On my ASUS boards, F8 brings up the boot menu at the BIOS splash screen. Also there is a menu prompt at the bottom of the screen telling you what F key functions do.

But if you hide your BIOS splash screen with the vendor logo or have it timeout too fast, then you would never see the menu choices at the bottom.

Hi Keith,

Yeah, I did some digging around on the Internet and found that Asus laptops use ESC, but motherboards use F8.

I gotta refer to my motherboard manual to see what SATA port(s) get disabled while using a second M.2 drive. Then I gotta get rid of the Winders partition on my PCIe M.2 and install the other M.2.

If I get rid of the Winders partition will Grub still pop up if I don't hit F8 or will it automagically boot into Linux? Or, will I have to use F8 no matter which drive I'm gonna boot from? I guess I'll spend more time digging on the Internet. ;)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Greetings,

Well, I believe I have my dual boot with 2 different drives figured out. I found out that Grub is installed in the Winders 10 EFI (ESP) partition. Since I have Winders 10 on a different M.2 drive I should be able to delete the Winders 10 partitions on the M.2 that also holds my Linux Mint installation and I using F8 to bring up the boot menu and selection either or, I won't have to worry about Grub showing up. Correct? ;)

Now to a new issue that I found info on on the Internet, but need opinion(s) about:

Yesterday I did 47 updates including going to Kernel 5.0.0-32 generic. Now when I boot into Linux I get this in the text that shows on the screen: "a start job is running for raise network interfaces" with red *s scrolling back and forth in the status [ ] brackets. I searched the Internet, again, and this is what I came up with:

1.    Open Terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T)

2.    Open /etc/network/interfaces file with gedit or nano:

    sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

3.    Set below text for any interfaces in this file:

    auto lo
    iface lo inet loopback

4.    Remove any other entries.
5.    Save the file and reboot

This is what is in mine:

# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.1.3
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8

My Linux no longer uses "eth0 and eth1", it uses "enp0s31f6". Is it wise to remove everything but the top 2 lines? I'll look further on the Internet. I just need opinions. :)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Greetings,

Well, I believe I have my dual boot with 2 different drives figured out. I found out that Grub is installed in the Winders 10 EFI (ESP) partition. Since I have Winders 10 on a different M.2 drive I should be able to delete the Winders 10 partitions on the M.2 that also holds my Linux Mint installation and I using F8 to bring up the boot menu and selection either or, I won't have to worry about Grub showing up. Correct? ;)

Now to a new issue that I found info on on the Internet, but need opinion(s) about:

Yesterday I did 47 updates including going to Kernel 5.0.0-32 generic. Now when I boot into Linux I get this in the text that shows on the screen: "a start job is running for raise network interfaces" with red *s scrolling back and forth in the status [ ] brackets. I searched the Internet, again, and this is what I came up with:

1.    Open Terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T)

2.    Open /etc/network/interfaces file with gedit or nano:

    sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

3.    Set below text for any interfaces in this file:

    auto lo
    iface lo inet loopback

4.    Remove any other entries.
5.    Save the file and reboot

This is what is in mine:

# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.1.3
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8

My Linux no longer uses "eth0 and eth1", it uses "enp0s31f6". Is it wise to remove everything but the top 2 lines? I'll look further on the Internet. I just need opinions. :)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

I would say yes. The top lines are all I have in my interfaces file. You might want to keep you static addresses configuration though. I just do DHCP and let the Network Manager figure things out. I use the Wired Settings app to add any extra DNS nameservers I want.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

On my ASUS boards, F8 brings up the boot menu at the BIOS splash screen. Also there is a menu prompt at the bottom of the screen telling you what F key functions do.

But if you hide your BIOS splash screen with the vendor logo or have it timeout too fast, then you would never see the menu choices at the bottom.

Hi Keith,

Yeah, I did some digging around on the Internet and found that Asus laptops use ESC, but motherboards use F8.

I gotta refer to my motherboard manual to see what SATA port(s) get disabled while using a second M.2 drive. Then I gotta get rid of the Winders partition on my PCIe M.2 and install the other M.2.

If I get rid of the Winders partition will Grub still pop up if I don't hit F8 or will it automagically boot into Linux? Or, will I have to use F8 no matter which drive I'm gonna boot from? I guess I'll spend more time digging on the Internet. ;)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

Even without a grub menu popping up, Linux still needs a EFI partition to boot from. But that will be created on your new standalone Linux drive. On the systems with just Linux installed, the hosts just boot straight to the OS and I don't get a grub menu unless I use the ESC key.

On my development host, I get the grub menu to select either Ubuntu 18.04 or Ubuntu 19.10. It all depends on what you have the grub file configured for to present your options.

