How to boot into failsafe mode Debian 11

[Member hamster]

Good day,

antiX offers quite a nice feature, namely booting automatically into failsafe. That is needed in case you install (like me) antiX on an old iMac from 2009. Works great, no issues. However, I tried this with a vanilla Debian 11 (XFCE) but I won’t get this option. The iMac requires this failsafe boot mode (don’t ask me why), otherwise you get a blank screen. I guess it has something to do with the Radeon grafic card.

Does someone know how you can “order” Debian 11 (non-free, Live) to boot into this failsafe mode? When I boot the live-USB of Debian, I get all kind of options (Live, install grafic mode, regular install etc.) but no “boot Debian thru failsafe”.

I appreciate your help. Thanks and Rgds,
Patrick

[Member PPC]

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hi, hamster – would it not be a better choice to ask that question on an Debian support forum, like this- https://forums.debian.net?
Or you can wait around someone tries to answer you here…

P.

[Member hamster]

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Thank you P.
Yes, I could do that, but I am “chicken” 🙂 The Debians are not known to react friendly on (stupid) newbie questions such as mine. I am sure its pretty simple and probably already pointed out on the deb forum, but I could not find anything and the answer “RTFM” does not help.
Cheers
Patrick

[Member PPC]

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As far as I know Debian does not have a “fail safe mode”, but you can try this: at the Grub (boot menu), with the first option selected, press CTRL+ i and the boot paramenters will be able to be edited – you can then apply the same parameters that work in antiX, maybe?

Edit: probably for such old device, you should stick with antiX, unless you really need something that requires Debian (like systemd dependent apps- snaps, etc)

P.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by PPC.

[Member madibi]

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Dear Hamster.
I’m writing from an old mac with antix (MacBook Air from 2013).
On older Mac I had a lot of problems with Debian, Antix, Q4OS and Sparky.
The distros that were booting, installing and working with no probs were the ubuntu based.
I installed successfully Peppermint 10, based on ubuntu 18.04. And my friends with MacBook Pro (2007 and 2008) or Macbook (2008)were happy.
Please note that with that OS you can get support till 2028, with a couple of tricks. My opinion is that ubuntu > 20.04 is unusable.
In any case please also remember to add the utility “macfanctld” or “psensor”. It is very important in order to avoid the overheating of the machine.
Which are the specs of your Imac?
Last week I’ve just installed linux on an Imac from 2011, 16gram, proc i5, with zero probs.
m

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by madibi.

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