[SOLVED] Having trouble changing Distros.

The Xunil Bypass · 09-17-2019, 09:46 AM

Does anyone have any thoughts as to what Enso OS could have done to the SSD to make it NOT reformatable?

I always assumed this would be the easiest task. Just wipe the drive and start again, which I could do with another drive but I don't want to toss away a brand new perfectly good 1Tb SSD.

In 35 years of computing I have never had a working drive that I couldn't just reformat!

Samsonite2010 · 09-17-2019, 09:52 AM

I think you are avoiding making life easier for yourself. A VM will not trash any computer or disk (unlike installing a distro directly). A VM is just really a file and the VM software such as Virtualbox allows you to temporarily run another OS in memory - it will use your system memory but you define how much and it will only write the the VM file, like a document and you can have this on an external drive if you like.

If you are evaluating distros and you want to cause zero harm, a VM will be your friend.

For simplicity on Mac OS, Windows or Linux you can very quickly create a VM by:
1) Install something like Virtualbox (others are available)
2) Follow the simple wizard to create a new VM
3) You can point the virtual optical drive at any ISO file you download from a distro site, then it will simply boot the VM and you can install, safe in the knowledge that it is not trashing your host computer

I am trying to help you here - you seem to have some strange myths about VMS - they are really easy and they are safe - much safer than installing directly to a disk.

Hope that clarifies or helps in some way!

Good luck.

Firerat · 09-17-2019, 10:00 AM

just press F12 when the dell is first powered up

The Xunil Bypass · 09-17-2019, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samsonite2010

I think you are avoiding making life easier for yourself. A VM will not trash any computer or disk (unlike installing a distro directly). A VM is just really a file and the VM software such as Virtualbox allows you to temporarily run another OS in memory - it will use your system memory but you define how much and it will only write the the VM file, like a document and you can have this on an external drive if you like.

If you are evaluating distros and you want to cause zero harm, a VM will be your friend.

For simplicity on Mac OS, Windows or Linux you can very quickly create a VM by:
1) Install something like Virtualbox (others are available)
2) Follow the simple wizard to create a new VM
3) You can point the virtual optical drive at any ISO file you download from a distro site, then it will simply boot the VM and you can install, safe in the knowledge that it is not trashing your host computer

I am trying to help you here - you seem to have some strange myths about VMS - they are really easy and they are safe - much safer than installing directly to a disk.

Hope that clarifies or helps in some way!

Good luck.

That is all very well in hindsight, ignoring that creating the VM is on top of everything else, but the problem I have, and I may be repeating myself, is wiping the SSD and starting again.

Not installing to a VM.

The Xunil Bypass · 09-17-2019, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firerat

just press F12 when the dell is first powered up

Do I need to repeat myself?

Samsonite2010 · 09-17-2019, 10:21 AM

What model is the Dell? I presume it does not have an optical drive? It will be possible to boot from USB, it would be very unusual to have no way of installing or re-installing an OS.

Does the Dell allow for more than one SSD to be installed?

The Xunil Bypass · 09-17-2019, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samsonite2010

What model is the Dell? I presume it does not have an optical drive? It will be possible to boot from USB, it would be very unusual to have no way of installing or re-installing an OS.

Does the Dell allow for more than one SSD to be installed?

It is a Dell Inspiron 11 3157 [2015/16]

It has no optical drive, only room for one hard drive, and as I keep repeating after finally installing Enso OS I could not change the boot order to get it off the internal SSD that has Enso OS on it.

And I am also repeating myself, the SSD is no longer in the Dell it is now in an external Hard Drive USB 3 case.

I can go through this whole exercise with another SSD but don't want to lose that as well.

The problem is REFORMATTING THE SSD that has the Enso OS on it. I do not have a time machine to go back and do something different, nor do I have the means to gain 20 years of Linux experience on something that doesn't run, so I can answer my own questions and not have a problem in the first place.

There is a reason I have posted this in the Linux - Newbie forum.

scasey · 09-17-2019, 10:49 AM

At this point, if I’m following the thread, the OP is unsure if they have initialized the drive.
I think they need to put the drive back in the Dell and see what happens. If it won’t boot, then boot to the install usb an install the new OS.

The Xunil Bypass · 09-17-2019, 10:59 AM

Yes if I must I will reinstall the SSD back in the Dell but that does not get me past the problem of reformatting the SSD.

Disk Utility reports that it has initialised the SSD but reports an error when I try and reformat it.

Maybe, just maybe, if I can get the Dell to change boot order, which I have not been able to, it might just see the recalcitrant SSD and let me install to it. But I'm putting money on that probably not happening, because that's where I came from.

Samsonite2010 · 09-17-2019, 11:15 AM

One problem is that although this is in the Linux Newbie section, your issue seems to be more of a hardware issue. It is hard to understand how the BIOS is no longer working as it was before, but at least you can get into it. Just to cover and probably annoy you further, when the Dell logo appears (assuming it does!), are you tapping the F2 or F12 key (seems to differ between models)? I seem to have to keep tapping the key otherwise it skips past the point of no return.

I do think that getting the USB booting is what to concentrate on, there must be a way! Are you able to share a screenshot of the BIOS settings? What options do you have from the top?

The Xunil Bypass · 09-17-2019, 11:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samsonite2010

One problem is that although this is in the Linux Newbie section, your issue seems to be more of a hardware issue. It is hard to understand how the BIOS is no longer working as it was before, but at least you can get into it. Just to cover and probably annoy you further, when the Dell logo appears (assuming it does!), are you tapping the F2 or F12 key (seems to differ between models)? I seem to have to keep tapping the key otherwise it skips past the point of no return.

I do think that getting the USB booting is what to concentrate on, there must be a way! Are you able to share a screenshot of the BIOS settings? What options do you have from the top?

