Live USB error vmlinuz ( Solved!)

[rs55]

I have been trying out Antix on my thinkpad x230. Overjoyed in general. Still have MX as daily driver.

I made a snapshot - went fine ( lz4 compression flies). Then used live-usb to burn my flash - went OK.
But when I booted off that USB I got a "cant find vmlinuz" error.

I tried all kinds of things - spent a couple of hours on this - no luck.
Then , I put that same iso on my other machine a w520 and ran the same version of live-usb from mx linux.
Then booted that usb on my x230 - Success !!

Strange. the usb ports on my x230 seem to be fine during normal use - I have been reading and writing off those usb ports for months - no issues. But for some reason - for live-usb burning the x230 ports seem to fail, w520 works.
Weird problem.

[rs55]

I wonder if this "live-usb" program needs more power than usual ?

By the way , in trying everything else first - I tried the DD option - which worked off the x230.

So why does "live-usb" fail while DD works?

[BitJam]

That is strange. Are you booting via legacy or UEFI? Two different bootloaders are involved. There is actually a bug in UEFI booting our dd live-usb that could cause the error you got. Our dev fehlix has already fixed it for our upcoming iso releases. I don't know why you would get that error booting from a live-usb-maker (LUM) live-usb. Again, the first step is to tell us if you are booting legacy or UEFI. If you are booting UEFI then fehlix may be able to help you track down the problem.

IIRC, when we boot UEFI on the LUM live-usb then we have to start with grub on the small fat32 partition. It's grub.cfg changes the "root" using the UUID of the main partition (which contains the vmlinuz file). If the UUID in the grub.cfg on the fat32 partition does not match the UUID of the main ext4 partition then that would explain this error. Fehlix and I have developed a fallback (for our upcoming iso releases) so even if the UUID search fails, we still have a way of finding the main partition.

Also, why do you wonder about live-usb-maker needing "more power than usual". Certainly what it does is more complicated than what a simple "dd" does but I don't think there is anything that would make it especially power hungry. As far as the usb device is concerned, the biggest difference is that "dd" does one long sequential write while "LUM" does more random writes since it is partitioning, creating file systems, and copying files.

An easy check to make sure there were no write errors is to mount the live-usb and cd (change directory) to it's antiX/ directory and then run:

Code: Select all

md5sum -c *.md5

You should get this output:

Code: Select all

initrd.gz: OK
linuxfs: OK
vmlinuz: OK

[rs55]

Both machines are MBR. The bios is set to "either" with priority for "legacy".
I no longer have access to the faulty usb - since I overwrote it - but I bet the vmlinuz would have thrown an error - on that md5 error check.

I am actually fine - just have to remember to burn my live iso's off the w520 - its not something I would need to do very frequently - once I am done learning how this works! thanks so much for your response.

If you have a moment - I am now live booting with dynamic persistence off that usb. At the login screen , after the initial time, it shows two items: the original date, and a "Custom".
Not clear on what those choices mean.

[BitJam]

Both machines are MBR. The bios is set to "either" with priority for "legacy".

The error you got was very unusual for the legacy bootloader. I agree with you that the live-usb may not have been written correctly. If you try running live-usb-maker again on that system you could look at the output of "dmesg" to see if there are IO errors. I'm not certain but there is evidence piling up that the newer kernels have a problem writing to disk/usb on certain hardware configurations.

If you have a moment - I am now live booting with dynamic persistence off that usb. At the login screen , after the initial time, it shows two items: the original date, and a "Custom".
Not clear on what those choices mean.

Do you mean the bootloader screen? In the legacy live bootloader of you choose "save" in the "F8 Save" menu then all of the bootloader parameters will be saved, as default values in the menus, with additional parameters added to a new "Custom" entry in the main bootloader menu. I believe you can use "F8 Save" --> reset to get things back to normal if you want.

If you don't mean the bootloader menu then you will need to explain what you are talking about more clearly (at least for me). The login screen usually means the display manager (lightdm for MM and SLiM for antiX) but the live system normally does an autologin so you don't normally see tha screen at boot time.

[rs55]

Thanks - yes I was talking about the bootloader screen. It shows two options:
antiX-17.4x64......... , and
Custom(18 March 2019)

This is probably documented somewhere, but its not intuitively obvious what those mean. I assume "Custom" is what you would routinely choose?
The only difference I can see is the "Custom" has an extra boot parameter "wicd".
I would actually prefer to not have 2 choices - since it would be easy to wind up choosing one or the other. And I am not sure what the persistence files would be saving in that case.
I tried the save - reset thing and still have two options on boot.
I initially assumed the "Custom" would load the persistence files and the first option would not ( to provide a fallback option if you persisted something you did'nt mean to on the previous boot. That does'nt seem to be the case.

[rs55]

Interesting to know that newer kernels have had some iO issues with older hardware. i am running the 4.9 kernel that Antix defaulted to.( on my x230).
On the w520 I have tried a few kernels - none had any issues. Currently using the liquorix 4.20. Cant really detect any difference to the 4.9 kernel - possibly because I have changed the vm.dirty.. parameters manually - and that is one of the things that liquorix does.

[rs55]

This is off-topic - but I have to say , as much as I love MX, this antix is just grabbing my attention more and more. I put it on my 18 year old X40 thinkpad yesterday- ran like greased lighting, and ram usage was at 75 MB ! ( I did a double take on that!).

The main thing Iam missing in Antix right now is the ability to set power options - like invoking sleep when I close the lid. ( Only been using Antix for 24 hours - so it might be there and I just have'nt seen it yet ).
Fabulous pair of OSs.

MX - is obviously more polished looking - with the MX Control Center etc. But man, that Antix is sure lightweight on system resources - and looks pretty cools too!!

[BitJam]

This is probably documented somewhere, but its not intuitively obvious what those mean.

Did you try pressing F1? The antiX bootloader says in large centered text:

press F1 for help

I assume "Custom" is what you would routinely choose?
The only difference I can see is the "Custom" has an extra boot parameter "wicd".
I would actually prefer to not have 2 choices - since it would be easy to wind up choosing one or the other. And I am not sure what the persistence files would be saving in that case.
I tried the save - reset thing and still have two options on boot.
I initially assumed the "Custom" would load the persistence files and the first option would not ( to provide a fallback option if you persisted something you did'nt mean to on the previous boot. That does'nt seem to be the case.

I just told you that when you "save", values are saved in the menus and in the Custom entry. To disable and change persistence use the "F5 Persist" menu. The difference between the Custom entry are the default entry are shown in "Boot Options:" box. The answers to almost everything you are asking/complaining about are right there on the screen. I routinely use the Custom entry because there are boot parameters I like to add most of the times I boot.

There are a number of good reasons why we leave the default entry alone when we add a custom entry. If you want to change that menu manually then you can edit the file /live/boot-dev/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg. There is even an entry in the antiX Control Centre for editing this file called "Edit Bootloader Menu".

[rs55]

Thanks. Yes I edited the syslinux file to hide "Custom"

I am not complaining ... not by a long shot. I am actually thrilled with both MX and Antix. As , I posted earlier , I have only recently started using these systems - so still learning.

Thanks for all your work and helpful responses.