Mx-23.2 boot failure

[james]

So as soon as I hit SUBMIT, here comes DukeComposed to burst my bubble. I guess I still don't understand. Are you saying then that it is really just like downloading your installer ISO, but while you can run it and see all the apps you had installed that nevertheless it just installs the OS and after that you have to go in and install all the apps and do all the configuration all over again?

[james]

Well, DukeComposed, I am on an emotional roller-coaster here. But on top again right now. Because when I made the snapshot I didn't exclude anything. I was going to exclude the Virtual Boxes, but I said, what the hell, I'll get a bigger flash drive, which I did. So it really should save me like I said? Please say yes.

[DukeComposed]

So as soon as I hit SUBMIT, here comes DukeComposed to burst my bubble. I guess I still don't understand. Are you saying then that it is really just like downloading your installer ISO, but while you can run it and see all the apps you had installed that nevertheless it just installs the OS and after that you have to go in and install all the apps and do all the configuration all over again?

No that's not what I'm saying.

MX Snapshot just makes ISOs. That's it. It's not a magic wand. It makes ISOs based on its own local system at runtime, so whatever you configured it to do last week to make a snapshot ISO it did, and whatever you asked it to exclude it left out. I think snapshot creation leaves behind a log file, probably under /home/snapshots, so you can check that to see what you did and how you did it.

And again, if you aren't sure what's in the snapshot ISO, just boot the damn snapshot ISO and look. If it's not in the live session of that snapshot, it won't be in the re-installation made with that ISO. Conversely, if it is in the live session, it will be in the re-install, unless you edit it or elide it during install time.

[james]

I have decided to wait several more days before I decide what to do about this problem, and tackle some chores I have been letting slide. Thanks to everyone who offered ideas and advice. I will be checking back frequently in the next few days to see if anyone has thought of something else to try.

In the meantime, I have two questions...
1) I have noticed that the Mx start menu, grub menu, and boot menus list either the model number (in this case, the Western Digital model) or the description of drives (nvme#), and that while the nvme# is at least unique (unlike the model number), the nvme# designations get shuffled around periodlically. Is there a way to get any menus to use something like the drive serial numbe or UUID to avoid confusion?

2) I have read up on systemd, and opinion seems to be polarized with some people liking it and some hating it. Since Mx offers the choice to use it or not, does anyone have an opinion on which way to go?

Thanks again for the help,
James

[CharlesV]

So as soon as I hit SUBMIT, here comes DukeComposed to burst my bubble. I guess I still don't understand. Are you saying then that it is really just like downloading your installer ISO, but while you can run it and see all the apps you had installed that nevertheless it just installs the OS and after that you have to go in and install all the apps and do all the configuration all over again?

When you create a snapshot, and have checked "Preserving accounts (for personal backup) ... you have setup to create a 'backup' which is installable. This means you have your *machine* your configurations, installed apps, data ( provided it is in your home folders!!) and the machine ' the way it looks' . (with a couple of exceptions.)

There is no 'restore' though like a regular backup. You *install* to a machine, overwriting that machine with what is on your liveUSB. (You should always boot off that live usb and verify what it on it - apps, configs etc. ) The installation MAY / WILL setup a new machine - and MAY decide to install different drivers etc on that machine. However, in my experience this is a GOOD thing and you should have your machine 'back' once your installed.

Caveats!
1) Things like VM's get big, and you may have to exclude them from the snapshot (they also MAY be excluded automatically from the snapshot excludes!). Verify this before installing!

There no possible way I could include my VM's, I am over 1tb. So this has to be handled around the snapshot.

2) You should ALWAYS have a real backup! (Backintime (my preference), Lucky backup, et ) that contains ALL your data before doing anything like this!

3) KNOW where your data is! If you have data outside of your home folders... then you *must* take additional steps to backup and them restore that data!! As an example: I dont have my real data in my home folder. I have it all on a different drive entirely. SO.. if I do a snapshot, I have an installable profile, but that contains links to my data - and not my data!

This is a great method of keeping data out or harms way on the bootable drive, but it can trip you up BIG time if your not on a totally different drive! (and can trip you up in differnt ways too;-/ )

[CharlesV]

I have decided to wait several more days before I decide what to do about this problem, and tackle some chores I have been letting slide. Thanks to everyone who offered ideas and advice. I will be checking back frequently in the next few days to see if anyone has thought of something else to try.

In the meantime, I have two questions...
1) I have noticed that the Mx start menu, grub menu, and boot menus list either the model number (in this case, the Western Digital model) or the description of drives (nvme#), and that while the nvme# is at least unique (unlike the model number), the nvme# designations get shuffled around periodlically. Is there a way to get any menus to use something like the drive serial numbe or UUID to avoid confusion?

2) I have read up on systemd, and opinion seems to be polarized with some people liking it and some hating it. Since Mx offers the choice to use it or not, does anyone have an opinion on which way to go?

Thanks again for the help,
James

There is a post by Fehlix or D_O that discusses how to name the drives so there is no confusion, but I cannot put my finger on it now. Do a little searching for that topic. Yes there is a way.

On systemd ... as you saw there is a lot of polarizing on this subject. I dont use it, but it seems like MX handles either well, possibly a little better on the SysVint side. Many of us that like sysvint are prone to stick with it, however there is a strong argument for understanding it and learning it. ( I have not started moving that direction ;-/ still working on learning sysvint better.)

There are quite a few people here that us systemd and I personally thing staying with a debian base... it is going to be a really good thing to know.

