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salan3
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2005 1:18 pm
Posts: 24
Location: Cheshire
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 Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 9:52 pm Post subject: Add new Distro wont boot? |
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Hi All,
I have tried the instructions in issue 108 to put a dif distro on a SD card.
Trouble is although it all seems to go well, when I come to reboot, all I get is a flashing cursor?
I have tried the same with two dif SD cards (one 512 meg and one 2 gig).
I have had this problem when I tried to put EEEunbuntu on a card as well.
Any ideas whats wrong?
For some reason, I just dont seem to be able to boot from SD!
Alan |
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ollie
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Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:26 pm
Posts: 2749
Location: Bathurst NSW Australia
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:17 am Post subject: RE: Add new Distro wont boot? |
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| Have you checked the boot order in the BIOS? Press F2 on boot to go to Setup and then check the boot order. |
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salan3
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2005 1:18 pm
Posts: 24
Location: Cheshire
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 6:37 am Post subject: |
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Yep
I am pressing esc anyway and choosing boot device
Alan |
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RedWillow
LXF regular
Joined: Thu May 29, 2008 2:05 pm
Posts: 716
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 8:21 am Post subject: |
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Nope. 
| salan3 wrote: | | I am pressing esc anyway and choosing boot device |
Pressing esc stops grub from booting up the default Xandros installation straightaway and brings up the Xandros grub menu. You won't be able to boot from an SD card from that grub menu. You need to press F2 as ollie said in order to bring up the BIOS setup menu to change the default boot device. If you've managed to install something to an SD card you would have done that anyway to make your optical drive bootable first. But you need to do that again to get the system to boot from the SD card rather than from the internal flash drive, but once you've done that it should boot from the SD card every time.
A couple of points from your first post: You mention a 512MB card. That's far too small for most distros, unless you've been trying one of the really lean ones. A freshly-installed distro like Mandriva or Ubuntu usually consumes about 2.2 Gb, so you really need a 4Gb card.
I've tried Eeebuntu. It looks good running live but I came across some serious issues with it once installed. It's still in Beta - or was last time I looked. I can recommend Mandriva 2008 Spring (on the latest LXF DVD). Works out of the box on the Eee 701, wireless included. |
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salan3
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2005 1:18 pm
Posts: 24
Location: Cheshire
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:18 am Post subject: |
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| RedWillow wrote: |
Nope.
| salan3 wrote: | | I am pressing esc anyway and choosing boot device |
Pressing esc stops grub from booting up the default Xandros installation straightaway and brings up the Xandros grub menu. You won't be able to boot from an SD card from that grub menu. You need to press F2 as ollie said in order to bring up the BIOS setup menu to change the default boot device. If you've managed to install something to an SD card you would have done that anyway to make your optical drive bootable first. But you need to do that again to get the system to boot from the SD card rather than from the internal flash drive, but once you've done that it should boot from the SD card every time.
A couple of points from your first post: You mention a 512MB card. That's far too small for most distros, unless you've been trying one of the really lean ones. A freshly-installed distro like Mandriva or Ubuntu usually consumes about 2.2 Gb, so you really need a 4Gb card.
I've tried Eeebuntu. It looks good running live but I came across some serious issues with it once installed. It's still in Beta - or was last time I looked. I can recommend Mandriva 2008 Spring (on the latest LXF DVD). Works out of the box on the Eee 701, wireless included. |
Hi thankyou for your reply.
The 512 meg card was tried as that was what was used in the article and suggested!
They also said about pressing escape to choose the boot device!
I have pressed f2 and changed the boot order and that does not work either.
Any suggestions.
P.S. I have also used with the distro that they provide on the cover disk, a 2 gig card and the same results.
With regards to eeunbuntu, I have used it successfully on other machines (not eeepcs) on a 2 gig card.
Alan |
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RedWillow
LXF regular
Joined: Thu May 29, 2008 2:05 pm
Posts: 716
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:35 am Post subject: |
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I haven't seen LXF 108 yet so I don't know in what context a 512 MB card was recommended. I look forward to reading the article when I get hold of this issue.
| salan3 wrote: | | They also said about pressing escape to choose the boot device! |
I would imagine that would only work if you've edited the Xandros menu.lst, but I might be missing something here. Is that what was recommended in the article?
There are two custom Ubuntu respins for the Eee, Ubuntu Eee and Eeebuntu. Which one were you trying?
Not having seen the article yet, I don't know whether Mike has given links for The Eee Wiki and Eee forums, but here they are:
http://forum.eeeuser.com/
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/
You might find them useful. |
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M-Saunders
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Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:14 pm
Posts: 2881
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:56 am Post subject: |
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Hi all,
I wrote that Eee tutorial. If you press the Esc key on the Eee when the Asus logo appears, it brings up a boot device selector. That's definitely the case, unless some very recent BIOS update has changed it (can't see why though!).
Breeezy is a very small distro and a 512MB SD card is more than adequate.
Salan3, did you run the syslinux-nomtools step? Did it report any errors?
M |
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salan3
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2005 1:18 pm
Posts: 24
Location: Cheshire
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 10:15 am Post subject: |
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| M-Saunders wrote: | Hi all,
I wrote that Eee tutorial. If you press the Esc key on the Eee when the Asus logo appears, it brings up a boot device selector. That's definitely the case, unless some very recent BIOS update has changed it (can't see why though!).
