[Help request] They say "don't break Debian" but apparently I managed to do it.

9 months ago by qyron to c/linux

While trying to move my computer to Debian, after allowing the installer to do it's task, my machine will not boot.

Instead, I get a long string of text, as follows:

Could not retrieve perf counters (-19)
ACPI Warning: SystemIO range 0x00000000000000B00-0x0000000000000B08 conflicts withOpRegion 0x0000000000000B00-0x0000000000000B0F (\GSA1.SMBI) /20250404/utaddress-204)
usb: port power management may beunreliable
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
amdgpu 0000:08:00.0 amdgpu: [drm] Failed to setup vendor infoframe on connector HDMI-A-1: -22

And the system eventually collapses into a shell, that I do not know how to use. It returns:

Gave up waiting for root file system device. Common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
 - Check rootdelay= (did the system wait lomg enough?)
- Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)

Alert! /dev/sdb2 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!

The system has two disks mounted:

-- an SSD, with the EFI, root, var, tmp and swap partition, for speeding up the overall system -- an hdd, for /home

I had the system running on Mint until recently, so I know the system is sound, unless the SSD stopped working but then it is reasonable to expect it would no accept partitioning. Under Debian, it booted once and then stopped booting all together.

The installation I made was from a daily image, as I am/was aiming to put my machine on the testing branch, in order to have some sort of a rolling distro.

If anyone can offer some advice, it would be very much appreciated.

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wickedrando 6 points 9 months ago

Can you reinstall? If possible, use the whole disk (no dual booting and bootloader to deal with).

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qyron 5 points 9 months ago

I can, already done before coming here and I risk I'm going to do it again because people are telling me to do this and that and I'm feeling way over my head.

But not in the mood to quit. Yet.

I'm running a clean machine. No secondary OS. The only thing more "unusual" that I am doing is partitioning for different parts of the system to exist separately and putting /home on a disk all to itself.

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wickedrando 3 points 9 months ago

Ah, yes I saw all the comment suggestions and was hoping a fresh reinstall would work for you.

Did you format before reinstall? Definitely seems like fstab issue dropping you into initramfs that would need some manual intervention.

A format and fresh install should totally resolve this (assuming installation options and selections are sound).

What does ‘ls /dev/sd*’ ran from shell show you?

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IsoKiero 2 points 9 months ago

Just in case you end up with reinstallation, I'd suggest using stable release for installation. Then, if you want, you can upgrade that to testing (and have all the fun that comes with it) pretty easily. But if you want something more like rolling release, Debian testing isn't really it as it updates in cycles just like the stable releases, it just has a bit newer (and potentially broken) versions until the current testing is frozen and eventually released as new stable and the cycle starts again. Sid (unstable) version is more like a rolling release, but that comes even more fun quirks than testing.

I've used all (stable/testing/unstable) as a daily driver at some point but today I don't care about rolling releases nor bleeding edge versions of packages, I don't have time nor interest anymore to tinker with my computers just for the sake of it. Things just need to work and stay out of my way and thus I'm running either Debian stable or Mint Debian edition. My gaming rig has Bazzite on it and it's been fine so far but it's pretty fresh installation so I can't really tell how it works in the long run.

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pinball_wizard 1 point 9 months ago

Once time I've had two bad installs in a row, it was due to my install media.

Many install media tools have an image checker (check-sum) step, which is meant to prevent this.

But corrupt downloads and corrupt writes to the USB key can happen.

In my case, I think it turned out that my USB key was slowly dying.

If I recall, I got very unlucky that it behaved during the checksums, but didn't behave during the installs. (Or maybe I foolishly skipped a checksum step - I have been known to get impatient.)

I got a new USB key and then I was back on track.

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Bane_Killgrind 1 point 9 months ago

How is your /home disk plugged in?

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