Weird boot problem. How can this be?
I have a strange problem where my computer does not recognize *ANY* boot device
or boot medium other than one single hard drive where a badly configured debian
linux is installed. I don't think the particulars of that messed-up install
are relevant, but I've put a note about it at the bottom just in case.
I don't understand how it can possibly happen, because I have completely unplugged
that hard drive, flashed the BIOS of the machine with the most recent update, installed
a brand new blank hard drive, and it *STILL* doesn't recognize any boot medium or
boot device unless I plug the drive with that messed-up install back in.
The machine is an Asus Sabertooth X79 motherboard, IA64 "Sandy Bridge" architecture,
with an ASUS SATA DVD-ROM in the chassis and a generic DVD-ROM attached via USB2. If
I don't have the single bootable hard drive (incidentally a 3 TB Seagate drive)
installed in the chassis, NO device will boot. And if I do have it installed in
the chassis, no OTHER device will boot.
I want to fix my confused install by creating a clean "Jessie/Testing" system to
migrate data to. But when I put a bootable 'Jessie' netinst disk into it (in either
drive) and a blank hard disk to format for a new system, and I get
"No Operating System Found" if I go straight into the BIOS boot menu and tell it
to boot off the drive that contains the netinst disk, or
"No bootable medium found; Please insert bootable disk into boot drive and press any
key" if I set the boot order so that the drive with the netinst is included.
I have also tried booting directly from a USB stick; it does exactly the same thing.
My main relevant current limitation in using the messed up install is that "su" and
"sudo" are both broken; to do anything as root, I have to be logged in as root.
There are some others, and lots of documentation that's just plain wrong about where
things are installed etc, but not being able to su or sudo is the most annoying.
My messed up install started as "Sarge" in a different IA64 machine a long time ago,
got upgraded to "Lenny" and then "Wheezy" when "Wheezy" was still experimental.
"Wheezy" was very definitely not ready for prime time, and I did some major config
hacking just to get a usable KDE desktop on it. Used it that way for several
years, then I moved the drive to the current chassis and motherboard and "sorted
out" several new issues that that caused, by hand. Next I wanted something from
the "Experimental" distro, so I downloaded it - and forgot to take "Experimental"
out of my debian sources list immediately afterward. Over the next couple of
weeks, about half the software got "upgraded" to flaky versions not available in
"Wheezy". I started trying to sort out issues and do configuration, and I wound
up with a bizarre mutant hybrid.
Then I realized I had "Experimental" in my sources, got rid of it, Added "Testing"
(which by this time was Jessie heading into the current freeze), and used dpkg to
get RID OF every version of everything that it couldn't still download. That broke
a bunch of stuff, and I've managed fix some by hand and work around the rest of it
for several weeks now. I don't see how it can be relevant when this drive isn't
even attached and I'm still having this problem, but if you can think of any reason
why it might be, do let me know.
Anyway, this is driving me bonkers. If anybody has any clues as to what could be
wrong on such a basic level as to affect boot behavior on a blank hard drive and a
net install disk, and that immediately after flashing the BIOS, please do let me know.
Bear
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