I have tried multiple USB sticks, and multiple distros (debian netinstall, debian dvd, fedora 40) and I just can’t get the mini to install the OS. I notice that when the USB is inserted at boot time, the keyboard only picks up a quarter of the keystrokes. It’s like there is something constantly interrupting the machine from getting the key presses.
I have been able to boot into the debian installer but during the installation it says that the USB stick has been removed in the early stages of the install wizard.
I have tried using all USB ports, I have installed the latest firmware, all of my other machines have no problem booting from these same usb sticks. It seems that I am just stuck at this point.
I tried a different keyboard and I no longer have the interrupted key problem. But when I select “Graphical Install” or “Install” from the debian boot screen the machine just freezes at the debian boot screen.
I will try other USB ports…
it behaves very inconsistently. when I choose the USB drive at the SeaBIOS boot menu sometimes I usually get the debian menu but sometimes it just says, “Booting from USB Device…” and freezes on the bios boot menu.
When frozen the numlock, capslock, etc… do not light up when pressed. So it’s definitely frozen.
I don’t have a mini, but I reinstalled PureOS on my Librem 14 a time or two and each time it was a very straightforward process of inserting a flash drive, booting the PureOS installer, and following the basic install process.
My personal advice would be to reach out to Purism support. Sometimes they take up to 24 hours to reply, but if the device is faulty you can discuss options with them about what to do.
Are all the USB flash drives USB 2.0? The issue being troubleshooted in the linked thread is specific to USB 2.0, so you can try a USB 3.0 flash drive in a blue 3.0 port as a workaround to get the OS installed. Then you could try the preview build once you have a bootable OS.
some are blue and some are black. Fortunately I was able to install an OS in the past through repeated attempts. (It took hours!) I will try installing the USB tuning build tonight and see if I get any further.
Using the preview coreboot made no difference. I’m going to try and use my existing grub to run the kernel on the usb disk and see if I can install it from there. What a crap shoot.
I’m able to see the files on the usb which is (hd1) now. But when I try to boot using chainloader it gets an error. Maybe has to do w/ EFI? I don’t spend a lot of time in grub CLI.
I had similar USB issues as mentioned in the other threads [1][2].
To work around them I used a USB 3.0 flash drive plugged into one of the front blue 3.0 ports, as jonathon.hall said above. Also, creating the OS install disk on another computer will ensure the image is not corrupted due to the USB signaling issues. Lastly, I found if you plug in your USB drives before attaching the power supply to the mini, then they will usually be detected and function correctly on the next boot.
I am not sure if this is a Coreboot issue or an issue with the hardware that is also present on the proprietary firmware for this board. But it is a big inconvenience not being able to use a lot of USB 2.0 devices. I have not heard of such issues with Thinkpads and other laptops running Coreboot/Libreboot, so it may just be the USB controllers on this board do not play well with Coreboot yet.
Thanks for the explanation. I will try that. Spend more money, this time on a USB 3.0 flash drive that might work. If it doesn’t, work I will try lighting candles and standing on one foot. Because that’s how reliable systems work! – Sorry, but this is such a time sink I’m about to yank all of the RAM and storage I bought to put in this thing and just trash the box… I’ll post how it went.
When I have run into trouble installing from flash drives to laptops without optical drives, I have had success burning the image to a CD and using a USB optical drive to install from that.
Debian releases usually include network install images which only install enough packages to boot and connect to a network. Then any other needed packages can be installed with apt. The bullseye release was the last that this “minimal” install fits on a CD and now a DVD is required. (To me, this represents mind boggling bloat.)
Using a brand new USB 3.0 flash drive brought up the debian netinst immediately. This is definitely an issue w/ the firmware. On the consumer end of this, I don’t understand why something that seems so basic would not be supported before going to market. Surely in the development process it was determined that a flash drives aren’t working… Anyway, on with the show! I never would have thought to try a USB 3.0 flash drive. Thanks @bugcity.