Breeezy is a very small distro and a 512MB SD card is more than adequate.
Salan3, did you run the syslinux-nomtools step? Did it report any errors?
M |
Hi mike,
Thanks for repyling.
Yes I did and no errors reported.
BTW in the article there is a small error (I think!). In the line (page 85 left column) 'To create a new filesystem on the SD enter: mkfs,vfat /dev/sdb1'
Should that not be 'mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1'?
Thats what I did and it worked.
The cards have the files on them and all seems well, they just wont boot!
Thanks
Alan |
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M-Saunders
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Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:14 pm
Posts: 2881
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 10:35 am Post subject: |
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| salan3 wrote: | BTW in the article there is a small error (I think!). In the line (page 85 left column) 'To create a new filesystem on the SD enter: mkfs,vfat /dev/sdb1'
Should that not be 'mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1'? |
Nope -- well, you can do it both ways. mkfs.vfat (with a dot, not a comma like in your example above) works on my Eee. I'm stumped by your problem as the commands in the mag are the exact same ones I used on my Eee, so perhaps it's down to the SD cards?
M |
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salan3
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2005 1:18 pm
Posts: 24
Location: Cheshire
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:14 am Post subject: |
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| M-Saunders wrote: | | salan3 wrote: | BTW in the article there is a small error (I think!). In the line (page 85 left column) 'To create a new filesystem on the SD enter: mkfs,vfat /dev/sdb1'
Should that not be 'mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1'? |
Nope -- well, you can do it both ways. mkfs.vfat (with a dot, not a comma like in your example above) works on my Eee. I'm stumped by your problem as the commands in the mag are the exact same ones I used on my Eee, so perhaps it's down to the SD cards?
M |
Hi Mike,
Well I didnt know that!
Thanks for that info about mkfs. I have always used the -t....
One of the SD cards was a Kingston and I have set it up to boot on other laptops.
Its Very frustrating as so far I have been unable to try any other OS on the EEEPC because I cant get the SD cards to boot!
I can't see how but could it be a fault with the EEEPC?
The cards are recognised and I can read and write to them so I can't really see how.
I might try to set up using a usb pen and see if that works.
Alan |
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nelz
Moderator
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2005 12:52 pm
Posts: 8002
Location: Warrington, UK
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:15 am Post subject: |
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| M-Saunders wrote: | | I wrote that Eee tutorial. If you press the Esc key on the Eee when the Asus logo appears, it brings up a boot device selector. That's definitely the case, unless some very recent BIOS update has changed it (can't see why though!). |
My PC900 still brings up the boot device menu on Esc. I think RedWillow is mixing up Esc and F9, the latter calls up the GRUB boot menu (although it is normal to use Esc to call up the GRUB menu when hiddenmenu is in use).
_________________
Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are. |
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RedWillow
LXF regular
Joined: Thu May 29, 2008 2:05 pm
Posts: 716
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:25 am Post subject: |
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| nelz wrote: | | I think RedWillow is mixing up Esc and F9 |
Apologies salan3; nelz is quite right. I was relying on memory and muddling....
Er, what he said.
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salan3
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2005 1:18 pm
Posts: 24
Location: Cheshire
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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| M-Saunders wrote: | Hi all,
I wrote that Eee tutorial. If you press the Esc key on the Eee when the Asus logo appears, it brings up a boot device selector. That's definitely the case, unless some very recent BIOS update has changed it (can't see why though!).
Breeezy is a very small distro and a 512MB SD card is more than adequate.
Salan3, did you run the syslinux-nomtools step? Did it report any errors?
M |
Forgot to say thanks for a great article. Enjoyed it
Alan |
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Whitefort
Joined: Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:39 pm
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 11:39 am Post subject: Wonderful, if only it worked... EDIT: and now it does! |
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I'm also having problems getting the SD breeezy distro to boot.
My machine seemed to differ from the printed instructions in a couple of respects: Instead of the SD card being listed as WCC-SD in my home directory (as the article said), it was listed as D:/
It also appeared as /dev/sdc, instead of /dev/sdb. Making allowances for this, and following the instructions with just the necessary changes, there were no error messages, and at the end all the files were on the card and looking OK.
But, on trying to boot from it using the method described, I don't even get a blinking cursor - just a black screen which sat doing nothing for 10 minutes or so until I turned the machine off.
Later EDIT: Maybe this will help others.
After some digging, I found a post suggesting that sometimes when SD cards wouldn't boot after being made bootable by fdisk, it would work if done in parted.
(I'm a newbie - I hope I'm talking sense)
Anyway, I fired up gparted on my Ubuntu laptop, inserted the SD card, unchecked the boot option, then rechecked it again. "Thinking 'what a waste of time THIS will be!'
And darn it all, I put it in my eee, and it worked! I now have a beautiful breeezy second distro.
I hope this helps somebody - and belated thanks to Mike for this little series on the eeepc. I'm looking forward to next month's already. |
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nelz
Moderator
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2005 12:52 pm
Posts: 8002
Location: Warrington, UK
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| Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:40 pm Post subject: Re: Wonderful, if only it worked... EDIT: and now it does! |
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| Whitefort wrote: | Instead of the SD card being listed as WCC-SD in my home directory (as the article said), it was listed as D:/
It also appeared as /dev/sdc, instead of /dev/sdb. |
Are you using a PC900? They have two internal SSDs, so the slot is sdc.
_________________
Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are. |
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