On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 10:41:17AM -0500, Haines Brown via Dng wrote:
> The installation goes smoothly, but when I boot after an
> installation I get this error:
>

>   /dev/nvme0n1p2: clean ...  
>   INIT: version 3.06 booing 
>   INIT: No inittab.d directory found 
>   Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel S 
>   Starting hot-plug events dispatcher: udevd.  
>   Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (subsystems)...done 
>   Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (devices)...done 
>   Waiting for /dev/ to be fully populated...[ 5.301262 ] platform 
>     regulatory.0: firmware failed to load regulatory.db (-2) 

>     

>   [ 5.3011313 ] firmware_class: see https:/wiki/debian.org/ 
>     Firmware for information about missing firmware 
>   [ 5.301394 ] platform regulatory.0: firmware: failed to 
>    load regulatory.db (-2) 
>   [ 5.316633 ] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: firmware: failed to 
>     load iwl-debug -debug-yoyo.bin (-2) 
>   [5.316695 ] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: firmware: failed to load 
>     iwl-debug -debug-yoyo.bin (-2) 

As I have previously stated, you need to install
linux-firmware-nonfree and wireless-regdb, which should take care of
that message. This isn't an error, you still seem to have a system which
boots properly as far as I can tell.

>
> Booting a live system on a key, I change ownership of a terminal
> to root. I find in the /root directory the file
> remove_firware.sh. I suspect this may be normal.

It is.

>
> I mount one of the SSD drives and discover that its
> /etc/fstab file has only these two lines
>
> overlay / overlay rw 0 0
> tpfs /tmp tmpfs nosuid.nodev 0 0

Once again, this is almost certainly the /etc/fstab for the live
system on the USB key, not the one for your installed system.

>
> The contents of the/dev
> partition look normal off hand. The / directory holds a broken
> out boot directory. The boot directory does not contain a
> /boot/efi directory but / does have in it the the binary file
> grub-efi-ia32_2.06-13_amd64.deb
>

This is almost certainly the /boot directory on the USB key for the
live system, not the one for your installed system.

> There is no efi directory, although I created a 550 MB ESP
> partition just after the 1 MG free space. In the partition table
> the esp partition is automatically bootable, formatted and not
> mounted. I thought the EFI partition is autaomatically placed in
> the boot partition.

The partitions for live media on a USB device will be different from
those on a installed system.

>
> I look at grub.cfg and see that it seeks to load all_video and
> vga. # lsmod says that for video the nouveau module is loaded

That's normal.

>
> $ lsblk -fs | less
>
> ...
> nvme0n1p1 vfat FAT32 AB523-677B

This is almost certainly the EFI partition of your installed system.

> |__nvme0n1
> nvme0n1p2 ext4 root ....

This is where your installed system lives. This is what you should be
mounting (/dev/neme0n1p2) in the live environment if you want to look
at what is on it.

> |__nvme0n1
> ...
> nvme1n1p1 vfat FAT32 AF62-C94A

This is the EFI partition on another drive. I assume this is what you
call your running system, since the output you provided from the
installed system you claim doesn't boot is on /dev/nvme0n1.

>   |__nvme1n1    
>   nvme1n1p2  ext4  root .... 

This is where your second install, probably the one you call your
running system lives.

Greg


--
web site: http://www.gregn.net
gpg public key: http://www.gregn.net/pubkey.asc

--
Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@???