• grub blank screen how to manually boot kernel and initrd Linux Ubuntu Debian Centos won't boot solution


    You probably didn't do an "update-grub" and grub no longer has any proper menu entries, but before you can fix it let's try to get grub booting anyway. If you get this lovely black grub screen here's how you can get things booting. In my case I have a gpt partition with partition 1 and 2. Partion 1 is just my EFI / ESPand partion 2 /dev/sda2 is my root which includes /boot. You will have to adjust this if you had a separate /boot partition.........
  • Ubuntu/Debian Linux/Unix Howto Setup Install Syslinux Bootable USB with EFI and MBR from Command Line/CLI Terminal


    There aren't too many simple guides that show you how to use commands to setup your USB or other drive as a normal bootable drive where you can easily boot custom kernels or whatever OS you would like. 1. Get the tools we need: We install "syslinux" for MBR and "syslinux-efi" for EFI and "MBR" as we need a tool that embeds the actual MBR into our USB: sudo apt install syslinux syslinux-efi mbr........
  • EFI PXE grub2 Howto guide for Linux EFI PXE Booting on Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, RHEL


    Just a quick note and warning is that if you are testing to see if EFIPXE booting works on a VM, MAKE SURE it actually works. For example Iinitially tested using my Distro's QEMU 2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.46 and ovmf BIOS firmware (OVMF supports EFI). However, I found on old versions of QEMU (like 2.5), EFIbooting with GRUB NEVER works so it may appear that you have made a mistake when everything is fine when you boot a physi........
  • CentOS 7 8 PXEBoot Netinstall Not Working Solution "Pane is dead "new value non-exisetnt xfs filesystem is not valid as a default fs type"


    The problem seems to be that whatever kernel and initrd you have is tied to an old version of CentOS 7 that is no longer in the current repos of most mirrors. If you were previously able to PXEboot and install CentOS and you are sure your network and tftp are good the problem is that you have an outdated kernel and initramfs that point to a defunct version.........
  • CentOS 6 impossible to compile a newer libguestfs


    yum -y install gcc make gperf genisoimage flex bison ncurses ncurses-devel pcre-devel augeas-devel augeas readline-devel checking for cpio... cpio checking for gperf... no configure: error: gperf must be installed configure: error: Package requirements (augeas >= 1.2.0) were not met: Requested 'augeas >= 1.2.0' but version of augeas is 1.0.0 yum remove augeas augeas-libs augeas-devel wget http://downl........
  • Convert and install to LUKS Encrypted Drive Ubuntu 18.04 19.10 Linux Mint and Debian Based Linux


    The reason for doing this is that the installer doesn't seem to work properly for LUKS and the server installer doesn't even support LUKS anymore. When you use the GUI install on Desktop for LUKS it won't boot and will just hang after you enter your password. So the only reliable way is to do it ourselves. 1.) Make a default minimal install of Ubuntu 2.) Have a secondary disk on the server or VM. 3.)........
  • Ubuntu Debian Linux Mint r8169 r8168 Network Driver Problem and Solution


    This problem has been around forever, Linux seems to think it is fine to use the r8169 driver for an r8168 NIC but this often causes problems including the link not working at all. In my case ethttool shows the link up and detected but it simply does not work especially on a laptop that has been resumed from suspension. Sometimes it takes several minutes for it to work or to unplug and replug the ethernet. Here is the solution: Install th........
  • Debian Ubuntu and Linux Mint Broken Kernel After Date - New Extra Module Naming Convention


    I don't consider a lot of these "extra" kernel modules "nice to have" as they often contain drivers for essential items like your soundcard, your NIC and many other devices that may not work. Sometimes you may find that "sound" or "ethernet" worked before a kernel/OS upgrade and now in the new version they don't. Often it will be because you need to install the "extra" kernel modules. One other weird thing is that sometimes........
  • systemd management using systemctl and journalctl to check systemd logs


    systemd is like the service manager for your Centos and other modern Linux distributions (including Debian/Mint/Ubuntu) allows you to enable services, stop them, restart them, check their status and even reboot your system. The key commands or arguments you will use with systemctl are the following: Unit Commands: list-units [PATTERN...] List loaded units &nbs........
  • Centos PXEBoot NetInstall Failure - Pane is dead