I like the Grub Customizer application to adjust what the grub menu presents. I don't know if you have seen that before or have it available in your distro.
https://launchpad.net/grub-customizer

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

On my ASUS boards, F8 brings up the boot menu at the BIOS splash screen. Also there is a menu prompt at the bottom of the screen telling you what F key functions do.

But if you hide your BIOS splash screen with the vendor logo or have it timeout too fast, then you would never see the menu choices at the bottom.

Hi Keith,

Yeah, I did some digging around on the Internet and found that Asus laptops use ESC, but motherboards use F8.

I gotta refer to my motherboard manual to see what SATA port(s) get disabled while using a second M.2 drive. Then I gotta get rid of the Winders partition on my PCIe M.2 and install the other M.2.

If I get rid of the Winders partition will Grub still pop up if I don't hit F8 or will it automagically boot into Linux? Or, will I have to use F8 no matter which drive I'm gonna boot from? I guess I'll spend more time digging on the Internet. ;)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

Even without a grub menu popping up, Linux still needs a EFI partition to boot from. But that will be created on your new standalone Linux drive. On the systems with just Linux installed, the hosts just boot straight to the OS and I don't get a grub menu unless I use the ESC key.

On my development host, I get the grub menu to select either Ubuntu 18.04 or Ubuntu 19.10. It all depends on what you have the grub file configured for to present your options.

I like the Grub Customizer application to adjust what the grub menu presents. I don't know if you have seen that before or have it available in your distro.
https://launchpad.net/grub-customizer

Hi Keith,

What I plan on doing is removing Winders from my current M.2 drive that also has Linux Mint on it. I'm thinking I could get rid of all but the EFI partition that pertain to Winders. Then I will install my original M.2 drive in the SATA M.2 slot. It contains Winders that I cloned to my current M.2 drive. It, of course, will need updates and I believe it is 1 version under what I currently use when gaming. Having an M.2 drive in that slot disables one of my SATA ports. When I built this PC, I deliberately did not have a SATA drive connected to that port (future thinking I believe ;) ).

I checked and I don't have Grub Customizer in my distro. I scanned the other Grub software and didn't see anything that resembles doing any kind of editing of the Grub menu.

On another note, I'm thinking I may need to revert back to my older kernel. I've experienced a complete system lockup (crash?) twice since then. Of course, Update Manager has another "new" kernel, 5.3.0.28.96. Perhaps this one fixes a bug in the current one that causes the lockup? I'll just go back to my original first and see what happens.

Thanks and have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

I checked and I don't have Grub Customizer in my distro. I scanned the other Grub software and didn't see anything that resembles doing any kind of editing of the Grub menu.

Strange, you mean you couldn't install the ppa? Is Linux Mint so different from Ubuntu and Debian it is not considered a derivative?

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I checked and I don't have Grub Customizer in my distro. I scanned the other Grub software and didn't see anything that resembles doing any kind of editing of the Grub menu.

Strange, you mean you couldn't install the ppa? Is Linux Mint so different from Ubuntu and Debian it is not considered a derivative?

Hi Keith,

What is a "ppa"? I've not dealt with anything "ppa".

I found a website on how to remove Winders from the drive that has Linux on it and all I have to do after deleting Winders partitions and adding the new space to other Linux partitions is do the "sudo update-grub" and it will fix Grub. I'm waiting to do this on Saturday or Sunday when the temp will be a little higher here. We're supposed to get snow today, but it doesn't look like it's gonna happen unless it hits at night. I need to blow the dust outta my PCs. Haven't done it in quite a while since Winter hit.

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. I think there might be a little Debian in there too. ;) As far as being considered a derivative or not, I haven't a clue. ;)

Thanks and have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

I checked and I don't have Grub Customizer in my distro. I scanned the other Grub software and didn't see anything that resembles doing any kind of editing of the Grub menu.

Strange, you mean you couldn't install the ppa? Is Linux Mint so different from Ubuntu and Debian it is not considered a derivative?

Greetings Keith

You certainly can use PPA's on Linux Mint, as it is built off Ubuntu 18.04 LTS base.

On a clean install, added the NVIDIA PPA, and then installed the lastest (444.48.02) NVIDIA Drivers through Driver Manager.

I even added a 1060 to my pc with an 1660 and didnt even miss a beat.

Cheers

What is a "ppa"? I've not dealt with anything "ppa".

PPA is the acronym for Personal Package Archive.

They are other repositories of private project code that is not located in a official distro repository. People that develop their own applications or modifications of some other codebase make the code available to the public for use.

Nvidia has an "official" driver repository that has some maintainers that make the recent drivers available same day or close to release that the code becomes available. For different reasons or either too much work to do in pulling in more recent drivers or wanting to keep stable drivers in the official distros, the distro maintainers are often many versions behind the current Nvidia release schedule. The graphics-drivers ppa is one example.

