This section relates to preparing, booting and installing a GNU/Linux distribution on your libreboot system, using nothing more than a USB flash drive (and dd).
Connect the USB drive. Check dmesg:
$ dmesg
Check lsblk to confirm which drive it is:
$ lsblk
Check that it wasn't automatically mounted. If it was, unmount it. For example:
$ sudo umount /dev/sdX*
# umount /dev/sdX*
dmesg told you what device it is. Overwrite the drive, writing your distro ISO to it with dd. For example:
$ sudo dd if=gnulinux.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync
# dd if=gnulinux.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync
You should now be able to boot the installer from your USB drive. Continue reading, for information about how to do that.
Guix and NixOS USB installers use the GRUB bootloader, unlike most GNU/Linux installers which will likely use ISOLINUX.
To boot the Guix or NixOS live USB install, select Search for GRUB configuration (grub.cfg) outside of CBFS from the GRUB payload menu. After you have done that, a new menuentry will appear at the very bottom with text like Load Config from (usb0); select that, and it should boot.
Once you have installed Guix or NixOS onto the main storage device, check grub_cbfs.html#libreboot_grub_config_ondisk for hints on how to boot it.
Using GuixSD (Guix System Distribution) is recommended; it's part of GNU, and endorsed by the Free Software Foundation, while being partly based on NixOS and containing some improvements over it.
Tip: don't use the official net install image. Download the full GNOME ISO (the ~1.5GiB one). In this ISO, there is still the capability to boot the net install, while it also provides an easy to use live system (which you can boot from USB). This ISO also works using syslinux_configfile -i (the Parse ISOLINUX menu entries in the default GRUB configuration that libreboot uses).
Boot it in GRUB using the Parse ISOLINUX config (USB) option. A new menu should appear in GRUB, showing the boot options for that distro; this is a GRUB menu, converted from the usual ISOLINUX menu provided by that distro.
These are generic instructions. They may or may not be correct for your distribution. You must adapt them appropriately, for whatever GNU/Linux distribution it is that you are trying to install.
If the ISOLINUX parser or Search for GRUB configuration options won't work, then press C in GRUB to access the command line.
grub> ls
Get the device from above output, eg (usb0). Example:
grub> cat (usb0)/isolinux/isolinux.cfg
Either this will show the ISOLINUX menuentries for that ISO, or link to other .cfg files, for example /isolinux/foo.cfg.
If it did that, then you do:
grub> cat (usb0)/isolinux/foo.cfg
And so on, until you find the correct menuentries for ISOLINUX.
The file /isolinux/foo.cfg is a fictional example. Do not actually
use this example, unless you actually have that file, if it is appropriate.
For Trisquel (and other debian-based distros), there are typically menuentries listed in /isolinux/txt.cfg or /isolinux/gtk.cfg. For dual-architecture ISO images (i686 and x86_64), there may be separate files/directories for each architecture. Just keep searching through the image, until you find the correct ISOLINUX configuration file.
Now look at the ISOLINUX menuentry. It'll look like:
kernel /path/to/kernel
append PARAMETERS initrd=/path/to/initrd MAYBE_MORE_PARAMETERS
GRUB works the same way, but in it's own way. Example GRUB commands:
grub> set root='usb0'
grub> linux /path/to/kernel PARAMETERS MAYBE_MORE_PARAMETERS
grub> initrd /path/to/initrd
grub> boot
Note: usb0 may be incorrect. Check the output of the ls command in GRUB,
to see a list of USB devices/partitions.
Of course this will vary from distro to distro. If you did all of that correctly, then it should now be booting your USB
drive in the way that you specified.
Most of these issues occur when using libreboot with coreboot's 'text mode' instead of the coreboot framebuffer. This mode is useful for booting payloads like memtest86+ which expect text-mode, but for GNU/Linux distributions it can be problematic when they are trying to switch to a framebuffer because it doesn't exist.
In most cases, you should use the vesafb ROM images. Example filename: libreboot_ukdvorak_vesafb.rom.
Use one of the ROM images with vesafb in the filename (uses coreboot framebuffer instead of text-mode).
When using the ROM images that use coreboot's "text mode" instead of the coreboot framebuffer,
booting the Trisquel net installer results in graphical corruption because it is trying to switch to a framebuffer which doesn't
exist. Use that kernel parameter on the 'linux' line when booting it:
vga=normal fb=false
Tested in Trisquel 6 (and 7). This forces debian-installer to start in text-mode, instead of trying to switch to a framebuffer.
If selecting text-mode from a GRUB menu created using the ISOLINUX parser, you can press E on the menu entry to add this. Or, if you are booting manually (from GRUB terminal) then just add the parameters.
This workaround was found on the page: https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch05s04.html. It should also work for gNewSense, Debian and any other apt-get distro that provides debian-installer (text mode) net install method.
Copyright © 2014, 2015 Francis Rowe <info@gluglug.org.uk>
This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License and all future versions.
A copy of the license can be found at ../cc-by-sa-4.txt.
This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See ../cc-by-sa-4.txt for more information.