I am trying out a Clevo MZ41, pretty interesting machine. It is coreboot supported (Dasharo, in the future also Heads) which is exciting.

But I cant boot any live Linux? I tried Fedora Media writer and KDEs iso image writer. I tried Fedora KDE and KDE Neon (you see a trend haha) and also Ventoy.

These sticks normally always boot up, but here I get Dracut timeout, partition /root not found etc.

In the insydeH2O Bios I already disabled Secureboot entirely (not even needed, that Bios is awesome I can even deploy my own keys and all). Nothing changed.

Warning: /dev/disk/by-label/Fedora-KDE-Live-38-1-6 does not exist
Warning: /dev/root does not exist

... emergency mode ...

Anyone know whats going on here?

  • just_another_person@lemmy.world
    8·
    8 months ago

    My gut here is saying you have a mismatched combo of how Coreboot is treating these, and how they are written. From what I’m reading, Coreboot should support Legacy, UEFI, or SeaBIOS, so go set that in the BIOS setup, then make absolutely sure your disks are being written as such (NOT mbr). Ventoy should be the tool to use here for testing different distros out, so good on finding that.

  • Psynthesis@beehaw.org
    3·
    8 months ago

    I have never used those tools, I usually just dd the iso to a usb. I am assuming you are on a linux distribution already. I would download a fresh iso and verify the checksum. Then use dd to write to the usb. I use this format, and of course replace the path to iso bit and /dev/sdx (your usb)with what is relevant to your situation. Just open terminal and type

    sudo dd bs=4M if=path/to/your.iso of=/dev/sdx conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

    You probably already know but you can find the usb’s specific /dev/sdx with sudo fdisk -l

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
    2·
    8 months ago

    It’s possible that the label of the disk somehow doesn’t match, you can check that by inserting the stick into your normal desktop and seeing if it boots. It’s probably fine, but even big distros make packaging mistakes sometimes. The partition has to be labeled exactly as stated in the path it can’t find, if you changed it, it won’t boot.

    If the label is correct and the disk boots on another machine, there’s something else going on. In my experience, when initrd can’t find the root partition after selecting the flash drive as a boot option, the kernel is probably not set up for USB devices when it needs to be. The initramfs image may miss the appropriate firmware or drivers, or the kernel doesn’t support a device feature that’s enabled by default.

    If your laptop has dedicated USB 2 ports, try booting from there. In my experience, USB 2 works more reliably than USB 3 in the early boot process.

    Also check any USB 3 related settings, such as XHCI hand-off and such; on some models of motherboard you need to turn all of that off. Some chipsets just don’t have very good Linux support, or need a firmware update before they work well, so make sure to check the vendor’s website for any firmware updates if you have an OS installed.