General Linux Chat and Small Questions v. I broke my Arch Install - Hardware & Software

Hey guys, I'm trying to install Linux Mint 15 with Cinnamon on an old laptop with Ubuntu on it. But the laptop doesn't support USB boot or DVD boot, only CD boot. is there any other way I could try and install it?

[QUOTE=SuicideZ;42978074]Hey guys, I'm trying to install Linux Mint 15 with Cinnamon on an old laptop with Ubuntu on it. But the laptop doesn't support USB boot or DVD boot, only CD boot. is there any other way I could try and install it?[/QUOTE] I highly doubt that it doesn't support USB boot. What makes you think it doesn't?

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;42978103]I highly doubt that it doesn't support USB boot. What makes you think it doesn't?[/QUOTE] There's no way I can select it in the boot sequence, all I can do is HDD, Floppy, Optical Drive and Network boot. It's a Sony Vaio VGN-FS515E if that helps.

USB's should show up as an HDD. Just plug it in and it should show up under the HDD section.

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;42978197]USB's should show up as an HDD. Just plug it in and it should show up under the HDD section.[/QUOTE] I've tried that, but it doesn't show up. [editline]25th November 2013[/editline] I just tried it with a different USB, doesn't work with that either.

[QUOTE=SuicideZ;42978218]I've tried that, but it doesn't show up. [editline]25th November 2013[/editline] I just tried it with a different USB, doesn't work with that either.[/QUOTE] Go into your BIOS and see if you have to enable something to load USBs.

I might just be spewing bullshit here, but is it possible to install GRUB first, which can then recognize boot USB's so I can go around the BIOS? [editline]25th November 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=neos300;42978402]Go into your BIOS and see if you have to enable something to load USBs.[/QUOTE] I've checked every possible option.

Are you trying to boot with a UEFI motherboard? Are you able to boot with the USB key in a different computer? Is your motherboard firmware up to date? What kind of options do you have in the HDD section? My computer lists model numbers which can get confusing when you have more than 8 drives/usbs connected. [editline]sadf[/editline] [url=http://notebooks.bigresource.com/Sony-Boot-from-usb-VAIO-VGN-NS105N-lMZwhd4p.html]This document[/url] implies that you need to enable an "external" option somewhere.

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;42978067]That's awesome that you made something personally for you that works exactly the way you want it! However, what's wrong with the existing music players? Banshee, Rhythmbox, Amarok, and VLC are all fully fledged GUI music players. While things like beets and MPD can give you a great cli/daemon player if you need it. I made a post about different music players here and their features, I included videos and pictures: [url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1326923&p=42930038&viewfull=1#post42930038[/url] My particular favorite currently is [url=http://farmpolice.com/content/images/e5716fd4.png]Rhythmbox[/url], because it follows my gtk theme the best while having neato notification features that let you pause and play music from the Gnome notification bar,[/QUOTE] I have nothing against any existing players. For a while I used Clementine, which is a great player, but as I almost always play one whole album at a time I would fall back to mplayer because it was simpler. And for tagging/organization I use foobar2000 in a VM =P

[QUOTE=IpHa;42978421]I have nothing against any existing players. For a while I used Clementine, which is a great player, but as I almost always play one whole album at a time I would fall back to mplayer because it was simpler. And for tagging/organization I use foobar2000 in a VM =P[/QUOTE] You should certainly look at [url=http://beets.radbox.org/]beets[/url], it's one of the coolest music organizers I've ever used.

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;42978419]Are you trying to boot with a UEFI motherboard? Are you able to boot with the USB key in a different computer? Is your motherboard firmware up to date? What kind of options do you have in the HDD section? My computer lists model numbers which can get confusing when you have more than 8 drives/usbs connected. [editline]sadf[/editline] [url=http://notebooks.bigresource.com/Sony-Boot-from-usb-VAIO-VGN-NS105N-lMZwhd4p.html]This document[/url] implies that you need to enable an "external" option somewhere.[/QUOTE] That's a different model number, there's no such option in my BIOS. AFAIK the motherboard isn't UEFI and the USB boot works in this PC. I'm not sure how i could check if the motherboard firmware is up to date but the HDD section only lists one thing, the HDD itself.

