Anyone have user experience with Toshiba Satellite laptops?

brent

PS--I put both those two Satellites in a box for now. They can't/don't/won't do much light normal stuff with 2GB. Have no idea if memory upgradable to 4...but if this is 2 then I don't want to see 4. Shocked my dad could even play Solitaire on this.

BuzzPCSOS I think the mods you did allowed you to tell the BIOS what boot image to look for, where the unmodified Toshiba BIOS just wasn't clever enough to make that action.

that has to be the difference I think. Ironically I think Toshiba is BRTFS-friendly, Be interested to see if your theory was correct. I got Solus on my Satellite but man I had to pull some strings 🙂

BuzzPCSOS

brent Fedora went in like a perfect install but then no boot 🙁
I took a look at the Fedora partition layout while installing Spiral OS and the two were significantly different. Spiral seems to have only one Btrfs partition whereas Fedora had two small unidentified partitions in front of the main Btrfs partition. I'm guessing Boot and Swap.
It looks like having more than the one partition is what causes the install to fail on the Toshiba as I could also make Solus bootable by avoiding the boot partition and just making a single Ext4 partition and setting it's flag as boot with a mount of / (think that was what I did). Solus booted after the install but could not survive updates probably because new kernels would have been written to/expected to be in the non-existant boot partition.
Spiral OS could be the answer on those old Toshibas. Don't know how 2Gb RAM would feel as this one got upgraded to 4Gb when it went from win7 to win10. A SSD makes a huge difference on old tech like this as would disabling ZRAM and enabling ZSWAP. If you are doing that on a recent kernel make sure that swappiness is up at 100 for best results.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS These install/boot issues intrigue me for some reason.
I cant Remb but I thought on some but not all Toshiba laptops it was F2 to get to the eufi/bios settings.
The reason I think is because of the (Legacy) is that it cant translate correctly ?
You could make a small partition -Mdos then partition the rest for ext4 on solus but dont let the installer
change anything and see if Solus installs (Dunno It may complain) may give eufi warning ignore.

Just spitballing as someone else would say.

brent

BuzzPCSOS edora went in like a perfect install but then no boot 🙁
I took a look at the Fedora partition layout while installing Spiral OS and the two were significantly different. Spiral seems to have only one Btrfs partition whereas Fedora had two small unidentified partitions in front of the main Btrfs partition. I'm guessing Boot and Swap.

there is some big distro (Fedora) that makes like a 1MB [Mandatory Grub Boot] even if you did sysd uefi bootloader so maybe both are boots? but you would see that in gparted so weird.

BuzzPCSOS make Solus bootable by avoiding the boot partition and just making a single Ext4 partition and setting it's flag as boot with a mount of / (think that was what I did). Solus booted after the install but could not survive updates probably because new kernels would have been written to/expected to be in the non-existant boot partition.

that is either creative as heck or you have everything going to a single EFI bootloader used by other distro? does that work?

What a conundrum. I don't see a navigable way to do things here. Spiral not bad but not Solus. If this is a goof off laptop I'd even find and up and comer in Distrowatchs unapproved/waiting list. that's always fun to, if not temporary. might be a way to get a better feel for whats acceptable/unacceptable for the toshiba. crikey.

BuzzPCSOS

Axios I already have that kind of planned out for a next step. I believe there is an issue with some bios installs listed on the Solus milestones site for 4.6 which show screen grabs from a Toshiba but hardwear seems to be listed as HP. Not sure if they are up for random conversations there so kept quiet.
BIOS is easy enough to enter but there is no option to change the start path (sometimes this can be hacked by adding a BIOS password like @brent did but not always). I think that Toshiba were using a BIOS that was more of a stepping stone between UEFI and BIOS which is why it does strange things.
TBH the laptop is a project rather than anything that I will seriously use but it is always good to be able to tell other forum users how to get out of a hole, also I don't like being beaten.

BuzzPCSOS

brent that is either creative as heck or you have everything going to a single EFI bootloader used by other distro? does that work?

😄😄 Clean install onto a fully wiped disc, partition information and all. Was inspired by the single partition that Spiral OS booted into and just wondered if I could make it work with Solus.
Next step will be a manual Solus setup with an MBR boot partition, root but no swap. I have a feeling that the install gets confused by the Toshiba oddball BIOS and installs an MBR boot with a GPT root. Something like that anyhow. After a Solus or Mint install the root partition is not accessible even from a live (USB boot) system despite the install finishing successfully. Something corrupts and breaks everything.

