USB install quirk

[atsak]

I was installing last night on a Dell GX280 for amusement purposes. I decided to give the USB install a whirl. Everything worked and I yanked the USB key after the CentOS install. When the computer rebooted I had GRUB across the screen a few million times.

I put the USB key back in and everything went along swimmingly; it installed on the hard drive, and all is well.

Except if I reboot with the USB key out; back to GRUB . . . .

How do I fix GRUB ? Linux neophyte here.

 

[atsak]

I just tested this again on a different GX280. It seems something goes wrong on these particular Dell's when installing from USB key. They both had the same problem. I'll test the USB key on an Acer Revo in a few days time to make sure it's not me.

 

[wardmundy]

Don't take the USB key out during the entire install and see if you get the same result.

 

[atsak]

Don't take the USB key out during the entire install and see if you get the same result.

That's what I did the first time, then the second I tried removing it after stage 1 (the initial centos load).

 

[dad311]

I had this issue on the gpc. I ended up manually install grub on the harddrive.

 

[bmore]

What is the hard drive configuration of the Dell GX280 (SATA, IDE)?

The routine is not successfully ignoring the USB drive during Grub configuration. To Linux the USB drive is just another hard drive so unless we successfully ignore it, removing it later will change where Grub expects to find the Centos during boot.

 

[atsak]

What is the hard drive configuration of the Dell GX280 (SATA, IDE)?

The routine is not successfully ignoring the USB drive during Grub configuration. To Linux the USB drive is just another hard drive so unless we successfully ignore it, removing it later will change where Grub expects to find the Centos during boot.

It's sATA. Two things of note; I have always found this Dell to have "quirks" with USB. I used to be part of a support team for a couple hundred of these, and stuff just didn't work sometimes.

Secondly, during setup, during the package load portion (the part where the red bar flashes across the screen), there's "garbage" characters on the screen (portions of text from previous portions of the install).

FYI I just did this on another machine from the same stick, and you're absolutely right, it's not ignoring the stick properly. The stick doesn't load correctly after the first use on the Dell.

I'm not sure anyone should bother with fixing this. It's just best to know it's not well suited to the GX280. But that's just my experience. Someone else should try, and actually try the rear ports instead of the front ones, just for interests sake. I was using a Kingston Datatraveler 4GB drive.

I sorta needed to get going so used the CD. I was testing the USB for an install I need to do that involves a bit of border crossing so I wanted to make sure it works. I'm going to take a CDROM too just in case. I like the USB it's faster.

 

[bmore]

It's sATA. Two things of note; I have always found this Dell to have "quirks" with USB. I used to be part of a support team for a couple hundred of these, and stuff just didn't work sometimes.

Hmmm. It usually works without issues on the default configuration of one SATA drive. Not sure why not on this Dell.

I do not have a GX280 to test to see why it fails to detect which drive to ignore. The machine specific fix would involve an edit to one line in 2 of the install config files on the flash drive.

The garbage on the screen is an issue with the Centos install routine if the config files are loaded via ftp/http. Loading the same files via the local disk or cd does not have the problem.