I am relatively new to Linux. I previously made a USB boot device that worked perfectly, using a single W95 FAT32 (bootable)
partition. However, that disk was too small, so now I am trying to replicate the same exact partition and format on a larger USB. However, I am not able to get this to happen no matter what I try.
First, I tried to format the disk as fat32, and then used the startup disk creator in ubuntu to load the iso file to the disk. When I try to use this usb to boot, I get a black sceen. In my boot options, I see three different options corresponding to this usb. The options I see are:
1) UEFI: [name of usb]
2) UEFI: [name of usb] partition 1
3) [name of usb]
Please note that I am using an MSI z170a mobo and an intel core i7 processor, with a radeon R9 390 8gb graphics card in pcie2 and a 1000w PSU. First off, I am not sure what is going on with these three partitions -- I simply followed the exact instructions in the startup disk creator, but I have not seen in any forums a mention of it creating three different boot devices. However I did find that some people saw 2 devices, one for UEFI and one for the legacy BIOS.
I tried to look into the cause of this using the disk tool, and I found that the device has actually been partitioned into three parts -- one of them was the FAT32 partition of size about 1.6 Gb with the ISO file, one of them was about 24 mb (I believe this is for swap), and the rest is free space.
In comparison, the old usb stick that was booting properly had only a single partition. While the partition type
was the same as the one I just created (W95 FAT32 (bootable)
), I notices that the contents
is in fact different. The old working usb had contents of FAT (32-bit version) — Mounted at /media/paul/1030-503F
, while the partition with the iso on the new device had contents ISO 9660 (version Joliet Extension) — Not Mounted
. I do not remember how I originally formatted the old disk image, unfortunately. But I would note that the disk is only 8 gb -- barely enough to install Ubuntu.
Question 1: how can I get my usb in the format of my old usb? I think If I could do this, everything should work. As a reminder, the config of the working partition is: just a single partition with fat32 format, and contents that say simply fat32?
Ok, so after giving up on getting the drive in the exact same format, I decided to simply push on. I tried to boot the device using the UEFI modes (both the regular and the one that has "partition 1" appended to the end), and all I got was a black screen. I found some mentions of this issue online, and tried all of the fixes -- including but not limited to setting nomodeset
instead of quiet splash
, or radeon.modeset=0
-- but none of them worked. Note that when I selected uefi I was not even able to get to the bios menu so that I could select f6 to make these changes -- I had to do them by hitting e
in the boot menu and then adding the parameters in grub. This path did not seem to be fruitful, so instead I decided to boot in legacy bios mode.
When I select the boot option for this usb corresponding to the legacy bios, I am able to get to the bios menu. Once I am there, I can select Install Ubuntu. and then select Download updates while installing ubuntu and Install third party software... so that I can install the driver for my gpu automatically. I get all the way to the Installation type screen. For some reason I am not able to see the three different partitions here -- only the free space, but neither the partition of the iso file nor the swap partition are showing up. I ignore this for now, and attempt to format the rest of the drive with fat32 and mount the root directory to /
. Unfortunately this again proves useless; I get an error that says
The file system fat32 cannot me mounted on
/
, because it is not a fully-functional file system. Please choose a different file system, such as ext2.
Ok, so I try this... skip the swap partition... and... I get another error:
The ext2 file system creation in partition #1 of sc17 (0,0,0) (sda) failed.
It occurs to me now that the reason I did not see the other partitions is because the non-uefi boot option probably corresponded to the free space, which is why it still needed to be formatted. and the other two uefi boot devices must have corresponded to the other partitions on the usb: the actual boot image and the swap partition. So it appears the problem still comes back to the partitioning and formatting of the new disk vs the old one.
By the way, I tested all of these steps without the graphics card, and I get the same results.
If anyone can solve even a part of this mystery, I would be very grateful, as it would give me at least some progress. Even answering one of these questions would be considered a correct answer in my book:
- Why am I seeing 3 boot devices corresponding to one usb?
- How do I create a startup disk with one single fat32 partition, similar to the one I described that booted properly?
- Why are the UEFI options leading to a black screen, even while using the recommended fixes such as
nomodeset
? - Why is the installation process not recognizing these multiple partitions, and instead only recognizing the one with free space?
- What does it mean that
/
is not a "fully-functioning" file system? - Why does the ext2 file system creation fail?
EDIT: I realized (at least I thought) that one way to get the larger drive in the exact same format as the older working drive was to simply copy the contents of the old drive byte-by-byte to the new one. I tried this, and indeed I saw the exact same format and partitioning on the new drive. However, I noticed one tiny change: the old drive still had a lighter shade stripe above the partition graphic, whereas the new usb did not have this lighter stripe across the top. I also saw that the old drive has an addition line of metadata: partitioning: Master Boot Record
. How can I get this property as well? I think this is making a difference because I still cannot boot from the new drive, but can from the old one.
Following some of the answers, I tried to install Ubuntu onto a blank stick that was plugged in to my GPU rig, using a different bootable usb. However when I try to restart and boot using only the new install, I get this very strange screen I will affectionately call “rainbow fuzz”. This screen happens after I select the boot option, but before I get to the Ubuntu boot menu. I’ve never seen this before but maybe someone has? By the way, I don't think it is related to the graphics card, as the same thing happens with my GPU disconnected.