While trying to move my computer to Debian, after allowing the installer to do it’s task, my machine will not boot.
Instead, I get a long string of text, as follows:
Could not retrieve perf counters (-19)
ACPI Warning: SystemIO range 0x00000000000000B00-0x0000000000000B08 conflicts withOpRegion 0x0000000000000B00-0x0000000000000B0F (\GSA1.SMBI) /20250404/utaddress-204)
usb: port power management may beunreliable
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
amdgpu 0000:08:00.0 amdgpu: [drm] Failed to setup vendor infoframe on connector HDMI-A-1: -22
And the system eventually collapses into a shell, that I do not know how to use. It returns:
Gave up waiting for root file system device. Common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
- Check rootdelay= (did the system wait lomg enough?)
- Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
Alert! /dev/sdb2 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!
The system has two disks mounted:
– an SSD, with the EFI, root, var, tmp and swap partition, for speeding up the overall system – an hdd, for /home
I had the system running on Mint until recently, so I know the system is sound, unless the SSD stopped working but then it is reasonable to expect it would no accept partitioning. Under Debian, it booted once and then stopped booting all together.
The installation I made was from a daily image, as I am/was aiming to put my machine on the testing branch, in order to have some sort of a rolling distro.
If anyone can offer some advice, it would be very much appreciated.
I’m on track for that, I admit.
As I read this, I’m trying a freshly installed live image.
I have to try… I’m already too invested in this stupidity to just quit at this point.
Why am I interested in a somewhat rolling release of Debian? Because I’m a dreamer with not enough technical capabilities. I like the stability Debian offers and the years I’ve used it as my default distro is a fond memory.
The bare bones mentality, the basic, clean approach to the UI/desktop distro customization and the minimal starting software package was a big plus, especially when using very underpowered machines, like I had then.
What is not a fond memory is having an OS remain static for such a long time span to the extent it feels like jumping into a completely new OS when migrating to the next release and lacking on having newer versions of software. Yes, I do know Backports are a thing but nonetheless.
But the more user friendly distros overcompensate on this, by overloading the starting software package and bloating the distro. Polishing can be too much.
No, I am not about to go and try LFS, Gentoo, or whatever distro that puts me in charge of everything. I have a life. Kind of. But still.
Like you say, I want things to work, I don’t mind doing some work but I really don’t care about nor need the extra bells and whistles the (excessive) polishing carries.
End of rant.
I’m going to torture myself trying to figure whatever might have gone wrong for a bit more.