Kali mini: no GRUB, cant boot

[Baxter]

Originally, I installed 2.0 full onto a 16GB thumb drive with minimal technical issues; it just used too much real estate, so I tried to cut it down some but that didnt work well enough. I then looked into the mini version, and it seemed to fit the bill. I installed it the same way I installed the full version-

sdxy/boot
sdxy/root

however, sending bios to the drive would not load GRUB; black screen cursor flashing, no input. loaded into live and checked the tables and directories, everything looked fine. rebooted to drive and left it sitting at black screen over night, no go

tried all sorts of things to get it working-
bios legacy/efi settings
chroot install of grub-efi-64
copy partition contents from/to known bootable system
reinstall using various partition tables and/or settings

nothing

so I tried to reinstall the full version....

no GRUB

wat do?

couple ideas-
1)http://www.ondatechnology.org/wiki/i...t_a_bootloader
2)install through vm and dd to drive

im flashing another live to the drive now to make sure its still kickin'

[Baxter]

Progress!

redownloaded both the full and mini iso's
burnt to drive
booted 2.0 full live efi mode and installed to thumbdrive
success

which is strange cause i used legacy the first time

does it matter which way you boot/install

eg

boot efi, install force efi
vs
boot legacy, install legacy
vs
boot efi, install legacy
vs
boot legacy, install efi
?

it could be something i figured out, gonna do more stuff and post results

[Baxter]

very interesting

so, im not sure whats causing this issue, but

1) normally, i multiboot from yumi; but for some reason now, when doing so, the installer wont launch from inside live
1a)burning image withi win32 disk imager did the trick

2)gparted failed to properly partition drives
2a) dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx
2b) gparted format ntfs
2c) gparted format fat32 [yes i had to do both]
2d) use installer for partitioning

3) first successful install was with legacy but now legacy install will not work regardless of bios settings
3a) full install works, if: force uefi install, with boot and root partitions only, root partition over 10 gigs [15 to be safe]
3b) this install will boot efi or legacy

Kali 2.0 Full install:SUCCESS with conditions [repeatedly tested]


next: installing Kali 2.0 Mini

1) no boot via legacy
2) no force uefi option
3) no efi partition option within installer

[Baxter]

Hah!

next day attempting to boot in... with no changes made, no efi and boots straight to windows when attempting legacy

reinstalling again now.

this is really something strange going on

[Baxter]

continuing to trouble shoot

1) fresh efi install verified working on 2 separate drives
2)boot into third drive live
3)view 1st two drives to compare disk space (to use the smaller one as backup incase i break something in the larger drive)
4)reboot into larger drive
5)no boot
6)reboot into smaller drive
7)no boot
8)reinstall onto smaller drive
9)verified working
10)boot into live
11)dd smaller drive into larger drive
12)reboot into larger drive
13)no boot
14)reboot into smaller drive
15)no boot
16)reintsall onto larger drive
17)verified working (logged in and writing this right now)

conclusion: the very act of viewing the drives from a secondary system is corrupting boot partition

1)is it mounting?
2)if mounting, is it the mount that corrupting?
3)if mouting is corrupting, can boot be set to read only?
4)if boot set to read only, will prevent corruption?
5)if prevent boot corruption, can cp/dd root partition as backup?

in anycase, i am now going to use this system to troubleshoot the Mini install

[Baxter]

I'm at wits end; I change nothing and the install breaks.

Now, it won't install at all on a brand new drive.

All sorts of issues, partitioning issues, whether gparted, terminal, or installer; all manner of graphic installer issues; boot issues.....

I'm beginning to suspect Kali is just inherently broken, no issues with live running as legacy or efi.... Initial install had no issues installing/running as legacy.

I've tried everything and essentially only the first install worked, now nothing is working, and I changed nothing....

I tried Kali 2016, it can't install from live because there's no installer, it can't install from from boot because it demands cd-drive.

Seriously, what in the world is going on.

I've read countless threads and so many people are having installation issues, I've never had any issues with Kali 1._ or any other distro

Am I going to have to install Debian, swap kernels and set everything manually? Lol

Id rather not just abandon this as there are tools that I absolutely require for my project

Does anybody have a functioning Mini+LXDE install? If so, what did you do to get it working?

@_@

[Baxter]

well.. the issue is most definitely a broken installer

kali 2016:
1)the installer run from the boot menu fails to identify the source of the files as USB and will not install without a CD/DVD
2)there is no installer in live mode

kali 2.0 full
1)the installer run from the boot menu fails to identify the source of the files as USB and will not install without a CD/DVD
2)the installer run from live mode
2a) worked once as legacy and never again
2b) worked several times as efi and never again

kali 2.0 light
1) the installer run from the grub menu fails to identify the source of the files as USB and will not install without a CD/DVD
2) the installer run from live mode would not install grub as legacy or efi at all

kali 2.0 mini
1) the installer would not boot as legacy, there is no efi option
2) there is no live mode

debian jessie
1) did not attempt to install from boot menu
2) install from live
2a) would not boot grub as legacy
2b) fail to install grub as efi option

lubuntu 16.04
1) did not attempt to install from boot menu
2) live install worked at legacy without issue


as far as i can tell, all versions of kali 2.0 -2016 use the default debian installer; each, along with debian itself had the same exact issues

lubuntu obviously uses a different installer and had absolutely no issues installing as legacy

CONCLUSION: debian installer is broken



i am currently running lubuntu via grub as legacy and building live-version iso (essentially kali-mini-lxde live)