BuzzPCSOS

brent @Axios I've beaten it.
The calmares installer for some reason installs the OS on to GPT partitions instead of MBR.
Set up manually by using partition manager to create a new partition table set to MS-DOS not GPT. Set up partitions Boot, Root and Swap with appropriate flags. Save and exit into installer and select "Install Solus to an existing partition" and choose the root partition. Run the rest of the setup. Sorted.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS I wonder what triggers installers to do funky stuff like that.
But cool you figured it out.
I was always one to clear the disk before installing new Os even got drastic a few times
so never really run into issue like you did.

brent

BuzzPCSOS The calmares installer for some reason installs the OS on to GPT partitions instead of MBR.
Set up manually by using partition manager to create a new partition table set to MS-DOS not GPT. Set up partitions Boot, Root and Swap with appropriate flags. Save and exit into installer and select "Install Solus to an existing partition" and choose the root partition. Run the rest of the setup. Sorted.

wow. you beat it with MSDOS? who woulda thunk???
oh those weird Satellites

BuzzPCSOS

Axios It didn't matter that BIOS was detected, if Erase Disk is selected (automatic partition and format) the installer will try to set root as GPT. This can be tested at the end of install by trying to mount the installed root partition. The data has been written but cannot be viewed as you cannot see data written to GPT from a MBR system.
The only way to overcome this is to physically set the disc up as MBR.
I think this is a fault with the installer rather than Solus as the same thing happens when installing some other OSs with calmares for the same reason. Anyone experienced enough to manually install their OS will never see this fault. The fault does not happen on all BIOS systems, I have successfully installed to other computers with BIOS without any issues. Perhaps just a detection issue for old Toshiba PCs.
Pretty sure I have previously seen various complaints on the Solus forum from users unable to install the OS for the same reason.

brent

Axios I was always one to clear the disk before installing new

me too. do you leave it unallocated or give it the GPT format?

brent

BuzzPCSOS I think this is a fault with the installer rather than Solus as the same thing happens when installing some other OSs for the same reason. Anyone experienced enough to manually install their OS will never see this fault.

I never thought calmares was the be all to end all. I seen these consistencies before in that installer. I've seen it inconsistent in manual bare metals. It's light years from what Solus used to have but nothing is infallible.
I'm happy you cracked it. you putting Solus back on?

BuzzPCSOS

brent you putting Solus back on?

It is already rocking 4.6 and loving it. The manual install should work on your Toshibas too without any BIOS modification.

brent me too. do you leave it unallocated or give it the GPT format?

Not for your Toshibas though. MBR MS-DOS partitions only 😄

Axios

brent Well with the old hard drives I would delete all partitions and make a new ntfs and format
it then delete that partition and install new most time that would work.
If that didnt yield results would do a disk wipe that would 99% time take care of it.
If that didnt yield results would test the disk and usually found issues.

But I do the first step with SSD (Of coarse you dont want to wipe a SSD)
To answer I leave it Unallocated That way nothing is on it.
(I Dunno Seems kinda unneeded but always got me out of sticky spots.)

Oh to comment on your calmares comment on their website they recommend you erase disk first.

BuzzPCSOS

Axios To answer I leave it Unallocated That way nothing is on it.

I tried that for my Toshiba but the installer always installs to GPT format. It was an oddball sure enough.

BuzzPCSOS

@brent @Axios Hopefully this might get sorted for the next iso. Spotted this which I didn't understand initially but now think makes a much better explanation of what the problem was and how to fix it. It looks like much of our research followed a parallel path

Axios

BuzzPCSOS That link makes sense maybe it will get corrected.
Brent I think has the original toshiba and you have the newer they sold out I think round 2012 or something
then came back.
So you know what that is always like with products.
Oh well put another check mark for ya..lol

Oh I agree this might be causing some others posting here the same problem

brent

BuzzPCSOS I read that while back. OP;s conclusion was MBR the wrong way to go. But he had a lot in common with your situation conceptually. Maybe Devs will revise Help Center with this knowledge. Probably better to have prescribed workaround than tamper with the guts of Calmares.

Axios Brent I think has the original toshiba and you have the newer they sold out I think round 2012 or something
then came back.
So you know what that is always like with products.
Oh well put another check mark for ya..lol

I will put them both in a box and mail them to you. They could double as sandbags for the high water.
They are upgradable to 8 but I don't have time time or money to get them there right now...that said Solus runs nice on one if I don't tax it...like open 2 tabs and an office doc...

BuzzPCSOS

brent I don't know what version Toshiba yours was other than using BIOS. Mine is a Satellite C660 with a i3 gen 3 CPU, 2Gb ram and originally shipped with win7.
4Gb of ram makes things much more responsive and an SSD improves general speed and performance greatly. Great for browsing and light use. Probably best not to try video editing or bitcoin mining on it though 😀

brent

BuzzPCSOS We aren't using either of them since I rebuilt my desktop; they are both in a box under the bed. 2GB just is not enough for a game of Solitaire..

..I think these would be great with 8-12GB in them so now I have to weigh RAM cost, install time [case has to be removed there is no memory access], money, availability...plus the hours of research I normally do before a task like that...

...or sell them $25 a piece for them on Craigslist.

I realize there are harder decisions in life than this 😀

BuzzPCSOS

brent Selling them is certainly an option, especially if you have problems getting at the hardware. I have since acquired another Toshiba with an older low performance AMD CPU. It seems to work well enough on 2GB for me, even running on a rusty disc.
Probably worth a look at the CPU spec as a decent processor could well justify a reclaimed SSD and a RAM upgrade especially if they are in excellent condition. For laptops I prefer i3 or i5 Intel CPUs. There were plenty of economy spec versions that were just a waste of space. Intel Celeron in all it's guises should be avoided as should Atoms, Pentiums and Core2duos.

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