Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

animefreak1233 · 2017-02-21 02:49:41

I have a successful install on a 2TB USB HDD that I have. I used it regularly on an old Dell Latitude D630, and an acer aspire one without any problems. I recently got myself an Inspiron 7559 laptop, and when I tried to boot, I received a "Can't find UUID... Dropping to a recovery shell" error.
I tried using the blkid, but I did't find any of my USB HDD partitions on it. So I tried using the fallback initramfs, which actually found the drive but froze after a few errors about pointers to tmd tables or something.
So, what am I supposed to do?

R00KIE · 2017-02-21 14:23:00

Have you tried the fallback initramfs image?

animefreak1233 · 2017-02-23 07:57:20

I'm pretty sure that I mentioned that I did that in the last post

x33a · 2017-02-23 09:48:17

Do you still have access to another machine? If yes, then does it work fine on it?

animefreak1233 · 2017-02-23 10:14:43

Yes, it works fine.

R00KIE · 2017-02-23 10:19:52

animefreak1233 wrote:

I'm pretty sure that I mentioned that I did that in the last post

Missed that, my bad.

Are you using 'quiet' as one of your kernel parameters? If yes try booting without it and you may be able to find clues in the extra messages you will see.

animefreak1233 · 2017-02-23 12:27:11

OK, so, I did some snooping around by booting into text mode. Found out that the problem was the nouveau driver. So I backlisted it and installed the official Nvidia drivers. But I found out that the "Disaplay wasn't connected". Does that mean I have no other choice but to use the intel graphics?

animefreak1233 · 2017-02-23 13:10:43

So, I also worked with Nvidia Optimus. I've configured SDDM and LightDM to work with them. After rebooting, Xorg doesn't seem to find any screens, since there was an error on this in the logfile. Which is also the reason SDDM throws segfaults at boot. So, what am I supposed to do now?

R00KIE · 2017-02-23 13:49:15

animefreak1233 wrote:

So, what am I supposed to do now?

Simplify. Don't start any login managers, rename/move/delete any xorg configuration files you may have, revert back to nouveau if you prefer to use it and go from there, even if that mean initially you have to use the intel card to debug/test until you get things working the way you want.

animefreak1233 · 2017-02-28 11:37:17

I followed your advice. It took me a few days, but I've finally seen progress. X starts (yay) but it throws an error about how it can't load module glx because it doesn't exist. I've already installed nvidia-libgl and mesa. So, where's the problem?

R00KIE · 2017-02-28 15:17:54

The exact error message would be helpful. My best guess is that somehow you have deleted a file that is provided by xorg.

animefreak1233 · 2017-02-28 17:22:34

I can't post here with the kind of access I have to my machine. I'm accessing the forum from Windows. The exact error message if I remember was "Failed to load module glx (module not found 0)". There were more errors about how it couldn't be initialized down below, but my hunch is that this the root cause. I didn't delete anything but the config files, which were regenerated using "Xorg :0 -configure && cp ~/xorg.conf.new /etx/X11/xorg.conf". I also had to modify bits according to the Nvidia Optimus page. But I've been running into this error, so I can't get the server to work.

R00KIE · 2017-02-28 17:33:41

Try the following, try to start X, see which file it complains about, check if that file is in the filesystem, if not check which package should own it with 'pacman -Qo /path/to/file' then reinstall that package. Rinse and repeat if X complains about more missing files.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-02-21 02:49:41

Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#2 2017-02-21 14:23:00

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#3 2017-02-23 07:57:20

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#4 2017-02-23 09:48:17

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#5 2017-02-23 10:14:43

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#6 2017-02-23 10:19:52

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#7 2017-02-23 12:27:11

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#8 2017-02-23 13:10:43

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#9 2017-02-23 13:49:15

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#10 2017-02-28 11:37:17

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#11 2017-02-28 15:17:54

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#12 2017-02-28 17:22:34

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

#13 2017-02-28 17:33:41

Re: Can't boot external USB HDD installation on Inspiron 7559

Board footer