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Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2024 11:06 am
by dolphin_oracle
a_freed_man wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2024 10:46 am
I just discovered the MX Workbench respin and it might be just what I need to resolve a bootup issue I have on an old Lenovo i5 system I'm trying to install TrueNAS on.
I added a dual SATA M.2 PCIe adaptor to use as a RAID system drive to install it on, and 2 SATA 2TB HDDs for the main storage. I booted the TueNAS installer from a USB flash drive and installed it onto the M.2 SATA drive array without a problem, TrueNAS detected the drives just fine. However the machine's BIOS did not, and TrueNAS wouldn't boot.
I upgraded the BIOS from 2014 version to the latest one released in 2022, still didn't detect the M.2 SATA drives.
I ran into the exact same problem on an old Dell system a coupla years ago running MX21, which I solved by booting it off a USB drive and essentially chrooting to MX installed on the SSD the BIOS refused to boot from. Fro what I see online this is a fairly common problem with older hardware.
Now TrueNAS is based on Debian but uses the ZFS filesystem. I see MX. Workbench provides tools to support ZFS but I'm not sure how to use them. I see the ZFS daemon for FUSE access is started at boot, but I don't see how to mount the TrueNAS drives, mount fails. I'm hoping perhaps I might be able to boot MX Workbench from USB and resolve the TrueNAS boot problem in a similar manor as I did for the Dell system.
I can imagine 2 possibilities:
1) change the MX EFI on the USB to point to the M.2 SATA drives to boot TrueNAS (I believe EFI has support for PCIe devices)
2) MX mounts the M.2 drive (possibly using chroot) and starts its' systemd / init start process.
I'm open to other suggestions for this boot problem.
I don't know much about that kind of thing. I suggest opening another thread on it. workbench is one of adrian's spins, not mine.
Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2024 12:11 pm
by Adrian
I don't know much about ZFS tools, I just added them to Workbench because somebody requested them, hope they are useful for your case.
Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2024 10:11 am
by a_freed_man
FYI - also noticed the efibootmgr version is very old (17-2). It may be the most recent available, but it doesn't work the way its' man page says it should. It always shows the same info regardless of the -d argument provided for the device.
Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2024 10:07 am
by BitterTruth
I recommend you open a separate thread for what you are trying to achieve and your exact issue that you are having. If you have multiple issues with different respins, apps then separate threads for each would be better to get the help you need. QSI of your setup would also be good. You mention 'an old lenovo i5'. What model/motherboard exactly? How did you install the bootloader if any onto the m2 drive when you installed truenas?
I don't understand how truenas could detect the pcie m2 drive if your bios doesn't detect it? Did you do the installation on another machine?
EDIT: when you start your new thread, please confirm
1) what mode you are booting the machine in (bios, efi,csm etc)
2) how you formatted the usb (mbr or gpt)
3) how and where you installed bootloader/grub(?) during the truenas installation
Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2024 8:54 am
by a_freed_man
BitterTruth wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2024 10:07 am
I recommend you open a separate thread for what you are trying to achieve and your exact issue that you are having. If you have multiple issues with different respins, apps then separate threads for each would be better to get the help you need. QSI of your setup would also be good. You mention 'an old lenovo i5'. What model/motherboard exactly? How did you install the bootloader if any onto the m2 drive when you installed truenas?
I don't understand how truenas could detect the pcie m2 drive if your bios doesn't detect it? Did you do the installation on another machine?
EDIT: when you start your new thread, please confirm
1) what mode you are booting the machine in (bios, efi,csm etc)
2) how you formatted the usb (mbr or gpt)
3) how and where you installed bootloader/grub(?) during the truenas installation
I hear you about separate threads, will do. I'll kick it off by quoting this reply and with Lenovo QSI.
I'll answer your question about m2 drive detection here: it's via kernel modules. Every recent Live boot installer detects it, but they load a kernel, MX included. I'm not sure which module is responsible for that PCIe card tho, and it does no good at boot time (need EFI driver binary that detects that PCIe card. UEFI / GPT is how I install everything now). There's a zfsBootMenu.EFI binary I thought was perfect as it actually boots a very small Linux kernel and is capable of finding bootable partitions in zfs, however TrueNAS has altered zfs in a way zfsBootMenu doesn't understand so that doesn't resolve problem either.
Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 11:34 am
by Shaddy
I'm not sure this is the right place for this but I wanted to share my experience using MX Linux minimal 21, I was very Happy then finding a minimal respin as I prefer appimages or blender style standalone apps over installed ones, also installing apps on mx linux is very easy and preinstalled packages will be outdated at some point and has to be upgraded, so I encourage you to make the minimal official as this is the biggest draw back is that you don't get official support, other issues that bothered me were resolved by digging and installing packages that resolved my issues that might not be a problem for super user but normal users might suffer. so I'm sharing my note of things to do after installing Minimal:
minimal version(as downloaded) needs tweeking after install
- install gvfs so that thunar can see external drives or usb flash, and gvfs-fuse & gvfs-backends for ftp server to open within thunar.
- install menulibre for edit applications on the whisker menu to work.
- enable AHS repository for latest Nvidia drivers, from MX Repo Manager goto indivdual sources, find mx.list, check the box that containes ahs at the end of the line.
- after enabling AHS repo, install Nvidia driver normally, from the app menu find "Nvidia Driver installer"
- install Xarchiver for the extract here in the right click menu inside thunar file manager to work.
- to install Qiuck system info which is required by MX forums to give support, you have to know the right package name "qiuck-system-info-gui" (that was a tricky one)
Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 11:39 am
by Shaddy
Is there a difference between "Base" "Bare" "Minimal" ?
Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 12:04 pm
by Jerry3904
Check the first post in this thread...
Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 12:08 pm
by kd4e
It's unclear, to me, what is the difference between this
MX 23.3 sysVinit-only resipin is up, Full version of MX-23.3 64 bit, with systemd removed. elogind, libelogind, and libpam-elogind are utilized to fill those session management requirements.
and the generic non-systemD MX 23.3 ...
Re: dolphin_oracle's respins (updated June 23, 2024)
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 1:01 pm
by Jerry3904
Systemd is present though not enabled on the official release. The respin does not even have it present.