I broke it. Again.
I’m so new. At first I just wanted to install discord on my fresh install of bazzite. It wouldn’t update any software and I could not get anything to install.
I’m running a very old pc. It’s got a 1050ti.
I don’t play demanding games but I also can’t keep running windows 7.
Here’s where I am currently. I have no idea what to do. Guide me, please?
50 Replies
you could provide more info, like in the image it says it created a bug report but you did not share it
at least you could say what you did before bazzite broke? you say you tried to install discord? where did you download it from and did the system crash right after you installed it?
the correct way to install discord is directly from the Bazaar store that is preinstalled with Bazzite
Sorry.
Again, I am very new.
I’ll get a bug report when I am at the computer again.
I just tried to install discord from the store that it pre installed. Nothing happened when I did.
Next time I tried to load the OS, it messed up
where did you download that iso.
It must be old
Bazzite no longer uses that software center, you either got an incorrect iso and installed the wrong one
Or it's incredibly old, as the guy above said
From here. From the official bazzite page
I’ve selected these things and downloaded it. Is this incorrect somehow?
Yes, that should be correct
When did you download it
I’m so puzzled lol. I’ll get the bug report still.
Like a week ago
Again, sorry it’s not the bug report. I only have one usb with the install on it. So I am trying to figure out how to save the log to /boot
I have no experience with anything outside of windows
ventoy?
might want to try the beta iso
The beta iso? Which download is that?
it is one button beneath the current one
I’ll try a fresh install using this. I went in town to download the file and I’ll transfer it back at home. Cheers for slow internet
Will this work for bazzite?
that seems like an old trick not sure it works nowadays
even back a long time ago when i tried it only worked with debian based distros seemingly
Okay. I’ve got the new install on a usb but I’m stuck booting into GRUB still.
I’d like to uninstall the dual boot and start fresh. I have a m4a77td mobo. I’m having a hard time finding the right settings in the bios to remove the old bazzite installation.
Advice?
Do I need to re-flash the bios? I don’t want to screw this up. Haha.
I’m using Rufus 3.22 to copy the iso to usb. Maybe I can just install the new iso over the old OS? 🤷♀️
Seems good so far. I got the screen:
Try Bazzite
That seems like a beta install thing? Yay
why would you think so?
the BIOS has nothing to do with deleting the OS
it just initializes the motherboard & decides where from/what OS to load
Because I am hilariously clueless. Very willing to learn. This computer was my first. It’s a prebuilt but I modified it and I just want to have it as a fun functional Stepmania/DDR gaming system. I have a lot of low gfx games I would still play if it wasn’t for the fact Win 7. Oh and steam doesn’t update anymore. I can’t play most of the things I have because of silly windows
yeah you almost never need to reflash the BIOS for any reason
it's referred to as firmware for a reason
it sticks around
& is absolutely essential
Thank you for being patient and explaining this to me
you should be very careful even when updating it
if that for whatever reason fails you'll be left without firmware
& until that's fixed your motherboard is effectively useless
how easy it is to fix varries
sometimes gaming motherboards have 2 BIOS chips on the motherboard
so you could switch to the working one to fix the other
sometimes the motherboard has a special recovery mode that can re flash the BIOS
I did not know that! Mindblowingly cool
but most of the time if the BIOS is corrupted you have to pull it out from the motherboard & use an EEPROM flasher device on a separate PC to re flash the BIOS chip
& re attach it to the motherboard
BIOS settings aren't stored on the BIOS chip so resetting those is safe
you only update the BIOS for security features or sometimes if you upgrade your CPU
otherwise no need to touch the BIOS software itself
again changing settings is generally safe
as long as you know what the setting does
again, I truly appreciate the help!
I won't go tampering with flashing it despite the tempting Asus EZ Flash option.
Clearly, my solution is not there.
I had the computer sit for a blank screen an hour and a half after trying to install the beta ISO using rufus. It started with "Try Bazzite!" and then I never saw anything more than the blinking cursor.
I still have the old broken version of bazzite in the Grub bootloader
hmm
the black emergency mode screen?
