Now googling to find out what to press to get to the boot menu usually brings up suggestions to hit the shift key. I keep trying this but am not having any joy. Esc doesn't get me far either. Do I simply need to keep trying or are there any other options? Does it make a difference that I'm using a laptop? I get 10/11 seconds till the Mint logo appears if that's any help.
It's all rather frustrating.
Thanks in advance.
Bev
Hi Bev,
I think it does matter what computer you are at. Those 10-15 seconds to Mint logo would suggest you have a UEFI boot enabled and you probably should be looking for "bios" config button rather then boot device selection menu.
Some uefi are real pain when it comes to changing the boot device. I even had a laptop that didn't have a boot menu as we all know it.
I was going to suggest here try using F10/F12, but... With some devices you'll find that to get the F10 you must hold Fn first. Sound, brightness, connectivity are more popular recently than the good old F-keyes.
Good luck Bart
Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk napisał(a):
Now googling to find out what to press to get to the boot menu usually brings up suggestions to hit the shift key. I keep trying this but am not having any joy. Esc doesn't get me far either. Do I simply need to keep trying or are there any other options? Does it make a difference that I'm using a laptop? I get 10/11 seconds till the Mint logo appears if that's any help.
It's all rather frustrating.
Thanks in advance.
Bev
main@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!
To explain, I'm still trying to get it to boot from the live disk, hence needing to change the boot order temporarily, I think. It seems to respond to the F10 etc keys so I'll try that combo next. (If it gets me bios config then I'll be that much wiser of course!)
This one's definitely got a boot menu on it, though.
Bev
On 09/08/2021 23:32, B D wrote:
Hi Bev,
I think it does matter what computer you are at. Those 10-15 seconds to Mint logo would suggest you have a UEFI boot enabled and you probably should be looking for "bios" config button rather then boot device selection menu.
Some uefi are real pain when it comes to changing the boot device. I even had a laptop that didn't have a boot menu as we all know it.
I was going to suggest here try using F10/F12, but... With some devices you'll find that to get the F10 you must hold Fn first. Sound, brightness, connectivity are more popular recently than the good old F-keyes.
Good luck Bart
Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk napisał(a):
Now googling to find out what to press to get to the boot menu usually brings up suggestions to hit the shift key. I keep trying this but am not having any joy. Esc doesn't get me far either. Do I simply need to keep trying or are there any other options? Does it make a difference that I'm using a laptop? I get 10/11 seconds till the Mint logo appears if that's any help.
It's all rather frustrating.
Thanks in advance.
Bev
main@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!
On Tue, Aug 10, 2021 at 11:16:40AM +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote:
To explain, I'm still trying to get it to boot from the live disk, hence needing to change the boot order temporarily, I think. It seems to respond to the F10 etc keys so I'll try that combo next. (If it gets me bios config then I'll be that much wiser of course!)
This one's definitely got a boot menu on it, though.
In that case it's not the bootloader menu but the bios/UEFI menu you want, what machine is it?
Here's a list that may help:
http://www.disk-image.com/faq-bootmenu.htm
Adam
On 10/08/2021 11:25, Adam Bower wrote:
On Tue, Aug 10, 2021 at 11:16:40AM +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote:
To explain, I'm still trying to get it to boot from the live disk, hence needing to change the boot order temporarily, I think. It seems to respond to the F10 etc keys so I'll try that combo next. (If it gets me bios config then I'll be that much wiser of course!)
This one's definitely got a boot menu on it, though.
In that case it's not the bootloader menu but the bios/UEFI menu you want, what machine is it?
Here's a list that may help:
http://www.disk-image.com/faq-bootmenu.htm
Adam
It's a Dell Latitude. I see F2 is what I'm after. (F12 definitely worked to get the grub menu, though. Nice to see it, even though it's not what I'm after now!) It's good to know it's not just my imagination that shift won't do much. Thank you.
Bev.
<snip>
Here's a list that may help:
http://www.disk-image.com/faq-bootmenu.htm
Adam
It's a Dell Latitude. I see F2 is what I'm after. (F12 definitely worked to get the grub menu, though. Nice to see it, even though it's not what I'm after now!) It's good to know it's not just my imagination that shift won't do much. Thank you.
Bev.
F2 right at the start works. However, I now have an entirely different problem. I can't run a fsck check as I have to have 'r/w access to the filesystem or be root.' I created a new sudo password but it didn't allow me that far in. So how to proceed?