Speaking of music players I'll throw my hat in the ring for MPD because: it's a daemon (music doesn't stop just because you decide to kill X, you can switch clients any time and not have to set anything up or even reindex, etc.), it has nice fading transition effects (I used to think this wasn't important but I really do enjoy it), a number of good clients have all the other nice features you expect which are hard to emulate in a simple script (searching by metadata, setting metadata, playlists, random playback order, etc.) For videos I still just use a directory tree and mplayer though :v: so I might be interested in your script, IpHa, it looks very nice!

[QUOTE=SuicideZ;42978625]That's a different model number, there's no such option in my BIOS. AFAIK the motherboard isn't UEFI and the USB boot works in this PC. I'm not sure how i could check if the motherboard firmware is up to date but the HDD section only lists one thing, the HDD itself.[/QUOTE] You could try to update the motherboard firmware by flashing a new rom from the manufacturers onto it, but otherwise I don't know what's wrong. To me USB's are "universal" for a reason, your motherboard should support it. [editline]asfd[/editline] Try making a thread in Technical support, some cool kids like GiGabite browse there and might know exactly what model of computer you're using and how to work around your problems.

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;42980715]You could try to update the motherboard firmware by flashing a new rom from the manufacturers onto it, but otherwise I don't know what's wrong. To me USB's are "universal" for a reason, your motherboard should support it. [editline]asfd[/editline] Try making a thread in Technical support, some cool kids like GiGabite browse there and might know exactly what model of computer you're using and how to work around your problems.[/QUOTE] Ah thanks, I'm gonna try using Network boot first.

I've had a few problems on my laptop (Asus zenbook UX31A) recently, when trying to install Linux on it. Basically when I updated my distro, It always broke my xorg, and was unable to restore it. I thought this was really strange, since it happened on any distro I tried out. (manjaro, Arch, Ubuntu, Mint, eOS, fedora) Now I just found out why, while reading the Ubuntu compatibility section for my Notebook model: [quote] Kernel versions higher than 3.10.x can lead to a failing of the x-server. If this should occur try activating "Launch CSM" within the EFI settings (under "BOOT") in order to avoid this problem. [/quote] [url]https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime[/url] The problems seems to be resolved in 3.12. Now THIS makes sense to me, and I can finally be happy again. gonna try again with linux on this machine, when 3.13 hits ~RC4.

So when I boot up it says, Cannot load kernel moduels. It doesnt seem to be causing any problems but how can I fix it?

[QUOTE=XxThreedogxX;43003748]So when I boot up it says, Cannot load kernel moduels. It doesnt seem to be causing any problems but how can I fix it?[/QUOTE] /var/log/kern.log its failing to load some modules, you should be able to find more details in the log

Any recommendations for a cheap linux compatible sound card?

GUys. I got linux working perfectly on my laptop. Wifi worked after a little tweaking. A few posts back, someone posted beets which is fantastic. All my music is sorted now and easily found (thank god). And y'all helped with my permissions after transferring over my files. Now, my PC accidentally had linux written over windows on the boot drive. so I lost my windows copy (even though I checked the "install alongside windows." I'm kinda okay with that since windows was being a pain across two hard drives. but... I had the wifi card working on the machine with broadcom's hybrid_wl, and it failed to load after boot up. so I attempted to remove it, and dsm (? i think) ended up getting stuck. I've tried removing the cache of dpkg installs (i think that's correct) which I read will hang the system if it doesn't uninstall correctly. and I also tried booting into recovery mode and repairing any broken packages - which will also freeze and not go anywhere. Since i've been using my laptop more often than my desktop, I have more important files on the laptop now - since it's stable. Is there anything I can do to fix the PC or should I just reinstall mint?

After almost a week of being away, I started up my PC with Fedora, and guess what, it doesn't fucking boot. I thought Fedora was stable. I think I might have run an update before I last shut it down or something. It fully boots up until the point where I [i]should[/i] be seeing my login manager (GDM). Both of my screens are just black (but still on). I cannot switch TTY's, pressing numlock won't even switch the numlock light on my keyboard. It just completely freezes. There are like 4 fedora options in my GRUB menu. 2 with the 3.11 kernel and 2 with 3.9. The difference between the two is that the ones with 3.11 start with a low-res boot animation (bars going from left to right) and the 3.9 ones start with the fedora logo filling up. Another difference is that the 3.11 boot options show a black screen at the end of the boot cycle, while the screens are simply off in 3.9. What the fuck went wrong here?

Hey FPtje, which distro do you currently use?

[QUOTE=Porky.;43008412]Hey FPtje, which distro do you currently use?[/QUOTE] Fedora.

[QUOTE=Porky.;43008412]Hey FPtje, which distro do you currently use?[/QUOTE] he seems like a Debian guy

[QUOTE=FPtje;43007642]After almost a week of being away, I started up my PC with Fedora, and guess what, it doesn't fucking boot. I thought Fedora was stable. I think I might have run an update before I last shut it down or something. It fully boots up until the point where I [i]should[/i] be seeing my login manager (GDM). Both of my screens are just black (but still on). I cannot switch TTY's, pressing numlock won't even switch the numlock light on my keyboard. It just completely freezes. There are like 4 fedora options in my GRUB menu. 2 with the 3.11 kernel and 2 with 3.9. The difference between the two is that the ones with 3.11 start with a low-res boot animation (bars going from left to right) and the 3.9 ones start with the fedora logo filling up. Another difference is that the 3.11 boot options show a black screen at the end of the boot cycle, while the screens are simply off in 3.9. What the fuck went wrong here?[/QUOTE] Can you start in safe mode or something like that and get a tty or SSH into the machine?

[QUOTE=FPtje;43007642]After almost a week of being away, I started up my PC with Fedora, and guess what, it doesn't fucking boot. I thought Fedora was stable. I think I might have run an update before I last shut it down or something. It fully boots up until the point where I [i]should[/i] be seeing my login manager (GDM). Both of my screens are just black (but still on). I cannot switch TTY's, pressing numlock won't even switch the numlock light on my keyboard. It just completely freezes. There are like 4 fedora options in my GRUB menu. 2 with the 3.11 kernel and 2 with 3.9. The difference between the two is that the ones with 3.11 start with a low-res boot animation (bars going from left to right) and the 3.9 ones start with the fedora logo filling up. Another difference is that the 3.11 boot options show a black screen at the end of the boot cycle, while the screens are simply off in 3.9. What the fuck went wrong here?[/QUOTE] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key[/url] might be helpful.

[QUOTE=lavacano;43009251]he seems like a Debian guy[/QUOTE] I have Ubuntu on my laptop and Fedora on my PC. [editline]28th November 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Porky.;43008412]Hey FPtje, which distro do you currently use?[/QUOTE] I mentioned it three times in my post :v: [editline]28th November 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=neos300;43009363][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key[/url] might be helpful.[/QUOTE] Thanks! I'll try it right away! [editline]28th November 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=neos300;43009363][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key[/url] might be helpful.[/QUOTE] Doesn't do anything. Really, my PC is so frozen that even the Num lock key doesn't switch the light on the keyboard anymore. I was able to see some more of the boot log in a quick flash before it disappeared. I saw green [code][ OK ] Starting ... [/code] lines everywhere. Not a single error. I even saw [ OK ] Starting GDM in there. Some UI thing is probably fucking my shit up. It's probably GDM, since I don't have an autologin. I can't get into a TTY while booting. I guess I'll put in a LiveUSB and move the GDM executable or something so that fucker doesn't boot. I don't have time for messing about with this, I mean [i]god damnit[/i] the reason why I didn't install Arch is because I didn't want this random bullshit to happen!

Thinking of switching from Mint to Arch/Manjaro, and I've got my /home on a seperate partition. Can I just install Arch/Manjaro (still not sure which) to my root and keep my old /home? Will anything break?

You might have problems with different versions of software reading your config files. If that's a problem you can just delete the offending files in .config

People make the mistake thinking the latest release of Fedora desktop is stable. It's not. Always use a couple versions behind, in my experience, people talk on the forums about which is the most stable version. This is also why I avoid Fedora for desktop use, the only time I use it is when the company I'm dealing with goes hard-in-the-paint RHEL. Ubuntu I can always trust to be OK, no matter how much people talk shit about it, it's always been rock solid for me.

my arch install is pretty stable for me, no matter what I throw at it.