The graphics-drivers ppa is the easiest way to get Nvidia drivers installed in a system. You just add the repository to your software sources and then issue a apt update to pull in the latest drivers. Or use the Additional Drivers tab in the Software&Updates application or the Mint Driver Manager. Or just add the drivers in from the command Terminal.

First step is to add the ppa repository to your sources.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa

sudo apt-get update

You can read about the repository here:
https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Hi Keith,

PPA is the acronym for Personal Package Archive.

Thanks for that. I'll check it out after I get this PC unscrewed!

I had a few freezes and had to do a hard reboot to get out of it. It did it twice to me today. The first time I installed the latest version of the kernel. It froze again. The second time I used Timeshift to go back to what I had before doing the updates the other day. Things no longer worked as before! BOINC would no longer run. Firefox was back to basics and without my bookmarks are preferences, etc.

I downloaded the new version of Linux Mint, 19.3 Tricia. I'm gonna burn the .iso to a USB drive (and it looks like I have to do it in fraking Winders using Rufus) and reinstall it using the whole M.2 drive. I wanted to do this on a warmer day anyway, so I could take it outside and blow the dust out of it; this just forces me to do it. I don't remember how I got it updated to 19.3, but it was not an install, it just updated 19.2 to 19.3, sorta like how Winders is done now, I think.

If you have any advice on possibly getting BOINC running again, I'm all ears (eyes). ;)

I don't know what the frak Timeshift did. I was under the impression, from reading about it on the Internet, that it only did SYSTEM files. BOINC has nothing to do with the system, per se.

Anyway, no BOINCing for this PC for a while. Thanks Keith. :)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

If you still have working Linux installation, just use the Mint equivalent of the Startup Disk Creator to make the installable USB from the ISO.

Or use the BalenaEtcher AppImage.

https://www.balena.io/etcher/

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I don't know what the frak Timeshift did. I was under the impression, from reading about it on the Internet, that it only did SYSTEM files. BOINC has nothing to do with the system, per se

If you are using the distro version of Boinc, then yes indeed BOINC is installed in system files and gets backed up by Timeshift.

One of the reasons why the AIO is so much better.

Can you just zip up the boinc-client directory and put it on a USB drive and then install Tricia from scratch and then unzip the BOINC directory when you are finished installing and updating.?

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I don't know what the frak Timeshift did. I was under the impression, from reading about it on the Internet, that it only did SYSTEM files. BOINC has nothing to do with the system, per se

If you are using the distro version of Boinc, then yes indeed BOINC is installed in system files and gets backed up by Timeshift.

One of the reasons why the AIO is so much better.

Can you just zip up the boinc-client directory and put it on a USB drive and then install Tricia from scratch and then unzip the BOINC directory when you are finished installing and updating.?

Hi Keith,

I'm not using the distro version of BOINC, I'm using the AIO. I have the BOINC directory on my Home partition. I already moved BOINC and a bunch of other stuff I don't want to lose over to my Data HDD for safe keeping. I don't have a boinc-client directory, I only have my BOINC directory where everything is at.

If I do the clean install and copy my BOINC directory back over, will BOINC pick up where it left off, assuming that boincmgr (boinc manager) will run? I would start BOINC by double clicking boincmgr. Right now, boinc manager will not run after the restore. I double click it now and get nothing.

I just remembered something. Back when we were having a problem with the anonymous platform, because of a new server software version, and some, if not all, of us used the stock version to get by until the server software was reversed to the previous version, I never got rid of it. I renamed it "Stock_bla_bla-bla". ;) Could that be why boincmgr will no longer run? I don't see how it would be a problem.

I have Mint 19.3 burned to a USB flash drive. I used Rufus in Winders to do it this morning.

Thanks and have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

If a binary executable won't run, the first thing you check are its dependencies met and is it allowed to be executable in its permissions.

Open a Terminal command window in the AIO BOINC directory and type:

ldd ./boincmgr

See if there are any missing dependencies reported. Also open its properties and see if it is still marked for being allowed to run. So the same for the client boinc.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

If a binary executable won't run, the first thing you check are its dependencies met and is it allowed to be executable in its permissions.

Open a Terminal command window in the AIO BOINC directory and type:

ldd ./boincmgr

See if there are any missing dependencies reported. Also open its properties and see if it is still marked for being allowed to run. So the same for the client boinc.

Hi Keith,

I was thinking about the permissions last night before I went to sleep. Because of bad memory, I forgot this morning. The owner permissions were read and write, but the group only read. I changed both to read and write and crossed my fingers. I got BOINC running right now! I'm glad I held off on doing anything drastic. Now I can wait for a much warmer day, later next week, before making the changes I want to for dual booting from 2 drives.

