Emmabantus Debian 4 Edition Installation

I had some major issues on installation of Emmabantus.

Now I know why Emmanantus could not be installed.
This distribution is meant for Africa and Asia in rural communities.
It is meant to be installed from a DVD since it has large number of packages.
It is not meant to be installed from a USB.
After partitioning with USB it looks for the DVD in the CD ROM and if the ROM is empty it hangs up.

I tried with a DVD and I had no problems.

I think the developers should work on this and allowed it to be booted from a USB.

USBs have come down in price and DVDs are being discontinued and finding a DVD is difficult and they have gone up in price.

I list them later but basically I think it is due issues with EFI partition and GRUB boot loader.

1. Number one problem was that the image I wrote in a 4GB USB was faulty.
It has over 5 Million MB files that cannot be accommodated in a 4GB USB.
Solution is to use 8GB USB.

2. I did not check that the iso image is complete and intact.

Simple way to check, is to use K3B and try to write it on a DVD (one need not have to write it to a DVD) and the K3B checks the integrity.

After 5 or more attempts of failed installation in a second hard drive I went back to Linux basics.

Check the image stored in an external SATA Disk and found it faulty.
Solution I had a spare image and redid the installation to the USB which is 8GB.

It had Fedora in the USB and I do not use Fedora at all and erased it with Emmabantus image.

3. Number 3 is Debian and Emmabantus cannot properly configure EFI partition for booting.

The GRUB file has to be written there and the Reserved BIOS Area of the old does not work now.

4. Number 4 is Debian and Emmabantus cannot look for all the distributions installed in my two hard disks of 2 terra bytes.

One terra bytes is for data which is never full.

It copies an old GRUB (already changed by me) which fails to boot to any distribution.

I do not keep a record of the partition table to change which one to boot at boot time.

5. Will you give up?

You should not.

Solution is simple.

Ubuntu has a great GRUB file and looks for everything before writing the final boot record.

6. Here how you do it with Ubuntu?

a) Install Ubuntu on any of the drives and let it take over the disk.
b) I resize the /root partition using Gpart.
c) Do not touch the EFI partition Ubuntu has created, one needs it for booting.
d) Install other distribution of your liking in the space created by the resizing.
The next distribution also takes over the rest of the disk and most of it is allocated to home partition.
e) Delete the home partition and make a new home partition smaller leaving space for a third distribution if you wish.

f) You  would find the distribution crashes at GRUB install.

Do not worry.

g) Either reinstall Ubuntu or make another copy of Ubuntu and the job is done by Ubuntu in it's Updated GRUB file.

Bottom line is before the power cut in Ceylon, I got all the distributions, I need including Linux Mint.

I have given a rough sketch of partitioning in another blog piece.

Make sure you have several swap partitions.

I install a swap partition on the boundary of each distribution.

One need not follow exactly what I have said and done, the user should feel free to experiment and get the best out your distribution.

But one should invariably have a copy of Ubuntu for posterity.

I am fast becoming an adopter of Ubuntu.

I have not yet tried Ubuntu 22-4.

Excuse me for typos.

Marathon Hardware and Software Update

I am home bound and with rainy season coming one month late, I have zero outdoor activity and my  rooftop garden need no intervention.

I planted 10 seeds of corn and only two are germinating.
No need for watering.

I have collected lot of computer gadgets and have one spare IDE hard disk and several large SATA Disks on which I had installed old copies of Linux some of them 32 bits and not booting with my PC.

I have several small SATA Disks and installed SparkyLinux on the SSD I removed from the PC.

It is only 120GB and I replaced it with 1 terra byte SATA.

I must say from the outset if not for the Ubuntu 21.10 I would not have done any of this.

I got Debian 11.4 and Ubuntu installed in my Intel NUC and I could not boot them (I have made some mistakes ) and I used another SATA external disk and installed Ubuntu and got Ubuntu and Debian booting from GRUB installed in the external disk.

This was bit annoying to say the least. I want it to be booted from the master SATA inside the NUC.

I resized the root partition of UBUNTU and installed Linux Mint and allowed it to write the GRUB on the SATA inside the NUC but it did not boot, this time round,too.

I had a little pause and studied the partition table and nothing wrong with both having EFI partitions.

I reinstalled Ubuntu on the external disk and made sure I installed the GRUB in the master or SDDa.

I made sure I selected the EFI on SDDa disk at partitioning.

It did the trick and all three Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Debian  are booting.

I did not remove the external disk, just in case but would take it out on a later date and see whether I can boot it from my old PC.

My guess is it won't since the boot record is on the SDDa.

But since I did not erase the EFI partition in the slave or external  disk there is some slight possibility of booting Ubuntu and Mint since an earlier occasion, I installed the GRUB on SDDb disk.

I mounted DeepIn on IDE mounted on an external case.
It booted once but I had an IDE of 10GB not working (remove from my first PC) and decided to put it inside the case, mount it with the PC.
Unfortunately something went wrong and the on / off switch and red diode stop flashing.
The current flows and the transformer is OK.

I think the case is dead and with it both my IDE disks.

No regrets since even though parallel data flow is consistent it is time for me to day good bye to all IDE disks.

I hate this master, slave cable select protocols and mounting only 32GB of  80GB disk.
Besides I can install only one Linux distribution.

Even 40GB SATA disk I removed from an IBM server I am going to discard.

Luckily I did not have any data in any of these disks only LINUX operating installed for testing purposes.

I have two SATA one 40 and 160.
Both are not booting and I selected the bigger one to install Ubuntu.

I accidentally dropped the case on the cement floor and everything came out in pieces and the back panel's plastic (plugs) locks broke.

Thankfully CBS did not crack.

I ised black tapes electricians use and sealed it and installed Ubuntu and it is running smoothly.

40GB SATA I cannot use it is too small for even Linux.

It is going to be discarded.

By the way, my first PC with 1MB on board  VGA and 128 RAM won't boot even with Ubuntu 5.4.
I did boot Ubuntu 5.4 on it first time round.

This happened after I tried to install Windows 98.
Windows 98 did something to the BIOS and even Puppy cannot mount on RAM now.
All Windows are pain in the Axsrxc and that is why I HATE Microsoft and stopped using Windows over 25 years ago.

It was one of my clever decisions that come good and me becoming a Linux Addict for life.

In spite of long use of Linux I still make basic mistakes not necessarily due to my mistakes.

It all due to some distributions diverging from the basics and try to do new things not time tested.

In that scenario, Ubuntu even though, I do not use regularly for my simple attachment to Debian may change eventually, since Ubuntu community is active and work hard to get things right.

Me making mistakes due to old age, learning new things (there is a price to pay for my mistakes ) does not come easy.

This site is called Linux 100 and I have done more than 1000 pieces on Linux.

It looks like time is right for me to take it easy or perhaps retire completely.