Why not switch to booting debian from a USB stick ??
* * *
* * *
Almost one (1) year ago, I ruined my debian 9 HDD installation by
naively running a "fix broken packages" command.
This deceitfully named command deleted a huge number of packages and
left me with a bootable but basically useless debian system on the HDD.
Command shell but no GUI.
* * *
* * *
After struggling with trying to build a list of all the deleted
packages, I abandoned that strategy. I was afraid just to re-install
debian 9 to the hard drive, out of fear of damaging all the precious
user data on the same hard drive.
Besides, debian 9 had become increasingly annoying because some packages
refused to install, reporting that the libc6 version was obsolete.
So, Instead of re-installing debian 9 on the hard drive, I made a
bootable debian 11 live USB memory stick. Since then, I have been
running debian 11 from this USB stick. It's a little slow to boot, but
this debian 11 system has only crashed maybe three (3) times since then,
and I use this debian 11 every day for many hours.
* * *
* * *
Here are details of how I implemented this bootable debian 11 live USB
memory stick:
(0) KEY POINT: The broken debian 9 system was STILL BOOTABLE and it
still gave me a command shell interface, but no GUI.
(1) downloaded a debian live iso image using a different PC (ancient
Windows XP):
debian-live-11.5.0-amd64-gnome+nonfree.iso
(2) copied this .iso onto a USB stick on the WinXP PC, inserted the USB
stick into a USB port on the wounded debian 9 PC, and copied the .iso
to a folder on the debian 9 HDD.
(3) unmounted the USB stick from the debian 9 file system:
sudo umount /media/sdb1
sudo umount /dev/sdb
(4) created the bootable debian 11 live USB stick:
sudo dd if=<path to .iso on hdd> of=/dev/sdb bs=4M conv=fdatasync
status=progress
Takes a while to run, and may seem like it isn't doing anything, but it
does work.
(5) motherboard BIOS settings:
-- turn off secure boot;
-- do NOT use csm;
-- make USB first boot device (some motherboards do NOT support USB
boot, luckily my Asus board does);
(6) probably need to insert the USB boot stick into the first USB port
(I always leave mine in the same front panel USB port)
(7) power up / reset the PC, and the PC should boot from the USB stick;
MIne takes a couple of minutes to boot up to a debian 11 gnome desktop.
* * *
* * *
TIP: My usb stick has a red LED that flashes when it is being accessed,
and otherwise is steady on. This LED is very helpful in indicating that
the USB is booting. It also flashes frequently during debian 11
operation e.g. while starting the firefox browser.
DOWNSIDE: apt-get package installations seem to disappear after I shut
down the debian 11. So I have to re-install whenever I want to run a
package. I could probably figure out how to install packages to the HDD
but haven't bothered with this yet.
* * *
* * *
This asy-sleazy fix for my ruined debian 9 may seem like an obscene hack
to linux purists, but hey, it works for me. I have way too many more
interesting things to do with my remaining time alive on this sorry
planet, than to invest time in being a perfect debian user. And besides,
when time comes to upgrade to debian 12, I can easily make a USB stick
for that too.
Steve Petrie
[email protected]
-------- Original Message --------
SUBJECT:
Re: [GTALUG] Debian has suddenly become unstable
DATE:
2023-10-11 20:06
FROM:
BCLUG via talk <[email protected]>
TO:
[email protected]
Giles Orr via talk wrote on 2023-10-11 15:30:
debugging Linux crashes. The `dmesg` command is useless, as it only
shows the log since the last boot.
The tool for inspecting previous boot logs would be:
## Logs from *previous* boot for `lp` and `cups`:
`journalctl --boot -1 --unit lp --unit cups`
I noticed was this, the only line of consequence about a millisecond
before the reboot: 2023-10-10T11:36:23.839046-04:00 sli7d
systemd-modules-load[399]: Inserted module 'lp'
I don't have a printer, and I hadn't just done a "print-to-PDF" or
anything like that
One thought might be to disable cups (`journalctl disable --now cups`)
and see if that helps (Common Unix Print Service)...
Is it possible that Samba was triggering "lp"-related stuff which was
causing the crash?
That's possible - I can't recall much about samba, but maybe look into
printer(s) is/are being shared and disable that feature.
I suppose I could reboot and select and older kernel and see if that
was stable ... Suggestions on how to better debug this would be most
welcome. Does blacklisting the "lp" module sound like a good idea?
Those also sound like good ideas.
Good luck.
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