    ValueError: new value non-existent xfs filesystem is not valid as a default fs type Pane is dead From what Iread this is misleading and has to do with the fact that the initrd and kernel are mismatched. This is a hard situation because for some older hardware Iam using the Centos Plus kernel which has modules that Irequire for an older server/NIC. This seems to have cropped up in the past few months and there is no simple fix........
  • How To Install Windows Server 7 8 10 12 2008 2012 2014 2016 Servers Desktops using Linux tftp, dhcpd and samba


    It has been a big pain for a long-time to install Windows from a Linux environment. I used to run a windows install server and it never worked right for some reason (the install would fail on most servers). Before getting start be sure to setup your samba share so once you boot into WinPE you can mount the install for whatever Windows you want /etc/samba/smb.conf [smbwinstall] path = /tftpboot/images/winstall guest ok = yes........
  • Install Windows From a Linux TFTP Server instead of using WDS Solution


    yum -y install samba vi /etc/samba/smb.conf https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/syslinux-6.03.zip mkdir syslinux;cd syslinux;unzip syslinux-6.03.zip mkdir -p /tftpboot/libs/ cp bios/com32/modules/linux.c32 /tftpboot/libs/ cp bios/com32/libutil/libutil.c32 /tftpboot/libs/ cp bios/com32/lib/libcom32.c32 /tftpboot/libs/ #add lib path echo "PATH libs" >> /tftpboot/pxeli........
  • Linux Mint Install Netboot PXE Guide Howto


    *Update so this doesn't work it must be something to do with the path of nfs or something else but the installer fails with "Installer crashed" at the end whereas with the CD/USB it works. This assumes you've already installed and configured a separate PXE/DHCP server somewhere else and your /tftpboot directory is setup. This is for Linux Mint 18.1 but generally applies to most versions although you may have tro change things like "casper"........
  • Centos 6 how to guide convert LVM non-RAID into mdadm 1/10 RAID array live without reinstalling


    Here is the scenario you or a client have a remote machine that was installed as a standard/default minimal Centos 6.x machine on a single disk with LVM for whatever reason. Often many people do not know how to install it to a RAID array so it is common to have this problem and why reinstall if you don't need to? In some cases on a remote system you can't easily reinstall without physical or KVM access. So in this case you add a second physical or disk or already ha........
  • KVM/QEMU how to boot from direct kernel vmlinuz and initrd with networking


    Thsi is very handy when doing your own kernel development. -m specifies how much ram (in the example it is 768MB) -kernel specifies the path to the kernel file -net tap,ifname=tap1,script=no (the ifname=tap1 is what you need to change and setup manually). *Run "tunctl -b" to create a tap device and use the one it gives you for ifname= Enable networking to the outside like this: *Note we assume that your bridge is br0 i........
  • OpenVZ mismatched kernel and dev when compiling.


    ./configure ./configure: line 91: cd: /lib/modules/2.6.32-042stab084.25/build: No such file or directory Error: kernel version not found. Please make sure your kernel is configured. dr-xr-xr-x. 4 root root 4096 Feb 21 06:13 .. lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 45 Feb 21 06:13 build -> ../../../usr/src/kernels/2.6.32-042stab084.25 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 12 20........
  • Migrate Linux Mint OS from one drive to another


    mount -o bind /proc /sda2/proc mount -o bind /dev/ /sda2/dev mount -o bind /sys /sda2/sys chroot /sda2 mint / # mount -o bind /proc /sda2/proc mint / # mount -o bind /dev/ /sda2/dev mint / # mount -o bind /sys /sda2/sys mint / # chroot /sda2 mint / # cd ~ mint ~ # ls Desktop mint ~ # cd / mint / # ls bin Desktop dev-temp home&nb........
  • kvm cannot boot xen guest using lvm


