Porteus

can't even boot into text mode- my computer doesn't have a cd player, and there is no bios entry to boot from cd either, so I think the cd I stall method is out? I can get to the menu IF i make the usb from within porteus which is installed into a virtual machine- every other method only gives either a total.y blank black page with no cursor or with a blinking cursor depending on how I created the USB (I've tried Ventoy, Rufus, tried copying files to formatted drive with with a fat 32 partition and an ext4 partition- all methods have resu,ted in one of those two black screen scenarios.

With the USB made from within Porteus in a virtual machine, when I reboot I can get to the first menu screen, click an option, and it starts 5o load 2 things, can't remeber the names now, but it freezes right there- won't go any further. Doesn't matter which option I click in the menu- all options result in freezing at that point. I tried to follow the help post for that particular issue, but must be doing something wrong because it just won't boot. Secure boot is disabled.

My computer is very modern- built in December with all new parts, i7 ultra processor, asus z890 motherboard which has thunderbolt 5 ports, plenty of ram, 32gb, ddr4, pcie 5 and 4, USB 3.2 and a few USB 2.1 I think. I've tried all the USB ports to no avail thinking maybe it only works with USB 2 - tried with USB 3.2 and 3 and 2 thumbdrives- none have worked beyond the point listed above. Is jy computer too new to run Porteus? I sure would love to get it running from usb- as it is one of th3 best looking distros I've seen- similar to Linux mint which is my main os.

I do dualboot (actually triple boot, with windows 10 and 11 on one drive, and linux mint as main drive on its own drive. I've tried making the USB in both windows and linux to no avail- been a frustrating several days trying to get it to boot. Not sure why it installs fine to a virtual maching but not my computer?

Read Porteus ISO file's USB_INSTALLATION.txt. Not hard to do.

Not helpful- I did read it and tried to follow it for both windows and linux separately- Whatever i do it gets to menu and freezes- I've even tried Nemesis and same thing happens- Followed the instructions to a T-

What drives are your /EFI, /boot and /porteus on? If /porteus is on a separate drive you have to edit the menu to point to it.

I had this happen to me recently, and it was a hardware thing where I had to throw away two seemingly reputable new usb sticks, no matter which port I used (usb 3 or 2).

Are these sticks out of the box new, or have they had a plentiful life of constant reformatting, repartitioning and such?

One thing I do in some cases is use gparted to create a new partition table, and then add a fat32 partition and format. Unmount or eject nicely, and re-insert to see if it is recognized properly.

Sometimes I'll just use the "wipefs" command (as root) on a well-used stick prior to using gparted too:
https://linuxconfig.org/wipefs-linux-co ... h-examples

If one is using usb 3 capable sticks, one could try formatting and paritioning initially in a usb2 port, and then move to usb3 port for normal use.

Despite all this, the sticks I threw away would fiendishly pass this test:
https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm

BUT, it took much longer than usual and I could see it ramping fast and slow, I mean really slow, so I suspected either crappy internal controllers, or poor manufacturing batch. Much anger, but at least I knew what was going on and they got binned and used a different brand for the time being.

Just sayin - could be a variable in hardware we're missing here with bad sticks.

Hi Ed- I'm trying to boot it from USB thumb drive- all files are on the usb- Have tried several different ones- some usb 2 some usb 3, some new, some not

Hi NanZor- Some are new, some are fairly old but not that much reformatting or file transfers to or from them- I'll give that "wipefs" a try- gotta get the Ventoy off one anyways- If that doesn't work., I'll try the USB 2 slot then a usb3 slot for the reboot.

I've also run into the same problem trying to install Nemesis, and also MXLinux- that freezes too almost immediately as soon as i click any of the options to start the OS from the USB. All 3 os's *(Porteus, Memesis and MXLinux install to Virtualbox just fine- no issues- Maybe because it uses it's own graphics drivers?) Is it possible that my TI 4600 is stopping them from booting from USB? Soemthign stalls all three-

I've tried running "stopx" and tried in safe modes, and just about every option and all do the same thing- In MXLinux, i can hit alt/F-10 and see what is happening, and when i try the 'startxorg' command it tries, but states that it can't connect after about 15 seconds-