[james]

CharlesV: Thank you for the responses. The point that the backup only restores data that was in the home folder makes it very clear. Like you, for more than a decade I have kept the OS and the apps on one drive and all my data on another. I am very careful with data and have lost almost no data in 22 years. Now that I have two 1 TB nvme drives on the motherboard, I put the OS and apps on one nvme drive and use the other for downloaded and recent data, and also copy the data to a third drive which is external and accumulates all the data, and then periodically back up the third drive to a fourth drive. That way I can recover from a drive failure, data corruption, or virus on any drive. I didn't have the expectation that Snapshot would back up my data - it is the installation of the apps and the configuration work that I was worried about. Like I said, I searched the internet for info on Snapshot and while I found a lot of info on how to make a backup, I did not find a clear explanation of how to restore one. MX should produce a web page on that because it does distinguish MX from other distros in a good way. By the way, I noticed that when I boot off of my Snapshot ISO flash drive and get into MX, all my apps and icons are there, but the screen resolution is aweful, even though when I made the snapshot it was set at 4K UHD. Any idea why?

As I said, I did not exclude my VMs, but although they are the biggest part of the Snapshot, they are only 120 GB. I just searched Backintime - that seems to be a free app, yes?

From what I have been able to understand about systemd, it sort of supervises what goes on and keeps code execution organized, but the drawback seems to be that it has some overhead. I'll have to read up on it more and also try to find the post you mentioned that discusses drive designations. That has always bugged me that the system just decides to shuffle the names of drives. That's just nuts, but I understand that that goes all the back to early UNIX, when it might have made some sense. But when I look at the boot choices on my motherboard and it lists two drives by exactly the same model number, that is even worse! Either way, that's just asking for it. Both Disks and gParted show clearly which is which, but you have to have booted into the OS to see it!

Overall, my impression of MX is that it is what I want to use. It's based on Debian rather than Ubuntu, and while I know Ubuntu is to some extent also based on Debian, Ubuntu is starting to go in a direction I don't care for. I like that MX is based on Debian and so very stable, but the software app versions aren't as old, and having used it very briefly, it has a lot of stuff I really like such as Snapshot, configurability, the whisker menu, and so on. Then there is Thunar. I didn't like Thunar at first, but it does have some neat stuff, such as split view. Coming from Ubuntu, I didn't like Nautilus at first either, but then Nautilus has a feature called multiple file rename, and that is SOOOOO useful, that I wish Thunar had that. And then I found out that Thunar DOES have it, but it didn't seem as easy to use. But after using it, I see it has MORE options to rename multiple files, and once I understood them, five minutes later I like Thunar better. One thing that Thunar offers that I have not see elsewhere is the options to 'Open Root Thunar Here' and to 'Edit as Root' - very cool. Also MX doesn't use snaps - that is something I am NOT gonna miss. In Ubuntu, you have snaps wanting to install stuff, and Software Updater wanting to install stuff, and occasionally you may need to have Synaptic install stuff. Having only one updater in MX is a plus. Finally, I was actually amazed that so many people at least some of whom are obviously engineers tried to help me out in the forum. They kept me so busy for a couple of days that I did nothing all day but try to solve this problem. I only got to use MX for three days before something happened to make my machine go catatonic. I may get lucky with someone having a sudden realization of how to solve this, but failing that I suppose I will get a first hand look at how Snapshot restore works.

[MXRobo]

Backintime https://github.com/bit-team/backintime
In MX-21.3 Xfce, it's available in MXPI-Enabled Repos tab.

[Charlie Brown]

Meanwhile @james

I didn't ask it as you already said (in post #5) you checked fstab , and then thought these parts were edited (to hide, for privacy etc.) by you.

But:

Code: Select all

#Entry for /dev/nvme0n1p1 :
UUID=275268df-8933-47f4-a415-baae5b4808ec	/media/N	ext4	defaults,x-gvfs-show	0	0
#Entry for /dev/nvme2n1p1 :
UUID=4d29af03-1bbf-432d-94b1-23c778ce863b	/media/M	ext4	defaults,x-gvfs-show	0	0

Are the mountpoints: M , N existing in /media/ ?

(Assuming uuids are correct)


If fstab is ok I'd try removing Nvidia and see what happens with just Nouveau (sometimes it's just an Nvidia bug (specific to that version etc..) )

In case you'd like to try:

Code: Select all

sudo ddm-mx -p nvidia

(... And in case that works it'll be a good feedback to devs).

[james]

I decided to go ahead and do use Live USB Snapshot to restore the snapshot. It went well and all my apps were there except the screen resolution is horribly low. I spent about an hour searching around for how to get the proper video driver installed. I downloaded the proper driver from Nvidia. I tried the Nvidia Driver Installer, which listed the one it that was installed and gave no way to choose anything else. I searched online and found instructions on how to do it via terminal, but it all involved rebooting in the middle of the process or turning off lightdm, which put me in a black screen terminal. I wrote down all the steps on a piece of paper and did them and rebooted and it was still horrible. So I figured it was the wrong driver because I had it hooked up to my other monitor which was HD instead of UHD. So I took the Live USB Snapshot, hooked the UHD monitor to the machine and did the entire install all over again. Same thing; horrible resolution. I tried Nvidia Driver Installer, no help again. I tried the terminal method. I actually said it saw it recognize the correct driver and SAY IT WAS INSTALLED. I rebooted the machine, and nothing has changed ( the Display says 1024 by 768 and it should be 3,840 by 2,160).
Can someone please give me instructions on how to get the proper resolution?
Here is exactly what I did:
Card is: GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
Bad config: nvidia-driver 525.147.05-7~deb12u1
Good driver: NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-550.54.14.run

Code: Select all

Install dependencies: - gcc, dkms, linux-headers: ( just verify)
chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-550.54.14.run
sudo service lightdm stop
sudo ddm-mx -i nvidia -f NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-550.54.14.run
sudo service lightdm start