    This booting error is because the Xen PV guest image uses the Xen kernel, this is not compatible with anything but a host running a Xen kernel. I did a kpartx -av virtual.img and then it created some partitions that showed up in fdisk. I mounted it and did a chroot into it and removed the xen kernel and installed a normal kernel but Xen still shows the same kernel in Grub (only the Xen one). This is strange but it seems like this Xen PV guest has some sort of hidden or........
  • Setup PXE Boot using Centos and dhcpd, tftp and syslinux


    This is something I often setup for clients because it's very helpful for people in datacenters, this allows custom OS installs on demand, you can customize it more by using kickstart etc.. but here's a base I use before customizing more: This little script below will install everything you need to get booting by PXE Linux. It also assumes you set a local IP (be sure not to overwrite your existing IP) on eth0:0 (note the :0) as 192.168.1.10 and it........
  • Ubuntu 10 Nvidia Drivers Not Updated After Kernel Update Solution/How-To Manually Rebuild nvidia kernel modules for Ubuntu


    I dread updating the kernel and rebooting to find the Ubuntu graphics aren't working and you have to manually intervene. This is usually because Ubuntu for whatever reason didn't update the drivers you need (eg. the manually compiled Nvidia Kernel driver that MUST be recompiled for each and every kernel update unfortunately). The most common reason may be that "linux-source" hasn't been installed automatically on my system. I tried to manually reinstall the........
  • CPU #1 not responding - cannot use it.


    I think this will be useful to others because I have a server that kept crashing mysteriously during intense disk usage/RAID checks. It would only crash during the weekly RAID integrity check. ThenI noticed during a reboot that not all CPUs were being brought up, as a result this actually creates much higher temperatures with the output I got from sensors, just booting the system produced higher than normal temperatures. You can imagine that a full blown RAID check........
  • How to see what's inside your gziped CPIO'd initrd image


    Copy the initrd to somewhere else, say /tmp: mv initrd.img to initrd.gz *the mv to .gz is needed otherwise gunzip won't work/it will refuse to operate without the correct .gz extension gunzip initrd.gz cat initrd | cpio -idmv The last command extracts the contents of initrd to your present working directory. For 7z .lz initrd........
  • yum in Centos 5/Xen halts and exits suddenly


    yum exits in the middle The problem is this VPS seems to be an OpenVZ template from HyperVM. The only way to make it work was to disable i386 packages since this was an x64 kernel. That shouldn't be necessary but it was the only way to make yum stop quitting after the first package or two. I couldn't find any issue by checking the logs either. echo y|yum install vim-minimal telnet expect jwhois net-tools slocate iptables elinks gawk L........
  • Revert to GRUB 0.97/1 instead of GRUB2


    had trouble trying to revert Ubuntu 10.04 LTS from grub2, won't boot mdraid and did not even install mdadm during the installation! I have tried moving back to GRUB 0.97 backed up original /boot and then copied /boot from an old Debian install. Modified device.map and menu.lst and put the appropriate kernels and initrd for Ubuntu back in /boot I ran grub: root (hd0,1) grub> setup (hd0) Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1........
  • mdadm force/fix proper md127 name


    I have an md0 arary that my Centos install refers to. I feel this is half the reason why it won't boot anymore. I saw the initrd for Centos was assembling it as md127 even though it was known as md0. The reason for this is because I used mdadm --assemble --scan to detect the array on a LiveCD. I had no idea this name would stick (but now I realize the name is permanently stored in the metadata once you mount md127 or whatever random name assemble gives it). W........
  • Centos 5.5 RAID 1 boot issue


    I installed 5.5 with a 300GB RAID 1 partition (boot is also on this partition). It booted up fine the first few times until after I used a Live CD and accessed the array, and it became named /dev/md127 for some reason. Now whenI boot into CentOS I get a kernel panic and different errors, once I got "invalid superblock", even though the array is fine (it didn't happen again, probably because I was sure to dismount and stop the mdadm array properly). Here's what........
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