I suppose that is what it was. A blank screen with a blinking _ cursor at the top left corner.
it'd might help if i explain the Linux boot process
should help you understand your original error
i would like to pole around the broken installation & maybe even fix it
if you'd like
that's certainly a thing i'd like to help with/learn about
here come some Linux boot process details
it all starts with the BIOS
the BIOS starts the hardware & looks for a bootloader program on the hard drive
the bootloader program(most often grub 2) loads 2 files
the first of them is the Linux kernel
this is the heart & soul of a Linux distribution
the 2nd file is a sort of zip file containing a few Linux programs for the kernel to run
this zip file is called the initramfs
the job of the software on there is to find the main system loading additional drivers if needed
for say the hard drive
& this is where your current installation is failing
the initrd is loaded & it tried to find the real system
but could not
so it threw you into emergency mode which you can use to fix things manually
there could be a few reasons for why the initrd can't find the system
don't know what the reason is exactly but we can investigate using emergency mode
i'm hoping we can just manually tell the initrd where the system is & boot into it
after that you update the OS which should hopefully fix the issue
ideally we figure out what the cause was & report it/fix it so it never happens to anyone ever again
Sure! It goes into emergency mode on a normal startup unless I select win7.
My next step would be getting the crash log, correct?
You’re so awesome 😄
that could help yes
it actually tells you what the kig file name is
/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt
hitting enter to enter emergency mode & typing cat /run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt & hitting enter will show the text in the file on the screenI’m making progress yay! I like these color coded errors
Now to save the file because taking photos of my screen is silly
I did it!!
I managed to save the report to a USB
I'm feeling pretty good now that I've started to fumble my way through this problem.
this does seem helpful
the ;og says you have 3 partitions
2 for Windows & 1 for fedora
meaning that the fedora partition isn't corrupted
because both the initrd & kernel are there
so if it was entirely corrupted you would not be here
yeah we should be able to get into the system
i don\t think anything is that badly broken
I had someone with a broken ISO with rufus once, although I doubt that yours is broken if you made it this far?
If I understand my error right, it's looking for a partition that doesn't exist now?
no not realy a partition the partition itself is fine it seems
usually this error would be caused by a missing partition or something like that
with a more normal Linux distro
but fedora atomic is a bit special
I hope you don't mind all my questions.. >.<
How is it special compared to a normal Linux install?
no i love questions
& i love the fact that you're largely correctly understanding the problem
fedora atomic is special in the way OS files are stored
usually with Linux it's one OS per partition
with system files just being stored right on the root of the partition
but with systems like fedora attomic that use OSTree system's are stored in a sub folder on the OS partition
so you can have many different versions of the OS & even many different OSes installed to the same partition at the same time
hence how the rollback feature works
which OS is booted is decided by some sort of pointer files
what likely happened here is those pointer files got messed up somehow
this is a known rare bug
& we could probably work around it other people have
but nobody knows what exactly causes this so it hasn't really been fixed yet
I suspect I know what caused it in my case.
When I was going to install Bazzite, I set aside a partition from my original win7 thinking you needed to pre-partition for the installation.
After I successfully installed Bazzite, I realized I had a large unused partition now sitting unused. So while I was in the win7 OS, I removed the extra partition. After that, Bazzite failed to boot. I just need to figure out how to tell it to look at the right partition when it's booting, I think?
After I successfully installed Bazzite, I realized I had a large unused partition now sitting unused. So while I was in the win7 OS, I removed the extra partition. After that, Bazzite failed to boot. I just need to figure out how to tell it to look at the right partition when it's booting, I think?
hmm i don't think the unised space matters
I didn't uninstall bazzite when I got rid of that partition. Just caused some kind of problem with the install
as long as it's unused as in bazzite wasn't installed to it that's fine
we can try my idea if you want
all of your files from bazzite should all be there still
Sure! I'm feeling a bit more confident to do this. If all else fails, I might reinstall because I've learned a lot and I think I should have picked KDE over gnome
yeah power it back on & get back to emergency mode
our adventure starts there
sounds good! What commands do I type next?
first we check the bazzite partition for filesystem errors
fsck -y /dev/sda3
will do that & fix any/all errors it can