Installation fails [SOLVED]

[Member kaye]

Hello Friends!

I’m trying an installation method that I’ve never tried before – grub on PBR (partition boot record)

Currently if I look at GParted, i have these relevant partitions:

1. 2 GB home partition
2. 9.77 GB root partition
3. 1 GB swap partition
4. 300 MB boot partition

None of them have any Flags.

When I run the antiX installer and I’m at the point where I can choose which partition to install GRUB, I choose the 300 MB boot partition.

Installation to the hard drive seems fine; no errors reported. However when I try to boot the hard drive, I get something like

MokListRT Out of Resources

then a black, ordinary screen where I can choose to boot antiX but it never boots, which then causes the still inserted live USB to boot instead.

What am I doing wrong here?

300 MB for boot partition too small?

Does PBR need to be ntfs format?

Thank you for your time!

• This topic was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by kaye.
• This topic was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by kaye.

[Moderator caprea]

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Might better to give some information which antiX you want to install on which hardware.
Is this bios or efi hardware? eg. in an EFI installation, grub is never installed into the MBR/PBR, but always into an EFI system partition.

[Member kaye]

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Hello caprea

Sorry forgot about other details.

My live USB is antiX-21_x64-full Grup Yorum 31 October 2021 , so that’s what I want to install on my laptop’s hard drive.

The hard drive has GPT partition table.

I have now turned the formerly PBR partition into a 1 GB fat32 partition, with “Flags” of “boot,esp” (according to what I’m seeing now in GParted).

Upon running the installer, I chose the ESP grub install.

Installation still failed.

I also see this:

Smartmon tool output:

—- sda (ESP, SWAP, /, /home, ESP) —
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 943

why are there two ESP? there should only be one.

Update:
at 95% installation, I get this message:
GRUB installation failed. You can reboot to the live medium and use the GRUB Rescue menu to repair the installation.

(if you can tell me what should be the file system and size of the EFI system partition, that would be great)

• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by kaye.
• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by kaye.
• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by kaye.

[Moderator caprea]

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The size of the ESP (efi system partition) should be 100-200 mb.
File system is fat32, mount point: /boot/efi

[Member kaye]

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If I plan to install Windows 7 64bit on another partition, is 200MB enough for the ESP?

• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by kaye.
• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by kaye.

[Moderator caprea]

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OK, why not going up to 500mb,if the hard drive has enough space. this should really be enough.I do not dual boot with windows, though.

[Member kaye]

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Right now I’m in the “Choose partitions” of the antiX Linux Installer.

For the EFI system partition, I made it 400 MB.

The column “Use For”, I typed “/boot/efi” .

However, on the “Format” column, there is no FAT32 option (even though I had formatted it to FAT32 beforehand using GParted).

[Moderator caprea]

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There should be the option to leave it as it is for formation. I have to look again at the installer.

Use for column should be ESP

• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by caprea.

[Member kaye]

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Yes, I set it to ESP.

When I click next, I get this message:

The antiX Linux Installer will now perform the requested actions.

These actions cannot be undone. Do you want to continue?

There is a Show Details button. Upon clicking it, I see this:

Reuse (no reformat) sda3 as EFI System Partition
Reuse (no reformat) sda5 as swap space
Format sda8 to use for / (root)
Reuse (no reformat) sda4 as /home
Reuse (no reformat) sdb2 as EFI System Partition

Notice the last line; the device is sdb2. But that’s the live USB! Is this normal?

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Yes, the live USB also has an EFI, otherwise it’s not a bootable device using the EFI/UEFI bootable technology that has been in place for quite a few years already.

• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by Brian Masinick.

--
Brian Masinick

[Member kaye]

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Still failed at 95% — installing GRUB.

I then tried the Boot Repair of the live USB.

I chose the:

Reinstall GRUB bootloader on ESP, MBR, or PBR

then for Install On, I chose ESP.

then for Location, it was the EFI system partition by default

then for Select Root Location, it was the recently created root partition by default.

I click Apply and got this:

Sorry, could not mount /boot/efi partition

[Moderator christophe]

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kaye wrote:

I’m trying an installation method that I’ve never tried before – grub on PBR (partition boot record)

PBR partition boot record is for putting the antiX grub bootloader on the *partition* boot record, instead of the master boot record.

So, say you have grub or syslinux from another OS booting the computer from the MBR.

(MBR is the tiny part of the hdd/ssd at the front of the device, used to boot the computer, since the old DOS days.)

Now, each partition has a tiny bit similar to that mbr, called pbr. It just sits at the beginning of the *partition*, instead of the whole disk drive.

So, to boot antiX from pbr, you install the grub bootloader to the same partition as you are installing antiX to.

But the other grub installed to the mbr (from your other os, mentioned earlier), has to “chainload” this second “mbr” (the pbr) – in order to boot antiX.

For example, I boot my antiX frugal from syslinux or extlinux. So if I want to install another os (mx for example) then I could install its grub to the pbr of the partition I install mx onto, and make an entry in my main bootloader to chain to that pbr grub, to boot my mx install.

(If you have grub on the mbr, you can run update-grub to find other pbr bootloaders to chain to.)

I don’t think this will work on gpt partitions. I tried it once, and it failed to boot. It needed dos partitions, and it worked for me.

I hope that helps. 😉

• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Moderator caprea]

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Forgot to point out it’s always strongly recommended to update the installer during the live session before the installation to HD.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install --reinstall antix-installer

Also while using boot-repair it’s might better to choose “reinstall grub” firstly and then do a boot-repair, ah just seen you did that.

• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by caprea.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Remember that since your display showed TWO different EFI partitions, be sure to select the one:
Reuse (no reformat) sda3 as EFI System Partition
and NOT
Reuse (no reformat) sdb2 as EFI System Partition —
because sdb2 is the USB drive from which you are installing the software.
Make sure you do it correctly.

Also, some people install it all on a single physical partition and only use different partitions for swap and the boot block;
I rarely use a separate partition for /home, for example, though others will divide them up.

This is mainly when you install for PERSONAL use.

When it’s a shared server, such as a large, interactive UNIX or Linux server, that’s a much different story.
THEN, I use a different physical device for practically every major thing, for example,
/ and the core /bin, /sbin stuff with / on one device
/home on another device, and if there are LOTS of users, maybe even a chain of several devices.
/usr may also get another device,
/var may get another device, etc. — BUT note, this much different configuration is when you are supporting a large development or user community.
When it’s JUST your OWN system, you don’t need to divide things up because it IS more complicated that way.
So use some thought and discretion to decide what you actually need based on what and how you intend to use the system.
IT is CAPACITY and performance concerns that make businesses select so many different devices, but individual use has vastly different (and simple) needs.

--
Brian Masinick

[Member kaye]

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Thank you all for your input. However installation still failed, particularly the GRUB.

I got this again at 95% progress:

GRUB installation failed. You can reboot to the live medium and use the GRUB Rescue menu to repair the installation.

I’m stuck. Don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

(Looking at GParted, my EFI system partition, ESP, is currently formatted as fat32 and is 400 MB in size. also shows “boot,esp” under Flags)

• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by kaye.
• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by kaye.

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