed up, hooray.
I tried rebooting several times, with and without debug parameter, and with and without pressing F5 while booting. Works every time.
All the error messages mentioned above, except the final one, are still present, but the system was able to boot into graphical desktop regardless.
The only difference I can think of is that maybe something in the BIOS changed. At first I tried UEFI booting (default mode. never changed it until today). Failed a few times. Next, I tried Legacy booting, Failed once iirc. Then (iirc) I tried again without changing boot mode, but the BIOS claimed to be in UEFI mode again. From here on, every boot worked.
If anyone is interested in reproducing this problem, I can try to poke around a few more times.
Thanks for reading. I'm not familiar with Debian mailing lists so if lengthy messages are not appropriate for mailing lists, please let me know.
Regards
Ruichao Chen (陈睿超)
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