1) added all kali 2.0-2016 repos
2) install gedit and gparted
3) run gparted and check/format drives
4) sudo apt-get update
5) sudo apt-get upgrade
6) sudo bash
7) cd /
8) apt-get install curl git live-build cdebootstrap
9) git clone git://git.kali.org/live-build-config.git
10) gedit /live-build-config/kali-config/variant-lxde/package-lists/kali.list.chroot
11) comment out software packages, leaving only "kali-linux", "kali-desktop-live", and "lxde"; save
12) apt-get install live-build
13) cd /live-build-config
14) ./build.sh --distribution kali-rolling --variant lxde --verbose

these steps install and update all tools required to roll your own version of kali from within ubuntu variants

i am currently awaiting step 14 to finish

if this doesnt work, ill look into replacing the default installer included with live-build
if this does work, ill look more into customizing my respin

[Baxter]

previous steps yield positive results

produced live image does not have an installer when run from live but will install from the graphic installer option from boot menu as efi

will install as legacy but will not boot grub

now to either

get legacy working

or

set boot as read only

or

boot without loader

to prevent the issues i was having with efi installs in post #5

[Baxter]

Progress!

Reinstalled as legacy and then

From live boot terminal:
1) apt install grub2
2) #allow the install then open new terminal
3)mkdir /mnt/usbboot && mount /dev/sdxy /mnt/usbboot && mkdir /mnt/usbroot && mount /dev/sdxz /mnt/
4)grub-install --force --removable --boot-directory=/mnt/usbboot/boot /dev/sdx

This installs grub2 and then puts it to my boot partition of my install, there is no config so booting into the drive loads grub shell, I direct: grub>


1) ls #identify drives and their format
2) ls (hd0,5)/ #identify contents of each drive and partition [(hd0,2) (hd1,1) (etc)] in my case my root partition was (hd0,5). Output of root directory should look like "lost+found/ bin/ boot/ cdrom/ dev/ etc/ home/ lib/ lib64/ media/ mnt/ opt/ proc/ root/ run/ sbin/ srv/ sys/ tmp/ usr/ var/ vmlinuz vmlinuz.old initrd.img initrd.img.old"
3) set root=(hd0,5)
4) linux (hd0,5)/vmlinuz
5) initrd (hd0,5)/initrd.img
6) #in my case, steps 4 and 5 failed so I boot back into live and check my install. Root directory has both vmlinuz and initrd and they both link to /boot directory; however, for some reason, /boot did not contain the necessary files. I copied /boot directory from my live system into my installed system, rebooted into my install and re-ran steps 1-5. This time steps 4 and 5 were successful
7) boot

System attempts to boot but hangs

[Baxter]

further progress!

attempted to update-grub, but received error having something to do with not being able to find/access some directory(cant recall exactly); i believe it has to do with me running the command from live rather than the install. i attempted to change root directory but same error

so i hacked grub.cfg and now i have functional grub menu =D

selecting the install successfully attempts to boot, however, it hangs at the same point as previous post

[Baxter]

this is log off successful live boot, ive marked where the install hangs with a red x

[    6.003794] psmouse serio1: synaptics: queried max coordinates: x [..5728], y [..4902]
[    6.074643] ntfs: driver 2.1.32 [Flags: R/O MODULE].
[    6.080970] mmc0: new high speed SDXC card at address 0001
[    6.082362] mmcblk0: mmc0:0001 USB D 250 GiB 
[    6.083987]  mmcblk0: p1
[    6.086565] ntfs: volume version 3.1.
[    6.105306] psmouse serio1: synaptics: Touchpad model: 1, fw: 7.5, id: 0x1e0b1, caps: 0xd00073/0x240000/0xa0400/0x0, board id: 1695, fw id: 739436
[    6.128397] ntfs: volume version 3.1.
[    6.170004] input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input2
[    6.233470] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     SanDisk  Ultra Fit        1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[    6.234294] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 242614272 512-byte logical blocks: (124 GB/116 GiB)
[    6.236756] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[    6.236838] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[    6.237177] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    6.252062]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2 < sdb5 >
[    6.254904] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[    6.651710] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access     PNY      USB 2.0 FD       1100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
[    6.652891] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] 15950592 512-byte logical blocks: (8.17 GB/7.61 GiB)
[    6.653468] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[    6.653556] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[    6.654033] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
[    6.654117] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[    6.656666]  sdc: sdc1 sdc2
[    6.658400] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[    6.720239] clocksource: Switched to clocksource tsc
[    7.385532] EXT4-fs (sdb1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[    7.514258] EXT4-fs (sdb5): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[ X  7.646592] random: nonblocking pool is initialized
[    7.713281] ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
[    7.714199] ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
[    7.736766] loop: module loaded

im going to reinstall a bunch of different stock versions using my working grub

[Baxter]

so....

innumerable combinations of installs.. different releases, different kernels, different grub configs

nothing ive tried works, each change yields some type of results, but, after chasing those leads for hours on end without any progress, ive given up on that route.

am now running persistent live boot and will be attempting to run VM install

[Snowden]

hey guys i have a quick question how long did your 64 bit version take to download (ISO FILE)

[Baxter]

64bit mini, about 30 seconds; light, 5-10 minutes; full, 20-25 minutes; over 3 or 4 different connections over 5 or 6 times each. im guessing, honestly, i dont recall; sorry

seemed to average somewheres around 1.5-2 MB/s so if your service allows those speeds it should be in that ballpark, if not it will depend entirely on your connection


there are tons of tutorials here or on sites like www.linuxquestions.org/questions/

if you're having trouble with various forums' search function, you can search using a site code, eg "site:forums.kali.org searchphrase"; in this case, google will return results for "searchphrase" solely from "forums.kali.org"


other links of interest might include

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_(computing)
http://www.math.com/school/subject1/.../S1U2L3GL.html