Re: Is it possible to install Debian in such a case.

[David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>]

On Sat 11 May 2019 at 16:42:04 (+0100), Brian wrote:
> On Fri 10 May 2019 at 13:20:39 -0500, David Wright wrote:

> > My interest in this stems from a Laptop on which you are blind until
> > the kernel loads (ie text pours down the screen). No boot selection
> > menu, no CMOS screens, no Grub screens.
> 
> You are in a bad way. I wouldn't even wish that on those users who see
> -user as a Windows support list. :)

I made some progress with this laptop. I think it's a problem with the
hardware that might involve something charging up with use. Left for a
week or two (or more), I get a period of time when the screen works,
and this was long enough to get though the early installation and
install the rest via ssh as I usually do.

I left out installing grub, and I had also already set Grub's timeout
to 60 seconds in order that I know I'm on Grub's blue screen even when
I can't see it. That enabled me to boot the old system, update grub to
probe the new one, reboot (blind) to the new system, and then update
grub on the new system and install it in the MBR when I was sure
everything was working. (Remember that once the system is up and
running, it can drive a monitor just fine.)

That has led to finding these lines in systemd's journal:

Jun 27 09:47:04 west systemd[1]: Created slice system-systemd\x2dbacklight.slice.
Jun 27 09:47:04 west systemd[1]: Starting Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:intel_backlight...
Jun 27 09:47:04 west systemd[1]: Started Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:intel_backlight.
Jun 27 09:47:06 west systemd[1]: Starting Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:dell_backlight...
Jun 27 09:47:06 west systemd-backlight[615]: Failed to write system 'brightness' attribute: Input/output error
Jun 27 09:47:06 west systemd[1]: systemd-backlight@backlight:dell_backlight.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 27 09:47:06 west systemd[1]: Failed to start Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:dell_backlight.
Jun 27 09:47:06 west systemd[1]: systemd-backlight@backlight:dell_backlight.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jun 27 09:47:06 west systemd[1]: systemd-backlight@backlight:dell_backlight.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

which suggests there's something wrong with the backlight.

Also from following this thread, I realised that putting lines like:

menuentry "Install Debian via HTTP" {
        search --no-floppy --label --set=root <LABEL-OF-ROOT-FS>
        linux   /boot/linux
        initrd  /boot/initrd.gz
}

into grub.cfg, I can drop a pair of netboot files into /boot and then
boot from them, without having to write to and boot from USB sticks
(which is beyond the capabilities of my older machines). I hadn't
realised it was so simple, particularly when you have two root
partitions on your system disk.

Cheers,
David.