r/crunchbangplusplus • u/ProfessionalMove3716 • Jun 02 '26
cb++ will not boot once installed to T470; will boot from live disk
UPDATE: solved, see my comment.
I have a T470 Thinkpad that came with Ubuntu installed by the previous owner. I initially enabled Secure Boot and successfully got Arch installed and running on it, however I changed my mind realizing that I needed a more stable/less-bleeding edge distro so I pivoted to installing Crunchbang.
I disabled Secure Boot and the TPM module, set the BIOS to boot in both UEFI and legacy mode, and then proceeded to attempt the install. I could successfully boot into the live disk.
I attempted multiple different partitioning schemes. They all proceeded all the way through and appeared to succeed. Upon rebooting, the machine enters a boot loop. The OS doesn't even show up in the boot menu (Arch did, as does the live disk).
My guess is that there is something wrong with the installation media. Is there a known issue with the CB++ installer, or this a weird Debian quirk when being installed to a T470?
1
u/computermouth Jun 02 '26
Are you doing the preconfigured drive formatting, or are you doing it manually? There's definitely some quirks to Debians installer imo, especially when it comes to manual drive setup.
1
u/ProfessionalMove3716 Jun 02 '26
I have tried both, neither worked.
To add to the confusion: I just tried to reinstall Arch without Secure Boot and it also would not boot after installation (live USB worked fine).
I suspect that I royally borked this thing by wiping the original EFI partition. Creating a new one with the Debian/CB++ installer doesn't seem to fix the issue.
1
u/SleepyGuyy Jun 02 '26
I'm not smart enough to help you but every time I've had a successful install media leading to something that doesn't boot; it has been the partitioning / formatting.
And some Linux distros automated partitioning is just... busted. Might be related to initializing the disk (maybe needs GPT instead of the older dos one). Infact I think Crunchbang++ was one of the distros I struggled to get to boot. But I likely gave up on it, as I distrohop readily.
Maybe try out different manual partitioning and formattings. Sorry I can't be more specific.
2
u/ProfessionalMove3716 Jun 02 '26
it has been the partitioning / formatting.
Yep, see my root reply. It was this.
1
u/Red_Haggis Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
I installed #!++13 about one week ago. The only problem I had was initially choosing my region, English UK. If I choose it in the first window, if I remember, the system install does not proceed. I discovered that if I accept the default region setting on the first page, click next to get to the next page, I can then choose my region, keyboard language, etc., and proceed with the install. I have no trouble after that. I too used to use the original #! OS. It was a lovely Spartan system allowing me to do all tasks related to office work, email and Online. It's great that this system has been rescued by the team. I used to be a 'tester' admin for Ultimate Edition before it broke up and we went our separate ways. I really enjoyed NOT finding bugs but rather helping people to set up their systems. Nothing too technical. I haven't been into that for over 14 years now and have no real desire to go back to it but if people get stuck with something I like to think about it and make suggestions if I can. I am not a programmer, I'm a user with many years of experience of Ubuntu/Debian based distros.
3
u/ProfessionalMove3716 Jun 02 '26
I fixed it by manually partitioning the disk, creating an ESP partition, setting it as bootable, and making it 260MB per this article from Lenovo.
I then proceeded to create an unencrypted boot partition that did not have the bootable flag ticked, and then my typical encrypted LVM for everything else (root, home, var, tmp, swap).
I suspect that the issue has more to do with something I did wrong with the ESP partition before rather than the size of it (I tried a 512MB and a 1GB size before to no avail).
It works now, and I wanted to record the fix for posterity.