As the title says, i am trying to boot from a USB with artix on but unable to. I am trying to boot from a thinkpad t440. I have disabled secure boot and enabled both uefi and legacy in that order of priority. I just get a black screen when choosing the usb which appears in the boot menu which have the artix iso on it.
I have tried numerous different times and with different methods, none of them worked.
I have tried with the open-rc and runit base image.
I made the first USB from the command line with dd and a blocksize of 2M.
Later i tried using RUFUS and balenaEtcher on a windows10 laptop.
I tried two different USB sticks, one usb3.0 and one 2.0 stick with the exact same results.
In RUFUS i tried both dd and iso mode, and both gpt and mbr partition table. When trying to boot from a USB made with iso-mode i get into grub-rescue and not a just a black screen like i got with dd mode and balenaEtcher.
In the past using dd or balenaEtcher have just worked both with artix and other images. I tried a usb with the newest debian netinstall iso which was able to boot on both different sticks using both dd and rufus iso mode. Interestingly i tried with the newest devuan netinstall iso as well and that didn't boot. I could try with an artix iso with desktop enviroment. But i would really prefer the base image with either runit or open-rc. Maybe i will try with vanilla arch as well just to see.
Does anyone of you know what i can try to do, i really like the artix base image and have used it on the same thinkpad in the past with zero issues. I will answer any question and provide more detail if anyone asks. Thanks in advance!
I don't think you should use the base iso from the way you sound you might not be prepared. Base iso is a black screen. Try hit ctr alt f1 but before that give it some more time to boot if you didn't make it to a tty or a shell.
If some of the iso you said it worked why not using those?
If you don't face the same problem with other distributions, you might have a similar problem as mine.
https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,6114.msg37882.html#msg37882
apologies if i sound wierd, english is not my first language. By black screen i mean totally black, not showing grub either. I have been using linux for three years and have installed the base image many times before, my only problem is trying to boot from a usb with the artix image on.
Im not using the debian image that works because i want to use artix, yaknow?
I didn't mean your English is bad just you sound a bit inexperienced.
Try giving it more time to boot. t440 doesn't sound to me like a blazing fast machine and booting from a usb in general is slow.
slow+slow=superslow
Let it boot 10-15 minutes. Linux kernel isn't that lightweight, there's a whole discussion around this. When you managed to boot perhaps that kernel was around 80MB at that time in size but now the kernel is about 130MB.
After you mange to install on your main disk it will boot much faster but booting from a usb isn't at all fast.
ah ok im gonna try to wait for 15 min. You may be right about the kernel it is indeed heavier today, but it has never been like this before and like i said, other heavier distros boot nice and fast from usb. i have probably booted from usb 100 times and always been pretty fast. The t440 isnt a potato either, and the usb 3.0 stick is pretty fast too. thanks for replying anyway :D
You could try opt either for UEFI or legacy but not both. Make it so the system determines much quicker hopefully what it needs to choose for your hardware.
i have tried to let it boot for 15 minutes and opting out of UEFI or legacy. the result is still the same unfortunately.
Try using ventoy
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ventoy-bin
When you boot from usb the system not only reads but also writes even if those are volatile files. Increase dd block-size from 2 to 4, 6 or even 10. You don't need to write it that compact/zipped but in this case something like 10MB would make more sense.
# dd if=/home/john/Downloads/whatever.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=6M status=progress
Write down the time it takes to dd that image and multiply it by 2 or 3. It's that long you have to wait till it boots assuming you create that dd iso with the help of the target machine t440 🎯.. If still fails it could be some hardware issue. Make sure you're not using weekly iso in case you forgot bout this.
Double check with lsblk what's your device/usb you need to write to. Unplug any other usb when you boot.
