Install - Stage 1

#1

My install is not working. As soon as I touch the mouse, the screen goes black, intermittently flicking back to the actual screen.

There is an initial terminal readout, which is clearly signalling a problem; (transcribing from what I photographed) ::

<<< NixOS Stage 1 >>>
*********************
loading module hv_balloon...
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'hv_balloon' : no such device loading module hv_netvsc...
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'hv_netvsc' : no such device loading module hv_storvsc...
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'hv_storvsc' : no such device loading module hv_utils...
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'hv_utils' : no such device loading module hv_vmbus...
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'hv_vmbus' : no such device loading module vfat...
loading module nls_cp437...
loading module nls_iso8859-1...
loading module dm_mod...
running udev...
Starting version 250.4
[      4.0169051 /dev/loop0: Can't open blockdev
#2

The failing module is related to memory for VMs aiui, so probably irrelevant. Failure to read /dev/loop0 probably means it’s failing to load the installer CD, if you’re trying to start the live CD I can see why that would be a problem.

Could you explain a little more? What part of the installation are you stuck on? Have you tried using the keyboard to navigate, does this flickering only happen with the mouse?

Assuming you’re trying to just start the installer CD, how did you make that CD?

#3

Thank you for helping TL. The USB I first wiped completely in Fedora’s drives utility, creating a GPT format. Then I opened Fedora’s media writer, and burned the ISO to the USB. Simple as that. The ISO being the recommended Gnome download. (I checksummed fine on Gtkhash).

Navigating by keyboard - not working.

At first the screen had a slight duplicate on the left margin. Now it looks fine, except it believes I am not connected to the internet, which I am. Also it will not let me progress. The screen goes black for a few seconds every time I activate the mouse, before returning to the normal page briefly.

Maybe I should burn another way…

#4

Hmm, I don’t know how Fedora’s USB burner works. Formatting it to gpt should be unnecessary though, if it works as I think it does.

Either way, the nixos documentation recommends dd, which is what I usually use: NixOS - NixOS 22.05 manual

The utilities for that come preinstalled on most distros, including fedora.

I’m unsure if that will solve your problem though. Do you have enough access to the live system to run dmesg in a terminal and get the output copied somewhere?

#5

Yes, I did a dd on a brand new usb stick. (It’s years since I did this stuff, & I’ve gotten used to tools).

sudo dd if=#.iso of=/dev/sd# bs=1024k status=progress

Exactly the same result. Blacking out screen…

I can actually get the terminal up, but as soon as I touch the mouse, it goes black again.

Frustrating, because I don’t want to stay in Manjaro.

#6

Ok, I was trying to install on a 2021 HP desktop. Now I just tried it on my very old Toshiba laptop. But the response is almost identical - it freezes up and won’t accept that we are connected to the internet (although it doesn’t keep defaulting to a black screen). I am as a low level layman inclined to think there might be a bug in the ISO

                          system         Computer

/0 bus Motherboard
/0/0 memory 4GiB System memory
/0/1 processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU 2020M @ 2
/0/100 bridge 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Contr
/0/100/2 display 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics C
/0/100/14 bus 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Fami
/0/100/16 communication 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family MEI
/0/100/1a bus 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family USB
/0/100/1b multimedia 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family High
/0/100/1c bridge 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family PCI
/0/100/1c.2 bridge 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Fami
/0/100/1c.2/0 wlp2s0 network QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network
/0/100/1c.3 bridge 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family PCI
/0/100/1c.3/0 enp3s0 network AR8162 Fast Ethernet
/0/100/1d bus 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family USB
/0/100/1f bridge HM70 Express Chipset LPC Controll
/0/100/1f.2 scsi4 storage 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SA
/0/100/1f.2/0.0.0 /dev/cdrom disk CDDVDW SU-208FB
/0/100/1f.3 bus 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family SMBu
/0/2 system PnP device PNP0c02
/0/3 system PnP device PNP0b00
/0/4 generic PnP device INT3f0d
/0/5 generic PnP device TOS1102
/0/6 generic PnP device TOS0320
/0/7 system PnP device PNP0c02
/0/8 system PnP device PNP0c01

#7

anything is possible, try a previous Nix/os release, and see what you get, upgrading is fairly painless.

If that works and the new release installer doesn’t , could be kernel issue, or something else.

Testing an old installer if the next port of call…especially if it’s doing it on older hardware.

#8

Thanks Nixinator. Yes, it is a Kernel issue. There is an issue on my PC which needs repairing.

In a way I am happy, because I really like the look of Nix, visually & metaphorically. So I will try again when repaired.

I am though slightly non-plussed as to why it wouldn’t load on my old laptop…

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