Hi, Roger Price wrote: > To check for bad USB stick, I downloaded debian-12.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso and > built a new 12.8 USB installation stick using command > dd if=debian-12.8.0-and64-DVD-1.iso of=/dev/sdj1 bs=4M && sync
The "1" in "/dev/sdj1" is surplus. Normally, the ISO image has to be copied to the base device "/dev/sdj", so that its MBR and partition table get into effect. The only exception from this rule would be if partition 1 starts at block 0. This is the case with Debian installation ISOs. But partition 1 of a netinst ISO is too small to take a DVD ISO. Is this the same USB stick as the one with Debian 12.7.0 netinst ? If so, did you run a partition editor to create a new partition 1 ? > I tried booting this and got to a GRUB command line. This time ls -l > reports that (hd0) has "no known filesystem detected", although (hd0,msdos1) > reports "File system type ISO9660. Label Debian 12.8.0 amd64 1". This is probably a consequence of dd output file /dev/sdj1. Other than with the properly copied netinst ISO, this partition 1 is recognizable to GRUB. Probably because its not an MBR partition of type 0x00 or because its start block is not 0. Since you don't mention (hd0,msdos2), i guess that the EFI partition inside the DVD ISO image does not become visible to GRUB. Probably it is not visible to the BIOS either. > It seems to me that the GRUB command line comes from the T5820 BIOS and not > from the USB stick. To test this I restarted and hit F2 to get to the BIOS > Setup. This reports Boot sequence: 1) debian, 2) UEFI SMI USB DISK 110 > (Windows Boot manager is excluded). The boot option is UEFI. It's the > mention of "debian" by the BIOS itself which says to me that the T5820 > contains a GRUB. Obviously the BIOS found an installation of GRUB. But this GRUB found no grub.cfg which would lead to more than a GRUB shell prompt. It is not so obvious whether the BIOS talks of present devices or of bootable devices which it has seen recently. But as there is some GRUB running, it might well stem from the disk to which you have installed Debian. The question remains why this GRUB does not find its own initial grub.cfg. Do you see an EFI partition on the disk to which you installed Debian ? If you want to test the USB stick, then copy the ISO to its base device file. Further make sure in the BIOS that this USB stick gets booted and not one of the other boot entries. Have a nice day :) Thomas