If you are asking how to get around this bug, rather than generally reporting it's existence, there are several ways. A base install essentially requires a bootable OS with a few tools to install the required packages , then you configure them and chroot in to make an initcpio and possibly set up grub unless you are booting from another grub. You can install from another partition, even if it's a different distro, there are guides online. You could use an older iso, for a base install you will still pull the latest packages from the repo, so long as it's not so old it can't find them it should give you the same results. You can also use an Artix GUI iso to do a base install if any of those boot, just open a terminal , the base install tools should be there, plus they might have Gparted to configure the partition easily. You might even be able to remove the drive and put it in another machine or external enclosure and install and set up like that. You still might need to chroot in and re-run mkinitcpio and possibly tweak some things after replacing it though.
For dd, the block size should be the native block size which is nearly always the default value, so it's best to not specify block size at all. While it's interesting to see what happens when waiting longer, I have some laptops older than that and they are not that slow to boot. The dd time should be slower than the boot time because write speed is usually slower than read speed, and not all files on the iso need to be read to boot
It writes a lot too. It reads and writes so time should be like I said bigger than dd time. You could benchmark your usb and see ~ how long it takes to read/write 700MB. When you choose small blocksize, reads and writes speed drop significantly and only certain small files are r/w faster.
The performance of the usb stick over times drops also.
Some usb stick specify to not use them to boot from them. Their controller sometimes fail. Controller is responsible with the fashion/algorithm data is being written. That thing ensures data uses the whole flash memory so it wears out slower but even with that at some point will fail completely. When you shred files flash memory wears out even faster.
edit: little known thing is it's better to have your stick formatted ext4 as if it's fat32 that file system doesn't support ownership you can't be root on a fat32 so it can conflict between fat32 lack of privileges and iso 9660 format. Everything you write as root on a fat32 fs it will belong to everybody not just the root and when you dd the image you'll write it on top of a fat32. So there can be a possible conflict.
it did finally boot with ventoy using grub2 mode. any idea why it doesn't with normal mode or the iso alone with the grub version it ships with? tried the older archive iso as well with the same results. well im just glad im finally able to boot. thanks for the help :)
@Surf3r I do respect your ability to take various, only slightly related, facts then juggle plus amalgamate until what comes out the other end is so far from reality it's almost entertaining yet generally entirely spurious. Though to the less experienced might sound plausible.
Just for instance what difference does the existent filesystem on the usb make when you are overwriting it with an image? (The answer is none. That's why it's little known. Because it's not the case.).
@gripped I'm still not convinced why with dd fails. If it works with those n00bish tools like ventoy coming from windoz realm, linux tools should be better I guess. As the way it went/solved sounds like windoz knows what's better for linux in linux house which more than not is incorrect.
Why it fails with dd then? Linux tools are bad? Common.
You are right gripped. Try to embrace humility surf3r, it could save your life.
Instead you could simply choose bigger blocksize. Is not about feelings here but why dd fails. I embrace whatever you want if you can enlighten us n00bs or just me the n00b why dd fails in your case.
vindicated ;)
"Why it fails with dd then?"
The problem is no boot menu comes up on certain hw when dd'ing the iso at present. In order to display the menu a mini-OS has to be loaded, there must be some bug in there that affects certain machines at present and it doesn't work on those, but it's OK on most others. Ventoy creates a multiboot usb with it's own mini-OS which displays it's own Ventoy boot menu, then skips the first part of the Artix iso boot sequence, or perhaps does something like switching on the display screen backlight or whatever, that gets omitted by the iso mini-OS, bypassing the issue.
That would be my guess.
No dd is imho the perfect tool to write an image to a USB.
It's the images that must be the problem on certain hardware ? Is it the hardware's fault or the image ? I don't know but that's immaterial to someone who just wants to get on with installing Artix.
I wouldn't call Ventoy either noobish or from the windows realm.
It's quite a handy tool. I only found out about it fairly recently myself on this exact site and tested it out of curiosity.
It's just another option if, as can happen, the iso is failing to boot when written directly to the usb drive.