Bev
On 10/08/2021 21:18, Bev Nicolson wrote:
<snip>
Here's a list that may help:
http://www.disk-image.com/faq-bootmenu.htm
Adam
It's a Dell Latitude. I see F2 is what I'm after. (F12 definitely worked to get the grub menu, though. Nice to see it, even though it's not what I'm after now!) It's good to know it's not just my imagination that shift won't do much. Thank you.
Bev.
F2 right at the start works. However, I now have an entirely different problem. I can't run a fsck check as I have to have 'r/w access to the filesystem or be root.' I created a new sudo password but it didn't allow me that far in. So how to proceed?
Bev
Oh yes I can. Figured it out. Ran a fsck, which I expected to take hours. Nothing. All fine.
Bev.
On 12/08/2021 15:03, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Oh yes I can. Figured it out. Ran a fsck, which I expected to take hours. Nothing. All fine.
Well done! :-)
OK, if it was suspiciously short, it could be that it assumed that disk was OK and didn't really check (if I recall, some versions of fdisk check for a flag that says "there's something wrong" and if it's not set, don't do anything.
If you're using fsck, I'm not aware of a way of overriding this behaviour. If you know what type of filesystem that partition is using, you can use a varaint of fsck instead. E.g you can use fsck.ext3 or fsck.ext4 if you're using ext3 or ext4 file system respectively.
If you don't know what file system the partition is, use
fsck -N /dev/sda2
but replace /dev/sda2 with the right partition that you want to check.
I got [/usr/sbin/fsck.ext4 (1) -- /] fsck.ext4 /dev/sda2
That tells me it's ext4.
So, I can use
fsck.ext4 -f /dev/sda2
This forces a check on the drive, even if it seems OK.
If it's still amazingly quick, then either you have a very fast drive, or double check you're checking the correct partition.
If it's still OK, which, to be honest it's likely to be, then try running the machine from the live cd for a while and see it it stays OK.
If it still seems OK, then it would look like some sort of software misconfiguration or corruption on your machine, which may be hard to locate. If that's the case, it's trawling through log files I think...
Good luck!
Steve
On 12/08/2021 18:03, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 12/08/2021 15:03, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Oh yes I can. Figured it out. Ran a fsck, which I expected to take hours. Nothing. All fine.
Well done! :-)
OK, if it was suspiciously short, it could be that it assumed that disk was OK and didn't really check (if I recall, some versions of fdisk check for a flag that says "there's something wrong" and if it's not set, don't do anything.
If you're using fsck, I'm not aware of a way of overriding this behaviour. If you know what type of filesystem that partition is using, you can use a varaint of fsck instead. E.g you can use fsck.ext3 or fsck.ext4 if you're using ext3 or ext4 file system respectively.
Fdisk said it only had sda1 ?? Not sure where to go with that other than using the live disk for several hours. Would that be your assessment?
Bev
On Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 10:37:44PM +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Now googling to find out what to press to get to the boot menu usually brings up suggestions to hit the shift key. I keep trying this but am not having any joy. Esc doesn't get me far either. Do I simply need to keep trying or are there any other options? Does it make a difference that I'm using a laptop? I get 10/11 seconds till the Mint logo appears if that's any help.
It's Esc on my Laptop (running xubuntu), I just sit tapping Esc all the time from when the reboot/power-up starts.
On Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 10:37:44PM +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Now googling to find out what to press to get to the boot menu usually brings up suggestions to hit the shift key. I keep trying this but am not having any joy. Esc doesn't get me far either. Do I simply need to keep trying or are there any other options? Does it make a difference that I'm using a laptop? I get 10/11 seconds till the Mint logo appears if that's any help.
Do you mean you want to get into the BIOS or the Linux boot loader menu? I think you mean the Linux boot loader (probably Grub?).
If the machine will boot and run Linux then there will be a way of making it show the menu on every boot, possibly by editing config files and running the grub install process or maybe via some menu options.
I set all of my desktops and laptops to pause at the grub menu (not servers) on boot as I don't boot machines very often and as they all boot in a few seconds with SSD and it's far more convenient having to wait 5 seconds every so often than spend 5-10 minutes trying to mash keys to get the boot menu up.
Adam
-
Adam Bower -
B D -
Bev Nicolson -
Chris Green -
steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk