On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 05:29:57PM +0100, Antony Stone wrote:

Thanks for the reply, Anthony.

> On Saturday 14 February 2026 at 16:41:17, Haines Brown via Dng wrote:
>
> > I am having difficulty installing the devuan operating system on
> > a 1 TB SSD or a 2 TB SSD installed in a Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Elite
> > AX motherboard that has a dead GPU chip. In place of it I put a
> > 1030 Low Profile D4 2G video card into a slot.
>
> You say you are having problems installing Daedalus (from the subject line).
>
> Can you successfully install Chimaera?

I have the netinst ISO and will give it a try.

> Also, what options are you selecting during the installation process?
>
> Specifically:
>
> 1. Are you allowing the installer to set up the disk partitioning, or are you
> trying to do that manually? (If the latter , then I suggest trying the
> former, to see if it resolves the problem).

I normally do expert partitioning in order to break out home,
boot, /var/mail, but also did many non-expert installs with use
of full disk so that it is an install from scratch. I also
deleted all partitions on the SSD I was not installing to and as
well the old partitions of the target disk.

I don't know if it makes any difference if the EFI paritrion is
named EFI or ESP. I've been namind it ESP.

> 2. Are you going for a text-only (no graphical desktop environment)
> installation (which is much faster, and results in a simpler system) to see
> whether this works?

I've never tried a GUI installation. Always text.

> I do not see what you quote as being an error. It mentions missing firmware,
> but that doesn't mean the firmware is necessary - it's often just a suggestion
> that you might want to install it for more feaures or better performance etc.
>

> >   /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)

>
> Nowhere above is the word "error".

True. This is simply what the boot returns. Can't get close it
witn my usual Ctl-Alt-DELETE and have to power down in order to
restart the boot.

> > There is no efi directory, although I created a 550 MB ESP
> > partition just after the 1 MG free space.
>
> I recommend that (even if it's not what you want in the long run) you allow
> the installer to fully partition the disk however it sees fit, instead of doing
> anything like that manually. If it works, you then know what partitions are
> needed if you subsequently choose to do manual partitioning.

Tried non-expert install to entire disk many times without any
success. But the lack of a /boot/efi partition obviously makes it
impossible to boot.

I worry that death of the GPU chip and or the presence of the
video card might be a source of trouble. I have a spare
motherboard thats would solve the problem, but at age 90 and
partially disabled, to change the motherboard would be a
challenge.

Now when I once again I can't even boot the netinst ISO and it
hangs with a message similar to what I get when I try to boot
devuan:

A lot of lines about Buffer I/O erroer on dev sr0, logical block
0, async page read
Gave up waiting for suspend/resume device
root: clean, ... files ...
usr: clean ... files ...
INIT: verdion 3.06 booting
INIT: No inittab.d directory found
Using makefile-style concurrent in 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 /devd to be fully populated...[ 39.105304 ] platform
regulatory.0:firmware: firmware : failed to load regulatiry.db (-2)

and addiional lines about
Failed to load regulatory.db
Failed to allocate transform for ctr(aes-generic)
Failed to reset rng
Test 0 failed for drbg_pr_ctr_aes128
Failed to load iwel-debug-yoyo.bin

I can't boot from a netinst ISO I used many times before, but I
am able to boot a daedalus live key with the refracta installer.
But after deleting all partitios and doing a simple installation.
the drive is not even seen by BIOS.


--

     Haines Brown