@#######
For someone installing from the base iso that ventoy mini OS would significantly mess with self respect/ego contained in the 'btw I run Arch'. The goal of installing from the base iso being a cleanest/lightest system possible. Of course ventoy is a welcome alternative but still sounds a tiny micro or nano-n00bish thing to do. I would rather go with an older base iso.
@gripped It means I'm a bit too much FOSS jihadist 👳🏿 I'll take it more easy 👼🏼. It's not good to think something is the absolute perfect tool or the silver bullet. Could this topic be the case? Idk 100% but I guess everybody already formed an opinion.
@Surf3r You still seem confused ?
Using Ventoy to boot the base iso image will not result in any difference to the resulting Artix install if the same steps are taken once the image is booted.
I almost wrote this in my first post in the thread:
"You can do a base install from any Linux live ISO
https://gitea.artixlinux.org/artix/artix-bootstrap"
Yet another option.
As for
ventoy is open source. https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
Again confused is how you come across to me. but with your heart in the right place.
@gripped yep, it's open source but for someone installing the neckbeard way that ventoy is just a needless pain. I did not install from base myself but you get the point. Neckbeards ain't gonna give many Michelin stars to ventoy be there open source, extra good or magnificent good.
Nobody with a long enough linux beard would like the final outcome that may sound like 'btw I run Ventoy'
Ventoy is nice but dd is king. And if it's open source we can find out what magic it does as bonus vs dd.
That's really a relief hearing this but I for one don't need too many tools other than what that distro offers like calamares installer or base.
Not quite base though. Base is base. You can't have a base with a roof on top and still call it base. Maybe semi-base would be the exact term.
Think the topic went rather into how do we like 'coffee' and not the 2nd key point of this topic that is what ventoy does that dd is such a n00b in doing that otherworldly top secret thing.
@Surf3r dude the whole point of this thread was to help
@hjkl get the base iso booted so they could install Artix.
That's all.
If you don't like Ventoy don't use it. Simples.
Other than when I tested it on first hearing about it i've used it exactly once. That was when I was helping a friends teenage son build his first PC. I knew he'd have no Windows install disc (don't even start ;) his PC ) and wasn't sure if he'd want 10 or 11 so put both on a ventoy usb to cover all bases which was simpler than taking two usb drives round
Nowhere has anyone, or at least not me, suggested "d0n'7 3v3r u53 dd. v3n70y 15 7h3 b0mb".
wtf are you on about? How would you know never having done a base install?
Anyway I'm out. Enjoy your delusions :-*
@Surf3r I don't think you should use the base iso reply anymore from the way you sound you might not be prepared. A word salad with excessive use of reddit meme-speak and pretentious adjectives make you sound a bit inexperinced.
(...)but for someone installing the neckbeard way that ventoy is just a needless pain. I did not install from base myself but you get the point. Neckbeards ain't gonna give many Michelin stars to ventoy be there open source, extra good or magnificent good.
Nobody with a long enough linux beard would like the final outcome that may sound like 'btw I run Ventoy'
(...)Not quite base though. Base is base. You can't have a base with a roof on top and still call it base. Maybe semi-base would be the exact term.
:o
im actually convinced you are just trolling and trying to be a pretentious on purpose when nice users actually make a useful reply.
@gripped i totally forgot that i could just as well install artix from any other iso with the artix install scripts. It was good to finally try ventoy as well. I put a few different isos on it and they all worked, super practical tool that i'm going to use from now on.
lol? If I, which I've never install from base consider ventoy not fit my beard size how the hell would fit a longer neckbeard?
The 2nd point was to see what dd problem is nothing more maybe we can somehow fix it. Call it whatever base you want for me that simply isn't the case.
I was just trying to keep it friendly with the folx coming from windoz via ventoy or other crap like that but looks like it's hard. When you lose an argument saw you got used to jump on the insult button thing which is really pathetic.