Good evening,

yet another thread, I know, but I really wanted to give Mint18 a shot now.

Unfortunately, when trying to start the Mint18 live system from a USB drive on my desktop system, it tells me essentially the following before going to the BusyBox prompt:
The drive definitely is not broken or anything as it boots up fine on other computers of mine but not on my desktop.

What can I do about this?

How did you set this up on USB? Did you use unetbootin?

Was it a CD image, or an actual pen drive image?

Good morning Gary987,


it was the standard DVD image for a x86_64 installation of the distro that I brought to the USB drive using Etcher.
Once I noticed the system wouldn't boot that, I did the process again using unetbootin but received the results posted in my post above.

In fact, I don't even know if there are proper images for USB pen drives especially.


Kind regards,
WaterCatapult

If the USB flash drive boots on other computers, then you have done a good job on the creation of the live Mint USB.
Go into the BIOS settings and make sure that "Secure Boot" is disabled.
Is the computer capable of UEFI? Are you intending a UEFI installation or a Legacy/CSM installation?
Are you intending to dual-boot with another OS, or is Mint the only OS you will have?

Good evening TxLonghorn,

I think the USB drive is fine for BIOS systems?
My desktop system indeed uses UEFI so booting stuff is always a pain to me but eventually it burning a DVD-R works out great.
Also yes, I plan to replace Mint17.3 on a 64G SSD while $HOME is located at a 2T HDD.
Windows is also installed as dualboot and has its own SSD and HDD of which both get deactivated in UEFI during the installation process.

My issue now is that although the Mint installer runs fine at first, it stucks at the point of trying to install grub-efi-amd64-signed to "/target/".
What's wrong this time around is beyond me, it's a relief already to know Mint18 can indeed boot on the system.

Might it be the partitioning?
I always tell the installer to just format the existing partitions on the system SSD while keeping the mounting points and file systems, so it looks like the following...

Excuse the handwritten structure but it's pretty much what I'd end up with if not changing things.


Kind regards,
WaterCatapult

Yes.
I can see why it freezes at installing grub. You don't have a place for grub to be installed.
When installing in UEFI mode, the bootloader (Grub) is installed to the ESP (EFI System Partition). You forgot to provide one on your /dev/sdb

REFERENCE

On the other hand, if your Windows drive is connected when you install, that ESP on that drive will be used automatically. So you would boot that drive to boot either OS.

Actually, the first question would be: Does /dev/sdb have a GPT partition table, or msdos?

Good morning TxLonghorn,

My idea was actually to keep both system SSDs separate from each other so I could always use one system if the other crashes on me.
Especially since it's both installed to SSDs eventually.

As for what partition table /dev/sdb uses, it's msdos according to gdisk, I have no idea of GPT at all as this is also my first system that uses UEFI, so I'd probably need some advices first how to create the ESP in general.

GNU/Linux and Windows are also separated because it was a plain Linux system at first, I decided to spend money on another two disks later on so I could use Windows also.


Kind regards,
WaterCatapult

That is a commendable goal. I do the same thing with my hard drives.
Unfortunately, it is much easier for me to do than for you. I don't have anything installed in UEFI mode.
With Windows installed in UEFI mode, you are (almost) forced to install Mint in UEFI mode.

I notice that you said, "Windows is also installed as dualboot and has its own SSD and HDD of which both get deactivated in UEFI during the installation process." Does this mean that you are switching from UEFI boot to non-UEFI boot to run the Mint installation?
It is possible to set up your system like that, but it would be a pain in the posterior to have to switch modes every time you wanted to switch operating systems.

Before getting into that, please verify that Windows is, in fact, installed in UEFI mode.
How to Check if Windows is Booted in UEFI or Legacy BIOS Mode

Good evening TxLonghorn,

as it seems I installed Windows10 in traditional BIOS mode.
Got to admit that I tend to forget such things every now and then because I think myself such knowledge being unnecessary for me in the future but oh well, so much for off-topic.

Due to this circumstance however, I have no idea why Mint wouldn't install properly otherwise.
Shouldn't Linux favor standard BIOS settings?

That is great news. It makes things so much easier...

I believe you might have tried to install Mint in UEFI mode. Check your BIOS settings.
When you boot the live Mint USB, open a terminal and run this command to verify that you have booted Mint in Legacy mode.
If you are in Legacy mode, you should have no problem installing Mint.

Just be sure to install the bootloader (Grub) to the drive that you want to boot first, either /dev/sda or /dev/sdb

Hopefully so, things are still strange enough.

The command you posted always tells me it booted in EFI mode, so much is sure.
Also trying to boot the regular entry for the removable media without UEFI may perform a regular boot but as soon as everything seems loaded and either the CLI or Xorg should show up, further actions can't be performed.
Neither can I type in any commands nor does anything graphical show up.

I already tried to change everything that'd make sense in Gigabyte's UEFI BIOS but no dice.

This time I even kept the Windows drives active but still no difference


Kind regards,
WaterCatapult

Sometimes you might have to access the BIOS boot menu, instead of the regular BIOS configuration.
That would probably be with F12 as it boots.
You might see 2 options listed there: UEFI USB Drive and BIOS USB Drive

That's what I did.
Also tried both those entries otherwise I couldn't tell what works for me and what not.

Booting the UEFI entry brings up GRUB from the DVD with options to boot Mint18.1 either normal or in compatibility mode and also to verify the files.
From that point anything works just fine except for installing Mint of course.

Trying the same with the BIOS variant also shows up the entries mentioned before in the traditional boot menu we are all familiar with when creating bootable thumb drives.
But(!) it ends as soon as the user should be able to use either CLI or Xorg, compatibility mode and verifying don't work at all.


Kind regards,
WaterCatapult

There is an alternative that might work.
Boot into Windows and copy the Mint.iso file that you downloaded to your C Drive somewhere. (It might already be there...?)
Open Unetbootin and browse to the directory containing the Mint.iso - select it
In Unetbootin, on the last line, you will see Type - you should select Hard Disk . - then click OK
Unetbootin will amend the Windows boot menu - placing the option to boot the iso on the Windows boot menu
Reboot, and on the Windows boot menu select the line that reads 'Unetbootin'. It should boot the Mint.iso and run just as if you booted a live DVD or USB.
But, since you are booting Windows to begin with (in Legacy mode), it is forced into Legacy mode.
Also, because you are booting the .iso file itself, you eliminate any difficulties with a bad USB, or your BIOS not running the USB correctly.
When Mint boots, run a command like to make sure you install Mint to the correct drive. Then make sure, during installation that you install the bootloader to the correct drive.
During the installation of Mint, you will get a pop-up warning telling you that you have mounted partitions, and asking "Do you want to unmount the partitions?" Answer NO.

I'll try so tomorrow and will deliver results in return.
But before doing anything to my Windows installation also, wouldn't selecting the Windows SSD in Unetbootin brake my Win10 installation as well?
And even if not, wouldn't the MBR get changed while doing so?

Because as of now, I at least can still run Windows.


Kind regards,
WaterCatapult