system won't boot. create bootable usb with android?

pickarooney

My son seems to have screwed something up by hitting the reset button repeatedly and I can no longer boot bast the boot menu. In normal mode I get two lines of hex and a call trace/stack error and pretty much the same thing in recovery mode. I've no real idea what's messed up or how to fix it but want to try booting to a live image to see if the data is intact at least.

Does anyone know if it's possible to make a live USB boot from an android device?

pickarooney

I found an old livecd and managed to boot into it once. It froze after a few minutes and since then it just boots to the Ubuntu splash screen and then back to a blinking cursor. Any ideas?

humbert

Do you mean make a bootable USB key from an Android device or make the Android device function as a bootable USB device? Or maybe it's the Android device that isn't booting?

Most (if not all) Android devices can't connect directly to external storage. What's required is called USB on-the-go or USB host mode and while I believe it's possible to hack some devices to get it I don't know of any devices that have it by default.

As for booting to an Android device, I'm not sure. Maybe you could edit the bootloader (from the menu) to boot to an image on the sdcard while the device is switched to USB storage.

Either of those solutions would be hugely more difficult than using some other computer (even with Windows) to do it so I suspect I'm misunderstanding the question.

EDIT: Didn't see your second post. I'd still try a fresh live USB key. Sounds like your CD is a bit dodgy if it's not always booting into it.

GreenWolfe

pickarooney wrote: »

I found an old livecd and managed to boot into it once. It froze after a few minutes and since then it just boots to the Ubuntu splash screen and then back to a blinking cursor. Any ideas?

Try disabling ACPI and booting into VESA fallback mode, if possible.

pickarooney

EarthlyPangaea wrote: »

Try disabling ACPI and booting into VESA fallback mode, if possible.

Is that done by editing the boot option? Do you know why syntax is needed?

I can write to a USB stick via an otg cable and I've found an ISO extractor app, plus my friend is here with his rooted phone so we're going to try droiddisk to boot directly from the phone and see what happens. If that fails I'll make a USB boot disk when I'm back at work.

GreenWolfe

pickarooney wrote: »

Is that done by editing the boot option? Do you know why syntax is needed?

Add acpi=off and vga=785 (sets it to 640x480 16 bit mode iirc)

More here - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

croo

If you're using an ubuntu live cd this might help... in particular the section Changing the CD Boot Option Configuration Line

I think the option you'd add would be "noapic"

acpi=off
This disables ACPI completely.
Note: this may not work with all computers and will disable a lot of useful (or even needed) features. In some cases it may even disable some crucial features, like.. fans. Be careful with this option, it might cause your machine to overheat if the fans no longer turn. Think of this as a last resort. Also note some machines require acpi=ht instead.

Noapic and nolapic
noapic and nolapic kernel options instruct the kernel to not use certain programmable interrupt controllers. To understand what that means exactly requires a deep knowledge of PC hardware, I will not go in to that here, Ill limit myself to saying on some bioses, especially for older systems, there are problems in the implementation of this and it may be necessary to disable either or both to cure a wide range of obscure problems, often but not always related to keyboard and mouse and power management (standby/resume issues).

from here

pickarooney

I'm not sure I'm in the right screen at all, none of those boot options are visible. I have
Record fail
Gfxmode ...
Insmod...
...
Set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
Search --no-floppy...
Linux /vmlinuz.... /initrd....Generic-pae.


That root parameter looks very strange. I think it should just be an integer instead of msdos

pickarooney

Booting from the phone failed and after extracting the ISO to the USB it failed to boot with no bootable partition in table.
Guess I'll burn another CD and see what happens.

croo

pickarooney wrote: »

I'm not sure I'm in the right screen at all,

You did say it was an old livecd ... perhaps it predates these.

At this screen


You'd press any key to bring up this screen



From where you'd press F6 - Other options to allow you to select the "no acpi" option .. or others.



Or maybe these screens are outdated? But these were the screens I remember from the last time I installed.

niallb

pickarooney wrote: »

Set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
Search --no-floppy...
Linux /vmlinuz.... /initrd....Generic-pae.

That root parameter looks very strange. I think it should just be an integer instead of msdos

Hi P.
the msdos1 is just the new convention describing partition 1 in an msdos bootlabel as opposed to a GPT bootlabel or otherwise.
You might find that editing that parameter and using TAB completion to show you what is really visible to the bootloader might help. It should list anything there.

Have you opened the machine yet? Are you in a position to remove memory sticks one by one to check if there's a fault there? Might not be your son!

If you have a livecd/usb even if it isn't booting fully, you might still be able to get as far as the Test Memory option. Let that run for a while, because if you're getting errors there, all bets are off, and you could corrupt your system further.

Ste-

Probably too late for this but might be of use to someone.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.softwarebakery.drivedroid&hl=en

pickarooney

Memtest showed no errors.
I made a bootable USB and it gets as far as the menu. If I tell it to boot from the USB it won't - the menu just stays open. I tried the option to repair a broken system but it drops to a black screen after a few seconds. I have no earthly clue what to do next. I'll try pulling the ram modules one by one I suppose but after that...

pickarooney

Worse and worse. I tried both memory modules individually but not only will it not boot but it won't even read the USB drive or a brand new installation CD any more. Just a black screen with a flashing cursor.

What else might be fried?

pickarooney

Some change now... I disconnected everything unessential and removed the CMOS battery then ran the BIOS setup and was finally able to get the lived to run the installer. The installer itself keeps failing at the select and install software stage though.

pickarooney

So I made another liveCD and this one works!

Finally got my system up and running, now just need to install and configure everything.

First thing I've forgotten how to do is share folders on the Ubuntu box so that my tablet can connect and read video from them. I've installed samba and done some basic configuration but when I try to connect to the linux box I get an 'unknown username or bad password' error. Both the user name and password are the same as they always were and I have guest access allowed so I'm not sure why it's blocking me.