WetGeek

The reason I used an App Image is because my regular linux distro of choice is Fedora. But as you may be aware Red Hat has recently made a move towards going closed source and is making life awkward for diistros like Rocky Linux that are based off of it. Also Fedora is talking about adding opt out telemetry to their distro, admittedly that isn't going to happen for about a year or so, but it pays to be prepared so the last few days I've been looking for a backup distro, and noticed on distrowatch that Solus was back to active status, so thought I'd give it another try, on my muck about / Media PC. Lenovo All in one.

So I downloaded the Solus ISO on Fedora, as I usually would, then used Gnome Disks to restore the Solus ISO to a USB Stick.

The same process I have used for Manjaro, Debian 12, Makulu Linux, Mint and other distros. I then used the Solus Installer to use the whole disk, and let it auto partition the drive.

The only problem is the Solus USB will not boot unless I set the Bios to Legacy Support. In UEFI mode I get the errors posted. I then tried Etcher but Etcher isn't in the Fedora Repo, hence the AppImage. I also tried Ventoy after it was recommended by BuzzPCOS see JanetLox's thread https://discuss.getsol.us/d/9659-solus-istallation-effort-fails

    So, how did you prepare the disk in the Lenovo all-in-one before you attempted your EFI installation? Did you provide a boot partition of at least 512 MB, formattd to FAT32, and with the flags set properly? I'm not familiiar with your method of creating the installation medium, but I am familiar with what Solus needs for an EFI installation. That's why I asked, and you still haven't answered.

    Simply put I didn't do anything to the drive. I let the Installer set it up. And that isn't my problem. I have a fully working Solus system installed. I'm using it now to communicate with you on this forum.

    The issue is that in order to install Solus in the first place I have to go into the BIOS and turn on Legacy Mode or enable CSM to be more precise. Boot mode is set to auto so it tries UEFI first then falls back to legacy. If I set it to UEFI only, then the USB or My current Install will NOT Boot.

    If I use UEFI only, the 'Live USB' just throws the errors I posted earlier, and my current working install will just get stuck in a perpetual boot loop.

    There is however an update for my BIOS, the only problem is I have to reinstall windows as it comes in an .exe format. And as this is a BIOS update I don't want to mess around with any Linux hacks as that will probably just end up in a corrupted BIOS.

      Chezzy Boot mode is set to auto so it tries UEFI first then falls back to legacy.

      That's how my BIOS is set for my Solus Plasma laptops. The first problem you have is just getting the installer to run -- the "live" session. It seems you've been able to do that. Once you can run that live session up and running you can use GPartEd (on the GNOME-based DEs) or KDE Partition Manager (for the Plasma DE) to set up your drive appropriately. It takes about 1to 3 minutes, dependingn on how familiar you are with the partition editor.

      Having prepared your disk in advance, then, you can run the installer and do as I suggested. If your BIOS is capable of operating in UEFI mode (and it seems it is), your installation should work fine. Just don't tell the installer to do what it wants to do, instead take charge of the installation by telling the installer to use the partitions you've provided by assigning them to mount points in the OS.

      On the very next page of the installer, you should see that it's using your boot partition as the place to install the bootloader. I know this isn't the only way to use the installer, but it's one way to do it, and I've never seen this method fail. That seems to be a better outcome than you're seeing now.

      I'm going to bail out of this thread now, because there's nothing more I can add to what I've already written. I wish you only the best of luck in getting Solus installed. It's definitely worth whatever it takes to make that happen!

          WetGeek

          Just curious, after you have manually setup the hard drive and install Solus, do you then go into the BIOS and change the legacy mode to UEFI only or leave it in Auto?

          And yes this device is capable of running UEFI with, Windows 10, Fedora, Debian 12, Linux mint (Both regular and LMDE), manjaro, BlendOS and MkuluLinux Max, which also incidentally recognises the now end of life Nvidia 820a GPU.

              Chezzy Just curious, after you have manually setup the hard drive and install Solus, do you then go into the BIOS and change the legacy mode to UEFI only or leave it in Auto?

              I don't see that there's anything to be gained by changing it to UEFI-only. If the OS you're running is booting in EFI mode, what does it matter if the BIOS can also fall back to legacy mode? It's not going to affect the installed OS, because the bootloader is installed on the EFI partition on the disk drive.

              My laptops also offer UEFI-only as an option, but I can't imagine why I'd use that. Especially if it keeps me from launching a USB drive, which doesn't have an EFI partition.

