Solus 4 Budgie Live USB Fails

Ricofizz

Hey there, thanks for taking the time to look and try to help first of all.

So, I've been trying to install Solus 3.999 2 days ago which didn't end up very successful.
Following the release of Solus 4, still trying to get it to work, it just doesn't seem to like my system.
Blinking cursor, tried Rufus in MBR, GPT, ISO and DD, balenaEtcher too. Secure boot disabled, also tried it with nomodeset. No game.

Short video of what happens when I try to boot.

Ryzen 1700 on AB350 by Asrock. Gigabyte GTX1660TI.
New Sandisk 3.0 USB 32GB.

Anyone have an idea as to how I start fixing this? Thanks in advance.

Link to Reddit Post

Justin

Ricofizz Try booting in legacy mode to see if there's a difference. Once it stops booting are you able to get to an alternate TTY by pressing Ctrl Alt F1 or F2?

The image above seems to be the issue with kernel modules, if we can get logged in at least and see what the output of systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service is we might have more info.

KronikPillow Tried legacy mode? Also check the SHA256SUM of the ISO you downloaded is correct, it is hopefully on the blog post where you downloaded it. Also did you select the drive to boot from or the partition?

cerebrix Any output from journalctl | grep -i lightdm (I think this is the command from memory, not in front of my machines).

KronikPillow

I'v been trying to Install Solus KDE testing and the only boot option it gives me from USB is Reboot in to Firmware settings ...

cerebrix

Also running into the same issue. Nvidia RTX 2080. I've been working with OP on reddit doing what I could. Here's where I'm at now with usb freshly created in the preferred method.

Fatih19

Could it be because you're using a relatively new GPU?

cerebrix

Fatih19

of course it is. which is why nomodeset was the first thing I recommended to him and then tried myself on my rig.

Fatih19

cerebrix luckily, i use ayyMD.

cerebrix

Fatih19

good for you? I'm failing to see how that comment is helpful to this support thread.

cerebrix

Justin
Here you go

JoshStrobl

Chances are it's failing to load the virtualbox kernel module since it's now included in the ISO. It won't prevent system booting though, it should just load the module when Solus is the guest.

Xmetalfanx

I ran the command in the last screenshot (journalctl) on the live media and I am not seeing the same thing but even after i install a working (on the machine) 3.99 Mate ISO and update lightdm ... i am stuck on the login screen on my old 2003-ish era desktop ... I was going to (why i am posting this here vs making a new thread) just wipe and install 4.0 but i can only get to a text login with that too .. though i am not having it go to a "blank cursor" issue ...

Tried using the 3.99 ISO (install + Recommended + security updates + even the kernel and xorg updates = still getting to a GUI) ... I KNOW i left the lightdm update unchecked.

NOT intending to hijack this thread, but I am noticing recent issues on my old machine related to lightdm too

Islandscout

Yeah, I have a very similar issue to cerebrix and @Ricofizz: the GUI will not work. However, I'm running on integrated Intel graphics and apparently lightdm is running when executing systemctl status lightdm, but it sometimes appears that it failed when executing journalctl -b. I made a thread about my dell not booting to this update, but unfortunately it was marked "solved" as soon as I encountered the problem again.

Output of systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service

cerebrix

Islandscout yeah man. I'm not sure anyone that can help is paying attention to this thread. It sucks, but it is what it is I guess. My hope is they sort this out and push out another iso later.

That's the toughest part. small community distros really don't have a ton of people that get off on "closing tickets" so to speak when it comes to volunteer tech support. That will get fixed eventually. I just wish that it was sooner rather than later. But I still bump into threads on reddit that seem to think this is an abandoned distro when it isn't. So I guess I can't be surprised.

dbarron

And while I really don't know how many techies Solus dev group has, they still do a good job (at least based on what I see). However, you gotta also remember, they're catching their breath after releasing a milestone. It's been REALLY busy here since Sunday.

cerebrix

dbarron I get it. Like it said, it is what it is. Honestly they really shouldn't even be dealing with stuff like this and just focusing on their work. But like I said before, on big distro, this is a problem solved by tech support nerds that just love "closing tickets".

I'm patient. I'll give it a few months I guess.

Johandherdt

anyone has found a solution yet? I really like solus and would like to go back to it. Well atleast I know next time to go Amd... guess I have to wait for 3 years before my 1080ti is useless against the high end of amd..

Johandherdt

I want to add a workaround to this bug. Really easy,

So when u boot up the live usb and u go get the black screen, just tab the power button once as if u would put it into sleeping mode... the pc/laptop will go to sleep.. Just press again once and it will go out of sleep.. For some reason this gives us the gui fully loaded.

Other discovered, I couldn't install or format my partition of the ssd i wanted to, so instead of using disks use it in gparted and format whole disk at once.. and afterwards I could just install it easily ( however when I had my other hard drives attacked with windows on it solus refused to put the bootloader on the ssd I was gonna install it to, so I turned of the computer, removed the windows hard drive, boot back up and do the "suspend and back awake" and then it had no problems for installing the bootloader also on the ssd.

I hope atleast some people were helped with this.
Have fun guys.

KronikPillow

the solution is to write the ISO to the USB in DD mode, not Iso mode, but seems current version of Rufus doesn't support Solus, from windows i used USBWritter app my post about the same topic [SOLVED] ... downside of it is that it installs the vbox modules on your host ... it basically copies the entire ISO setup on to your host, and you will have failed load kernel modules in the journalctl until you uninstall them ... overall a great distribution, but in my opinion 4.0 wasn't tested enough as there are quite a few bugs I have found, related to chrome, graphics breaking, the usb iso issue, etc ...

Johandherdt

KronikPillow
Hmm, in my case i also got the vbox stuff its just that after it loads it stood at blackscreen, not even tty didnt give anything, unless i usee nomodeset first.
I used gnome multi writer, fedora usb writer, suse image writer.. all did the same.

I stumbled on a workaround per accident while I was trying to hold power button to shut it down but instead just clicked and put it to sleep. I did tap it again and voila instead graphics fully loaded.
I then tested this a few times more to check and it worked this way.

Justin

KronikPillow Have those issues been reported?

Justin

Johandherdt I never use anything but dd and have never had an issue. Granted it's command line and not for everyone. Someone needs to write a super simple dd interface.