Screen corrupted after booting debian 8.5 installer
I was finally able to install debian on the laptop - I manually created bootable USB stick with syslinux (which has textmode by default) and since that process was far more complicated than I originaly thought, I'm posting it here:
I was using instructions from:
- https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/amd64/ch04s03.html.en - this is unfortunately very brief and I was not able to get it to work
- https://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/i386/ch04s04.html - this is quite old, but it helped me to fill missing pieces
This is how I did it:
On my "normal" computer:
- download
$ wget http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/8.5.0/amd64/iso-cd/debian-8.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso
- insert USB-stick (used
$ dmesg | tail
to determine device name -/dev/sde
- but you'll probably get a different name, so I'll usesdX
) $ sudo cfdisk /dev/sdX
- create one big FAT16 bootable (!) partition/dev/sdX1
- make filesystem:
$ sudo mkdosfs /dev/sdX1
- make USB-stick bootable:
$ install-mbr /dev/sdX
- install syslinux:
$ sudo syslinux /dev/sdX1
- mount the stick:
$ sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt
- copy
vmlinuz
andinitrd.gz
from iso to/mnt
create
/mnt/syslinux.cfg
with the following content:default vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz
now the manuals above says to "copy iso image to USB stick" - which is what I probably didn't get right - I tried to copy the content of the ISO, the ISO file itself, but I ended up with the iso file copied as
netinst.iso
to/mnt
$ sudo umount /mnt
On the laptop
- insert the stick, power up laptop
- linux boots quite nicely in textmode
- the install process starts but it ends up with Incorrect CD-ROM detected error.
- I tried to mount usb stick to
/mnt
and then mount/mnt/netinst.iso
to/cdrom
which didn't worked - so I just copied the content of the ISO file (do not forget the.disk
hidden directory!) to another USB disk (on my "normal" computer), inserted it in the laptop, mount it in a console as a cdrom (ALT-F2, enter):mount /dev/sdc1 /cdrom
then I went back to main console (ALT-F1) and install process was resumed and I was able to finish installing with one small glitch:
when debian installer was about to configure apt-sources mirrors, it was not able to do this - no crash, just a window flashed on the screen and I was in the install menu (D-I) - I found out here: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg07251.html that the problem was with the
/usr/lib/apt-setup/generators/50mirror
file, adb_metaget apt-setup/use/netinst description
line to be specific. I finally just deleted the line from 2nd console (ALT-F2) usingnano
editor:$ nano /usr/lib/apt-setup/generators/50mirror
- then I just had to run every subsequent task from the D-I menu manually, but no other problem was encountered and I'm quite happy with the nice little laptop.
I got the same issue on a Lenovo Yoga 11S and all linux command line parameters mentionned doesn't work either.
Finally, I get this installer working by changing the BIOS parameter...
I modify the boot mode from "Legacy" to "UEFI" and the screen displays correctly in both text mode or graphical mode.