On Sun, Jan 06, 2013 at 10:52:36AM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote:
> anyway, i've finally made myself a debian live (wheezy) bootable
> usb stick, and i'm about to try booting and chrooting to get grub
> installed so i can finally boot linux from the hard disk.
well, that didn't work.
writing the debian-wheezy-live-b2-amd64-xfce-desktop+nonfree.iso file to
the USB stick resulted in a partition with type 27 ("Hidden NTFS Win")
- i presume that's normal (it's been a long time since i had to use
anything other than pxe to install linux or run a "live" distro)
The BIOS wouldn't boot it (no USB boot option at all), and windows
wouldn't recognise it (wanted to format the USB stick).
I updated the BIOS from the version 204 that it came with to version 310
downloaded from the ASUS web site. After reboot, an option for UEFI USB
Generic Flash showed up in the BIOS boot priorities menu.
Tried that, it didn't work. at all. so i returned to BIOS and found that
the USB boot options had disappeared again.
BUT, this time the BIOS now allows me to add a new boot option, and even
lets me browse to the /efi/debian/grubx86.efi that i had earlier installed
onto the EFI fs. So I did that, booted it, and finally saw the grub menu
with the expected options for Debian, Debian Recovery, and Windows 7.
Chose Debian and it looks like it started boot, but has been sitting on a
blank screen for about 30 minutes now. The HD light on the notebook is
solidly on, as is the wireless LED.
This is really shitting me. i've wasted about 2 days on it now.
If i can't boot debian on this notebook, it's a worthless piece of junk.
anyone have any ideas on getting this working?
i'd prefer to get the currently-installed-but-not-booting debian
running...but my next step is likely to be to just wipe the system, turn
off UEFI in the BIOS setup, and forget about dual-booting (windows isn't
at all important to me, but i was hoping to come up with a workable
procedure for dealing with UEFI machines because it won't be long before
it's impossible to get a new m/b without it...and after i've spent so
much time on it, i'd like to have something to show for it other than
just knowing "Dont Do That Again")
craig
ps: one of the most annoying things about this is discovering just how
appalling Windows still is as a user-experience. When I first booted up
the notebook and plugged it in to the network, both Asus Live Upate and
Windows Update wanted to download and install stuff. fair enough....it
was only a few hundred MB in total, shouldn't take more than half an
hour or so to dl and install them all, right?
nope, wrong.
it actually took about 8 hours to complete because a) they were
competing with each for disk I/O, and b) worse, they both wanted to
reboot several times during the process (Windows Update about three
times, but Asus Live Update wanted to reboot after every thing it
installed - 9 items).
12 reboots just to install about 100 little updates? before you can
even begin to use the brand new machine you've just bought? this is
supposed to be a compelling user-friendly experience?
to add further injury, you have to sit there and wait and watch and
log in again (*and* launch both Asus Live Update and Windows Update
manually) after each reboot before it will continue installing the
updates. What idiocy or arrogance makes Asus or Microsoft think this
crap is even remotely acceptable?
--
craig sanders <[email protected]>
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