                The reason I ask is to confirm if there is still a problem or not, unlikely admittedly, but unless you try it you can't say for sure, and as you say it only takes a few minutes to setup the hard drive, it takes even less to switch back to UEFI only, after that it's only a problem if run a lot of things that boot in legacy mode. Also if it can be setup to run as UEFI why is the ISO failing on the same PC? Which brings me back to a point I made in Janetlox's thread, is there an issue with the way the ISO is created?

                I'm not trying to be awkward but Solus has had it's problems, so people may be wary of coming back to it. Have you seen distrotube's video on youtube about 4 months ago? I've also seen articles written in the same vane. If people burn the ISO and are greeted with the same problem, are they going to stay around to fix it or just say it doesn't work and leave further negative reviews?

                  Chezzy is there an issue with the way the ISO is created?

                  No, there isn't. Not unless yours were damaged in some way. I've used those same .ISO files to create 5 Solus VMs (Budgie, GNOME, MATE, Plasma, and Xfce), two DELL Latitude laptops (mine and my wife's), a little ACER Travelmate laptop, and two DELL Optiplex desktops (my workstation and a utility server that mostly supports torrents). They are all using EFI.

                  And they all hibernate well. They were all setup with disks that were prepared the way I described, with details dependent on the machine involved. For example, my workstation has 32 GB of RAM, so its swap partition is 48 GiB in size, but the arrangement of their partitions, and the purpose of those partitions are all the same.

                  Again, they were all installed with those same .ISO files, and all_ boot in EFI mode. That's why I'm so confident that the method I described will work for you.

                      Chezzy I recently had very similar situation. My errors started with what you have at the end:

                      -- unable to read id index table
-- dracut-initqueue[962]: mount: /run....
-- dracut-initqueue[962]: dmesg...
-- dracut: Refusing to continue
-- systemd-shutdown[1]: Could not...
-- systemd-shutdown[1]: Failed to finali...
-- reboot: System halted

                      I was booting Solus 4.4 iso file from a known to work Ventoy usb memorystick with other linix distros line clear linux and linux mint working just fine. I was able to boot to live Solus by "burning" the iso file to a dedicated usb memory stick without Ventoy.

                          WetGeek

                          Yes your way will probably work. But then why not state that on the download page, and remove the the option for automatic install from the ISO, as hey, it just doesn't work as it should. It would save a certain set of people a lot hassle. I could probably also install Solus the Arch way and skip the installer totally.

                          What I'm trying to get at is there are a lot of people out there who don't want to mess around with disk partitioning. All they want is an operating system that works, and dosen't track everything they do, and to be honest I'm getting that way. That's why I like Fedora. Open source, rock solid, more up to date than Debian but not as bleeding edge as Arch. But there is talk of adding telemetry to Fedora, I doubt it would be anything invasive and it is still just a proposal at the moment, but I thought I'd start looking for a backup just in case.

                          I used to build my own PC's. My current desktop is a right Frankenstein setup and an example of what everyone says you shouldn't do, The motherboard is from an old Dell Mini PC, I upgraded the processor with a second hand chip from ebay. The ram has two random mixed 8GB ram sticks, and the Hard drives all mismatched things I picked up on Ebay, It has a second hand AMD RX 480 GPU. And dual boots between windows and Fedora. The majority of people probably wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. But if I replace it, I am now more of the mind to buy something that has been ready built and tested. And at the same rate, I don't really want a Distro I have to fight with just to install it, I'll install Arch for that.

                          My fedora machines use UEFI, and so did this one when it was running Fedora, Debian, Manjaro, BlendOS, Linux Mint and MakuluLinux. All of which booted from the USB Stick in UEFI mode and installed correctly from their installers. I didn't have to go into the BIOS or anything, and I didn't mess with gparted to setup the drive first. And I haven't hibernated a PC in years, I either suspend or just power down.

                          And as you say there is no issue with the ISO (other than it won't boot for a certain set of people, and there is of course no possibility that the issue can be looked into or fixed, because well there is nothing wrong). It's just like the way I really didn't need to buy a support for my graphics card which sagged. I mean it worked 90% of the time without trying to grind the fans to death. Which is starting to make me wonder, how many other other issues are there that may need working around that no one will admit to.

                              Jumpy

                              Thanks for the reply Jumpy. I tried with my usual method of Gnome Disks, that nobody seems to have heard of, Then Etcher followed by Ventoy. I also downloaded the on two different machines and used 2 USB sticks. but the only way to get it to boot is in legacy mode.

                                Chezzy That's why I like Fedora. Open source, rock solid, more up to date than Debian but not as bleeding edge as Arch.