I gotta go into the BOINC directory on my data drive and change the permissions there. When I get ready to wipe this drive and only have Linux Mint (full clean install) on it, I need to wipe the SETI folder on my data drive and copy my current SETI folder to the data drive before I do or all heck is gonna break out. ;)

So far, I haven't had this PC freeze, but it was at random times, not specific. Yesterday's freezes were after more than 24 hours of not having any. We'll see what happens today if going back fixed the problem. I'm back to running on Kernel: 4.15.0-54-generic. I'm still running Distro: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia, I did not go all the way back to 19.2. So this will be a test to see if the problem was caused by the Kernel update or the OS update. :)

Thanks and have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Greetings,

So far, I haven't had this PC freeze, but it was at random times, not specific. Yesterday's freezes were after more than 24 hours of not having any. We'll see what happens today if going back fixed the problem. I'm back to running on Kernel: 4.15.0-54-generic. I'm still running Distro: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia, I did not go all the way back to 19.2. So this will be a test to see if the problem was caused by the Kernel update or the OS update. :)

The PC just froze up on me again today, after more than 24 hours. I do not believe that the Kernel update had anything to do with it, I'm running on the original after my restore using Timeshift the other day. I'm thinking that the cause is somehow related to the way this PC was updated from version 19.2 to 19.3. I don't remember how it was done, I'll have to check the Internet. I could restore back to 19.2, but I don't see the point. Peace of mind perhaps? Perhaps I will since I don't see any warmer days in the forecast.

Anyway, I hope that doing a clean install, when I make my changes to this PC, will fix that. I have 19.3 burned to a USB flash drive. I'll just have to wait and see, soon as we get some warmer weather around here. ;)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Greetings,

Well... Things just went from bad to worse! :(

After doing my morning ritual in World of Warcraft this morning, I went to log back into Linux Mint. No could do! Messages saying that "fsck must be run on filesystem nvme0n1p4". I logged into my live USB flash drive and attempted to do just that. Whatever fsck is, does not seem to be doing anything. Yeah, it's an acronym for "filesystem check" I presume, probably like Winders chkdisk. Nothing there seemed to work; it just kept giving me the version number or some such. I even tried "sudo" and nothing.

There was something about the disks on the Mint menu and it had an option to repair partitions. I tried it and all it did was change my Grub menu by adding a whole bunch of stuff that was not there before. Originally I had 4 options on the Grub menu, now there's like 7 or 8ish.

I then found something on the Mint menu that had something to do with partitions, sorta like Winders "Disk Management". It had a repair option for... well, partitions. ;) So I thought "what have I got to lose?" I started it on the root partition which happens to be the one in question. And this is what I get:

I haven't a clue what that is telling me. All I know is that that partition is hosed and perhaps non-repairable. Believe me, I DO NOT want to go back to using Winders as my main OS.

Is this PC trying to tell me that I HAVE to get Winders off of that M.2 drive and dual boot from 2 drives? I am in dire need to blow the dust out if the PC first and I'm waiting for a day where the temperature is greater that 45 degrees. It's too cold to do it now. Is there, perhaps, a way for me to get that partition repaired first, while I wait for a warmer day, that I haven't found yet?

[edit]
I just remembered something that I thought was kinda odd at the time, but could do nothing about it. When Linux Mint was un-booting ;) to boot into Winders, in the list of things it was doing that was scrolling on the screen, in one spot I saw a red FAILED. The text scrolls by so fast I could not see what had failed. That is probably when my root partition was compromised.
[/edit]

Have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

One thing about fsck is if the disk is really hosed it can make it much worse.

try man fsck. see if it tells you what error code 1 is.

all else fails, copy your data off, erase the partition and reinstall place data back.

One thing about fsck is if the disk is really hosed it can make it much worse.

try man fsck. see if it tells you what error code 1 is.

all else fails, copy your data off, erase the partition and reinstall place data back.

Hi Gary,

Yeah, I already looked at the man page for fsck. Nothing on error codes that I saw. I even tried Gparted from my live boot. It said it fixed stuff, but when I went into terminal to check, still got the "bad magic number in super-block" error.

Well, I've been planning on going dual boot from 2 drives, but I'm waiting for a warmer day so I can blow the dust out of the case. It hasn't been done for a few months, since it got colder. One things fer sure, when I do this I will be giving the root partition more space on the M.2 drive, since it is 1TB. ;)

I think I'm just gonna brave the cold and do that after posting this. :)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

I did a google search on the complete error code, many of the comments were to do with disk drive failures, and a fair number of them to do with SSD drive failures. One suggestion that may work was to partition the disk manually and to leave a tiny, unformatted, partition at the end of the disk which appeared to remove this error.

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?