I am following the instructions here (Start9 | StartOS (x86)) to install StartOS on a Mini PC. When plugging the USB to the mini PC and booting it up, however, there is no StartOS installation option on the GRUB boot menu. Options on the menu are live system, live system (fail-safe mode), and utilities. [Screenshot removed - new user can put at most 1 image]
After choosing live system, the system fails to boot up with some errors. Screenshot:
I use a 16GB USB drive and balenaEtcher to flash StartOS ISO to the USB. I also tried a few StartOS ISO including startos-0.3.4.2-efc56c0-20230525_x86_64-nonfree.iso, startos-0.3.5-871f78b_x86_64.iso, and startos-0.3.5.1-39de098_x86_64.iso. But all of them does not have installation option on the GRUB menu when booting up.
The Mini PC hardware: CPU AMD R9-7940, 32G RAM, 2T SSD.
Also, installing and running Umbrel OS on the PC is successful.
Could anyone shed some insight on this issue? Please let me know if you need more information.
If you have been trying to use the x86_64.iso this might be what is causing the issue you are seeing on your hardware. The x86_64-nonfree.iso file is the recommended one to go with.
This version has additional drivers which are sometimes needed when working with DIY hardware.
You might need to poke around in your BIOS/UEFI settings, though for your specific case I can’t say what exactly you might be looking for or what might be wrong.
After a quick search for similar issues, I’ve found things like…
Turning on legacy boot
Updating firmware
Toggling IOMMU settings
Might also be worth trying a different media to flash with the .iso, it might be a hardware issue there.
Set secure boot to false. (I do not find legacy boot option)
Set IOMMU from auto to false.
Set IOMMU to true.
Set the TPM computing option to disable.
Flash startos-0.3.4.2-efc56c0-20230525_x86_64-nonfree.iso to an 8GB drive (previously on a 16GB USB drive).
The mother board is very new with 2024 firmware on it. The vendor is american megatrends.
Still there is no StartOS installation option on the GRUB boot menu.
Selecting the live system option leads to an error in the post above. The screenshot shows an error about unknown amdgpu (unknown family_id …). The GPU here is AMD radeon 780M.
Considering the errors on attempting live boot are from X11 and this is a new machine, I’m going to assume that we simply don’t have either the drivers in non-free or a compatible kernel in StartOS yet.
If it’s a beefy machine, you might want to just install Linux, then run StartOS in a virtual machine.
You won’t see it listed in the grub menu like that. Once it boots live, it will take you into the installation process. It’s just not getting that far. Probably a missing driver. You may not be able to run the current version on the bear metal of that machine. But running it as a VM is certainly an option.
