Unable to boot GuixSD USB stick

Unable to boot GuixSD USB stick

[良ϖ]

Hi,

I've followed instructions on this page:
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/USB-Stick-Installation.html#USB-Stick-Installation

everything goes smoothly and at the end I get a partition named
"gnu-disk-image" with flag "boot". Sounds good. When I mount it it's a
classical GNU / Linux root with folders bin, root, dev, etc, gnu,
home, mnt, root, run, tmp and var.

However when I reboot the key isn't recognised by my laptop so I'm
unable to install it :'(

Any ideas how I could solve that?

Thanks in advance,

piotr

Re: Unable to boot GuixSD USB stick

[良ϖ]

I've got some new stuff:

Using Grub2 command line I am able to invoke `ls` to see all available
device / partitions and guixsd bootable partition is present as
(hd0,msdos1).

So I want to boot Linux manually from Grub2 command line.
set root=(hd0,msdos1)

Next steps are to set boot files and boot prompt. I found nothing like
"vmlinuz" at the root (it would be too easy) but after some meandering
I find the two files /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img and
/boot/grub/i386-pc/boot.img

linux /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img
returns error: "invalid magic number"

linux /boot/grub/i386-pc/boot.img
returns error: "unexpected end of file /boot/grub/i386-pc/boot.img"

I have some questions:
- Where in the bootable partition is the boot file I should launch?
- If this boot file is core.img, how should I fix this magic number?
- If this boot file is boot.img, how do I make sure the file has been
correctly copied?
- Is the image really usable "out of the box" or does it require some tuning?

Thanks in advance.

piotr

On 09/04/2017, 良ϖ <p.de.boisset@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've followed instructions on this page:
> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/USB-Stick-Installation.html#USB-Stick-Installation
>
> everything goes smoothly and at the end I get a partition named
> "gnu-disk-image" with flag "boot". Sounds good. When I mount it it's a
> classical GNU / Linux root with folders bin, root, dev, etc, gnu,
> home, mnt, root, run, tmp and var.
>
> However when I reboot the key isn't recognised by my laptop so I'm
> unable to install it :'(
>
> Any ideas how I could solve that?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> piotr
>

Re: Unable to boot GuixSD USB stick

[良ϖ]

For the record, perhaps it would be useful to others in the same
situation to be hinted to read what's in grub.cfg: it contains the
reference to boot file and boot prompt (see the menu entry).

Using these references I was able to complete a boot. Don't forget to
include all options in the "linux …" command (boot file)

piotr

On 10/04/2017, 良ϖ <p.de.boisset@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've got some new stuff:
>
> Using Grub2 command line I am able to invoke `ls` to see all available
> device / partitions and guixsd bootable partition is present as
> (hd0,msdos1).
>
> So I want to boot Linux manually from Grub2 command line.
> set root=(hd0,msdos1)
>
> Next steps are to set boot files and boot prompt. I found nothing like
> "vmlinuz" at the root (it would be too easy) but after some meandering
> I find the two files /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img and
> /boot/grub/i386-pc/boot.img
>
> linux /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img
> returns error: "invalid magic number"
>
> linux /boot/grub/i386-pc/boot.img
> returns error: "unexpected end of file /boot/grub/i386-pc/boot.img"
>
> I have some questions:
> - Where in the bootable partition is the boot file I should launch?
> - If this boot file is core.img, how should I fix this magic number?
> - If this boot file is boot.img, how do I make sure the file has been
> correctly copied?
> - Is the image really usable "out of the box" or does it require some
> tuning?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> piotr
>
> On 09/04/2017, 良ϖ <p.de.boisset@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've followed instructions on this page:
>> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/USB-Stick-Installation.html#USB-Stick-Installation
>>
>> everything goes smoothly and at the end I get a partition named
>> "gnu-disk-image" with flag "boot". Sounds good. When I mount it it's a
>> classical GNU / Linux root with folders bin, root, dev, etc, gnu,
>> home, mnt, root, run, tmp and var.
>>
>> However when I reboot the key isn't recognised by my laptop so I'm
>> unable to install it :'(
>>
>> Any ideas how I could solve that?
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>>
>> piotr
>>
>

Re: Unable to boot GuixSD USB stick

[Thomas Danckaert]

From: 良ϖ <p.de.boisset@gmail.com>
Subject: Unable to boot GuixSD USB stick
Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2017 18:46:18 +0000

> However when I reboot the key isn't recognised by my laptop so I'm
> unable to install it :'(
>
> Any ideas how I could solve that?

Maybe one thing to try is calling 'sync' after the dd command that 
creates the image, to ensure everything is fully written, i.e.

dd if=guixsd-usb-install-0.12.0.x86_64 of=/dev/sdX && sync

(this has bitten me before)

otherwise it's hard to tell from the information you've provided:

Do you know if this is a specific issue with the Guix installation
image, or does it happen for other bootable USB media, too? Were you
able to use other bootable images on the same USB stick in the past?

I've had issues with specific combinations of USB sticks and laptops
in the past (though that was years ago).

Thomas

Re: Unable to boot GuixSD USB stick

[良ϖ]

Hi, thanks for you answer.

> Maybe one thing to try is calling 'sync' after the dd command that
> creates the image, to ensure everything is fully written, i.e.

Actually (see later emails) I've been able to manually boot the USB
stick. But why doesn't it work automatically on my machine? this is
weird ^^

> Do you know if this is a specific issue with the Guix installation
> image, or does it happen for other bootable USB media, too? Were you
> able to use other bootable images on the same USB stick in the past?

This stick + this laptop should run fine: I've put Ubuntu on the same
stick and it works fine.

On 10/04/2017, Thomas Danckaert <post@thomasdanckaert.be> wrote:
> From: 良ϖ <p.de.boisset@gmail.com>
> Subject: Unable to boot GuixSD USB stick
> Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2017 18:46:18 +0000
>
>> However when I reboot the key isn't recognised by my laptop so I'm
>> unable to install it :'(
>>
>> Any ideas how I could solve that?
>
> Maybe one thing to try is calling 'sync' after the dd command that
> creates the image, to ensure everything is fully written, i.e.
>
> dd if=guixsd-usb-install-0.12.0.x86_64 of=/dev/sdX && sync
>
> (this has bitten me before)
>
> otherwise it's hard to tell from the information you've provided:
>
> Do you know if this is a specific issue with the Guix installation
> image, or does it happen for other bootable USB media, too? Were you
> able to use other bootable images on the same USB stick in the past?
>
> I've had issues with specific combinations of USB sticks and laptops
> in the past (though that was years ago).
>
> Thomas
>