                                I like Fedora, too. Also some of its derivatives, like Ultramarine. The one fault they all have in common, though, is that they're just not Solus.

                                Chezzy Yes your way will probably work.

                                My way will definitely work. But so will the default, where you let the installer do it all. Although I don't use that method, I have used it, as have thousands of others. The Solus 4.4 installer creates a 512 MB EFI boot partition, and I don't remember if it creates a swap partition or not.

                                In any event, I prefer a 1.0 GiB boot partition (safer for dual EFI boot), and I set the swap size depending on the RAM size in the computer. In other words, I have control over the process. And it takes me about a minute with a partition editor to get that. control. And neither GPartEd nor KDE Partitiion Manager requires rocket science to operate it.

                                You certainly have the skill to prepare the disk. If you don't have the experience yet, there's an easy way to get it.

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                                    • Post #38

                                    If you are able to boot into the live USB, then the issue is not how it's written. My wild guess is secure boot. Make sure you've turned it off

                                      [deleted] My wild guess is secure boot. Make sure you've turned it off

                                      Actually, Solus 4.4 supports Secure Boot, but it adds an extra step when you boot up for the first time. Unless you have a good reason to use it, it's less confusing to turn it off, as you said.

                                      Ahhh ... you're talking about booting the ISO. I was thinking of booting the OS. You're probably right about that.

                                        With me Secure boot was already off, and again the only way I can boot the live USB is in legacy mode. Any other distro I have tried was quite happy to boot with UEFI only, so to me that says there is something different with this ISO. I'm not saying that there is a problem with Solus, it is probably something to do with the way the USB drive is portioned that is incompatible with my system or BIOS, but that info is included in the ISO.

                                        Now I can quite easily setup my drive with gparted and run from there, but to be honest I'm not sure I want to. While I liked Solus when I used it before, and I like the idea of Solus, if run in to issues simply trying to install it, its not filling me with confidence that there aren't going to more issues, and as I said earlier I'm looking for a stable system, so the more I think about it, Solus probably isn't the Distro for me.

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                                          • Post #41
                                          • Edited

                                          Chezzy I gathered you can boot the live system, but not boot into the installed OS. If that is not the case and you can't boot even the live USB, then it might be your Lenovo motherboard has 32-bit EFI. Only 64-bit UEFI is supported by Solus, so your only option is to use legacy mode.

                                              [deleted]

                                              I think a lot of distros have dropped support for 32-bit now. I have an old Intel Atom, Windows 8.1, Toshiba Satellite Click Mini. That is a 64bit processor with a 32 bit boot loader. Last time I tried to install an operating system on it, the only live usb I could only get to boot was fedora, but it was so laggy due to lack of ram, that it's not worth using. My lenovo B50-30 installs every other distro so I don't think that's the issue.

                                              My Bios is a 2015 version and there is an update for 2016 which might fix the problem, I just need to summon up the courage to install windows, as the bios update is a .exe file.

                                              I'm logged into this forum on my Lenovo, which is running Solus Gnome, but with legacy mode turned on in the BIOS. I just can't run my current install or boot the live USB in UEFI mode.

                                                  Chezzy Fedora would boot because they have both 32bit and 64bit efi that was awhile
                                                  back if they still have.

                                                  Run this command on another installed linux on that machine and it will tell you 32 or 64 bit efi
                                                  (cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size) it will reply 32 or 64.

                                                  But I would kill 2 birds with one stone install winders again update firmaware and install rufus
                                                  and burn another Solus watching what (target system is selected).
                                                  And test it.
                                                  If you got secure boot turned off it should boot to efi. (Rufus is always the goto)

                                                  Note if you select target system bios/efi sometimes it can be slow detecting and seems like it
                                                  is not booting (I would recommend using bios or efi individaul)

                                                    I just burnt a live install USB of PopOS using Gnome Disks. Rebooted this machine turned off CSM so that it is in UEFI only mode, then re-disabled Secure Boot. Pop Os Booted no problem. Opened a terminal when it loaded and typed in 'cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size' and got the reply 64

                                                    I just hate installing windows, it seems to take forever, then normally more or less locks up untill it has downloaded a gazillion updates, and then just for good measure wants to install updates for the updates.

                                                      Chezzy Well can rule that out then its using 64bit efi
                                                      Got be some issue between bios or solus or making of usb (not sure which)
                                                      I have an lenovo ideapad and thinkpad both boot ok in efi. (thinkpad older machine,idepad newer)
                                                      But I burn all my stuff with rufus and havent tried ventoy.
                                                      Are you just waiting for it to boot or pressing f12 and selecting?