Hi y’all. First off, thank you for the work that you’re all doing on this!
So I’m attempting to install startOS for the first time on an old laptop. Details below. Everything seems to be going fine until the end. The TLDR is that it gives an error message after telling me it was successfully installed and the OS will not launch.
Here are the full details. I’ve been following along the instructions on the start9 website. I have the non-free iso flashed onto 32gb flash drive, when I turn the laptop on I am able to select the flash drive from the boot options. It runs through some command line scrolling and ends up on the startOS boot menu where I select “Live System (amd64)”. After a new minutes it pulls up a browser interface and prompts me to select my disk and then to install startOS. It takes a few minutes to install and then give me a message that the installation was successful, to remove the usb, and restart the device. This is where it gets confusing.
My first attempt, I did as it said, removed the usb, and then clicked button “reboot” on the message prompt. Instead of shutting down, the prompt goes away and it lands on the “Install type” page where you select to install the os. Only now in red text above the install button there is a message that says “RPC ERROR: Filesystem I/O error input/output error (os error 5)”. See the image below. From here if I cycle the power to reboot, it defaults to the CL saying “no os found”. If I enter the boot options and manually select the installed disk drive to boot from it says no OS found.
Keep in mind this image is after the message “Install Success” and clicking the reboot button.
So next I insert the usb and retried the install, I got to the install success message. This time I clicked the reboot button before removing the drive. This resulted in no red error message that I could see and it immediately began shutting down on its own. I removed the usb as it was shutting down and let it reboot. Unfortunately I get the same results in that it says there is no OS found. So I’m kind of stuck at this point.
Machine
Installing on a Dell XPS from 2011
CPU: intel core i7-2630QM 2.0GHz
6Gb RAM
A brand new Crucial 2.5” SATA 2Tb SSD (is this an issue?)
Not sure about the motherboard
There’s definitely something wrong with the disk, either physically or in terms of the boot table. If this was me, I might remove the drive, attach it to a linux machine and reformat it there to ext4. Whatever the issue is, it might then go away.
If that doesn’t work, fiddling with any secure boot options in the bios might be a worth a try.
With DIY devices, there’s always some experimentation to do.
Thanks for the reply! I did expect I might run into some road blocks!
Interesting… I didn’t notice any secure boot options in the bios but I will poke around more. I did just realize I am on a bios version from 2011 still and Dell has a newer version posted in 2020, A12 version. Would it be worth updating the bios? I wonder if this could be an issue.
I think I might try that first since it is easiest. If that doesn’t work I will take a look at reformatting the drive. It is brand new and has not been used for anything yet.
So another potentially interesting data point… I re-installed the original HDD in the machine, wiped and attempted to install startOS on it. I got the exact same I/O error after removing the drive and clicking reboot. And if I attempt to boot from the HDD it says no OS installed. So entirely different drive, exact same result. To me this says it may not be an issue with the drives?
I’d still like to try to update the BIOS but I have been unsuccessful so far. The info I’m finding online doesn’t seem to line up with what I have on this machine.
I think I’ll probably attempt to install another Linux distro which will hopefully shed some light.
interesting. I got a basically identical result when attempting to install Linux Mint. Walked through the install process, got to the end and it tells me it was a success and to reboot the machine. When booting it says there is no OS. So this issue does not appear to be specific to startOS.
Aside from updating the BIOS, I’m at a loss for what else to try.
Maybe some community members will have some ideas. Other than looking around in the BIOS and trying different options, it could be an actual hardware problem. You might try replacing the hard drive
Thanks for your reply! I do hope so! I’ve also reached out to some other linux communities as it seems my issue is not specific to StartOS.
On the hard drive, I have tried 2 different drives with the same result. I tried on the OEM HDD that is original to the machine as well as a new 2.5" internal SSD that I just purchased. So I wouldn’t think I’d be that unlucky as to get 2 incompatible drives.
My suspicions are in the prehistoric BIOS but I’m still struggling to get it updated.