PS- forgot to add- I have tried several Porteus versions, down to 4 something- all do the same thing- I checked all sha256sum hash and all were correct- I also note that when i click to go to Porteus from the menu, that as soon as the first 2 files load, the system freezes and i lose the keyboard- (Note, that doesn't happen in MXLinus when it freezes, i can still go to alt/F-10 and use keyboard- and do ctrl/alt/del and shut down, but in porteus, when it freezes, thats it- hard reboot only)

nazareth wrote: ↑

03 Apr 2025, 15:08

and it starts 5o load 2 things, can't remeber the names now,

guessing that would be the vmlinuz(kernel) and initrd.. that you see both suggests the kernel initializes ok(maybe, at least loads to ram), but initrd fails or once initrd attempts to do anything the kernel fails.
that it happens for various different kernels/setups does suggest something specific to your hardware and not necessarily a kernel thing..
that Mint works for you suggests something specific about porteus(and maybe MX) secondary booting processes..

nazareth wrote: ↑

03 Apr 2025, 23:32

TI 4600

maybe.. being that old shouldn't be a problem for nouveau, but ifrc it doesn't get used until xorg starts..
it's clearly ok with whatever the bootloader(syslinux) uses ..framebuffer or something..
some video cards can do some weird stuff early on like powering off/on...
<end of thought bubbles>

Tried to respond but got "forum token out of date" - trying again- one correction, it isn't the 4600 ti card I have, it's the 4060 ti- my brain was on strike when I posted lol.

Ok. Thanks for replying- I think maybe it might be the card because porteus works fine in virtual machine, which uses its own graphics system I beleive? But y3ah, the nouveau should work fine, not sure why it isn't.

Just out of curiosity, I created another usb, and this time put the folders in both partitions (I've also tried doing just one partition) just to see if it might been trying to find files in the wrong place for whatever reason- didn't wor.k. tu4ned off fast boot hoping that might be the issue- nope- still doesnt work. No secure boot on the machine-

I'm at a loss of what to do. I jight break my windows 7 machine out of storage and see if it works on there- I've got an old windows 98 laptop too- but that probably is too old-

Thank you for being honest about other distros having a similar issue.

So, if we rule out thumbdrives for the moment, we can chase down *possible* other issues in that modern homebuilt rig. Essentially in the bios, have you started from scratch with it, ie load the bios "defaults", and then walk-back things like you did with fastboot and obviously secure-boot etc? Does it make a difference if you run from uefi-only, or will it boot with CSM (compatibility) enabled, even if not specificially choosing one or the other - just having BOTH available...

I noticed pcie. Some cards are notorious for misbehaving. (dmesg usually goes nuts with timings etc) Can you temporarily disable or remove the pcie? Worst case, can you disable ALL storage, and just for this test, run solely from the usb stick? Not that you'd want to ordinarily, but it might help to narrow things down by bringing up hardware in bios one at a time (or physically removing and reinstalling if successful....)

Just my thoughts - my hunch is that there is a weird combo you will strike upon..

Once I found that the Fast boot didn't make any difference, I set it back to fast boot. I'm not sure about booting from csm, I haven't tried that yet.

Great thought on the vid card and on paring down to basics then adding back in again- good way to find the weak spot. The board I have has onboard video, I just have to find out how to enable it. That alone might answer the question about whether the card is the culprit. If not i will do what you suggested and start from scratch.

One thing I'm gonna do if that doesn't work is dig my windows 7 machine put of storage- it's probably 15 years old, and has older tech on it , and just see if the usb will fire up on that. I will try both the older version and newer version of porteus if the newer one doesn't fire up.

OK- Some progress- I just tried my old Windows 7 computer, which has older hardware- The Vid card is an old GTX 1050 Ti SC GAMING, 4GB GDDR5 - i tried running the MXLinux too, and it booted without issue- so I'm thinking it might be the video card or drivers in my new machine not working with either OS? My next step to hopefully cinfirm it will be to disable vid card in new machine- gonna be a day or 2 though before i can try- Thank you for the suggestions abotu the hardware- I think that is a right call at this point- will know better after i test without vid card-

Ah, I'm no video card guru. But at this distance, I'd try using the nomodeset cheatcode kernel parameter.

You know the deal - at the main boot menu countdown, hit TAB. Enter in nomodeset. See if that takes you further.

Thanks i will try that- I'll report back - I did try to use onboard video- by unplugging from vid card and using the motherboard port for the monitor- That is supposed to switch over to onboard video only- but it didn't work- still froze at the first 2 liens in main menu

Update- Tried the nomodeset tab setting- still same problem- I think I'm out of luck for running porteus from usb on this computer- As mentioend, the usb's for both Porteus and MXLinux worked very well on my older computer- so the USB creations were done correctly- that much is confirmed- it's just that my modern computer won't run them for some reasons- One of the messages that flashes very briefly tells me it can't find vmlinuz (sp?)- even though the first 2 lines says it has loaded that and the other one with an "OK' right before it freezes-