I can use both F2 and F12 to enter the very basic BIOS editor, but it got much harder after Enso was installed. I was told it should be UEFI.

How do I do a screen grab in BIOS? If I use Print Screen where does it go?

I am uncertain as to whether the BIOS is up-to-date, I can't see anywhere where it mentions versions and creation dates. It is truly annoying that the manual does not show what I see. Dell seems to have a full featured BIOS editor with some UI/UX that certainly does not exist in mine, which is very basic DOS like and with bugger all options and I can not move the device order.

I'll see if I can show every step. I may have missed something and it becomes a blur after I have circled through the same few options for the umpteenth time. It was the reason I had so much trouble getting it to install in the first place. Everything I had read said to turn Legacy mode OFF! I only successfully installed Enso OS after I turned it ON.

Samsonite2010 · 09-17-2019, 12:29 PM

Is legacy mode still on or can you turn it off?

Firerat · 09-17-2019, 01:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Xunil Bypass

Do I need to repeat myself?

I genuinely missed that in the walls of text.

so, in the post where you criticise the manual ( hard copy ?) for having screenshots that do not match you current screens, you mention being able to highlight but not change order.

Quote:

I know how to get into what I believed to be the UEFI, it may have been the older BIOS, but couldn't install Enso until I reverted to Legacy Install with the aid of a friend. The problem is if I go into Legacy mode the only one where I see multiple drives, they are listed but without a means to reorder them. I've rebooted and changed everything I can, but can't change the boot order. I follow the instructions at the foot of the BIOS screen, select the drive, user the cursor key, but it only moves the highlight not the device. The manual does not show what I see in the BIOS. The Dell manual shows different screensnaps to what I see, all I see is so basic as to be useless.

have you tried highlighting and the using

PageUp PageDown ?
+ - ?
Edit: possibly < > or left/right arrow

is that the "default boot order" menu or the "One Time" menu?

installing an OS should have no effect on the "one Time" menu

ondoho · 09-19-2019, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Xunil Bypass

as I keep repeating after finally installing Enso OS I could not change the boot order to get it off the internal SSD that has Enso OS on it.

And I am also repeating myself, the SSD is no longer in the Dell it is now in an external Hard Drive USB 3 case.

The problem is REFORMATTING THE SSD that has the Enso OS on it.

You can simply nuke the contents of the SSD, that should make it easier to deal with it in any context afterwards.
Do this:
UNplug the SSD
issue 'dmesg -w' in a terminal, hold down enter for a while to get rid of the wall of output
now plug the SSD IN
see what output you get in dmesg; something like this:

Code:

[13483.120834] usb 1-8: new high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
[13483.302844] usb 1-8: New USB device found, idVendor=0951, idProduct=1666, bcdDevice= 1.10
[13483.302849] usb 1-8: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[13483.302852] usb 1-8: Product: DataTraveler 3.0
[13483.302855] usb 1-8: Manufacturer: Kingston
[13483.302858] usb 1-8: SerialNumber: 60A44C4139D4B341890C010D
[13483.304866] usb-storage 1-8:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[13483.305139] scsi host7: usb-storage 1-8:1.0
[13484.342430] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 PMAP PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[13484.344346] sd 7:0:0:0: [sde] 60604416 512-byte logical blocks: (31.0 GB/28.9 GiB)
[13484.344697] sd 7:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off
[13484.344701] sd 7:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 45 00 00 00
[13484.345050] sd 7:0:0:0: [sde] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[13484.696264]  sde: sde1
[13484.699390] sd 7:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk

So, in this example it tells me that I want /dev/sde.
This could be different in your case, so don't just blindly copy-paste!
now enter this command:

Code:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX

and replace 'sdX' with the device you determined in the previous step.
Let it run for 10s or so, then <Ctrl-C> out of it.
Your SSD is now completely erased.

The Xunil Bypass · 09-19-2019, 04:31 PM

Sorry I've been slow getting back, I've been working on this problem and some other stuff over the last few days.

Thank you all for your fantastic help, sometimes I just need to get other people's views to kick me off in a different direction.

First I found I didn't have the right manual. When I originally searched in Dell's website it took me to what I now know was another model which I took to be a generic manual. I finally got the exact model manual via a roundabout search and nailed the issue with the BIOS. I found I had to do it in F2 and I'd got the boot selection reordering method arse backwards. I needed to select the order and then the device to go in that position, I was trying to do it the other way round! I know everyone who has ever built a PC out there will laugh at me, but I was just trying to follow the BIOS footer instructions.

So I managed to get my KDE Neon Plasma 5 Installer to run and overwrote my SSD drive, I couldn't see a way to just erase the SSD so decided to leave it be for a while. I'd prefer it in my Macbook Pro but it might be useful in the Dell to run a couple of VM distros.

I installed KDE Plasma Neon 5 easily and it does look much closer to what I want and I started to change the Desktop around but immediately hit a major problem. Discover which I assume is KDE's App Store crashed every single time I launched it and did a search. This made it very hard to get any further on anything that involved downloading Apps or add-ons. After 2 days of trying to find out what was causing this, including several shutdowns and reboots, today it spontaneously fixed itself. One of the update perhaps?

This all happened just now, so I will continue to reshape the UI/Theme and install design and productivity software, until I hit another snag and be back for further helpful and patient assistance here.

And recommendations for various Apps to fill all my Pro/Personal categories. Also I will want at least a couple of VMs to test alternatives.

It is becoming quite obvious that I will have to up the RAM, it labours on intensive tasks like running x265 videos.

Thanks again! At last I begin my Linux adventure, and hope to have the Dell all shipshape for when I have to take it with me interstate next week.