Unable to run live disk Linux Mint 21 to upgrade

[Brickwizard]

ID-1: /dev/sda model: SATA SSD size: 476.94 GiB speed: 3.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 61.5 scheme: GPT

ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB model: General USB Flash Disk size: 28.91 GiB type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 1100 scheme: MBR

Spot the difference!

Your onboard is using GPT, this is usually used on machines with UEFI boot
your USB is using the older standard MBR for BIOS machines, which you have,
most SSD's have a primary partition of 500mb for MBR, but if it has been wiped at any time [or repartitioned] it may be lost,
try re-installing Using legacy mode/support, and let the Mint installer partition the drive, if this doesn't work you may have to start again and make a new partition 1 formatted for MBR

 

[wizardfromoz]

Just a heads up on the following

ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB model: General USB Flash Disk size: 28.91 GiB type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 1100 scheme: MBR

That is a standard representation of a normal FAT32 USB stick, nothing unusual or lacking.

I'll show you with just the relevant portion of the same inxi command in my environment.

Drives:
Local Storage: total: 5.75 TiB used: 1.30 TiB (22.6%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST2000LM007-1R8174 size: 1.82 TiB
speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: 5400 rpm serial: <filter> rev: SDM2 temp: 38 C
scheme: GPT
ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Micron model: 1100 SATA 256GB size: 238.47 GiB
speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: L022 temp: 42 C scheme: GPT
ID-3: /dev/sdc type: USB vendor: Western Digital model: WD My Book 25EE
size: 3.64 TiB serial: <filter> rev: 4004 scheme: GPT
ID-4: /dev/sdd type: USB vendor: Kingston model: DataTraveler 3.0
size: 57.73 GiB serial: <filter> rev: 0000 scheme: MBR

The last part I have bolded and italicised is simply my 64 GB Kingston Data Traveller I use with Ventoy on it to house a dozen or so Linux Distro isos.

There is seldom a reason to format a USB stick to, say, EXT4 and GPT (unless, for the GPT you want to be able to create up to 128 partitions, rather extreme and time-consuming).

So for the inxi output on drives for Linux, under UEFI, you can often see

EXT 4 ==> GPT and
FAT32 ===> MBR

@MrBob22 - could you please give us the output from the following command

sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda

That -l is with an l for list, not a numeric 1

I'll be back on my tomorrow with more.

Cheers

Wiz

 

[MrBob22]

Spot the difference!

Your onboard is using GPT, this is usually used on machines with UEFI boot
your USB is using the older standard MBR for BIOS machines, which you have,
most SSD's have a primary partition of 500mb for MBR, but if it has been wiped at any time [or repartitioned] it may be lost,
try re-installing Using legacy mode/support, and let the Mint installer partition the drive, if this doesn't work you may have to start again and make a new partition 1 formatted for MBR

Wiz, you are a great resource. But my patience with trying to install Mint 21 ran out. I obtained a disk with MX Linux and presto chango, it installed beautifully, no hiccups just smooth sailing. The distro is clean looking and has many similarities to Mint. Best of all,the system recognizes the drive with Mint 17 so I can access all of the files there. You have to love linux when it runs well. Not sure I should mark this SOLVED, but I am done messing with the set up of the operating system until the next required intervention. Take care, and thanks again for your support.

 

[MrBob22]

PS to WizardfromOz:


Just for fun, I did run sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda on the new set up with a fresh SATA SSD. The result is a bit concerning...

[sudo] password for mrbobmx:
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1

Warning: Partition table header claims that the size of partition table
entries is 0 bytes, but this program supports only 128-byte entries.
Adjusting accordingly, but partition table may be garbage.
Warning: Partition table header claims that the size of partition table
entries is 0 bytes, but this program supports only 128-byte entries.
Adjusting accordingly, but partition table may be garbage.
Partition table scan:
MBR: MBR only
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: not present


***************************************************************
Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format
in memory.
***************************************************************

Warning! Main partition table overlaps the first partition by 33 blocks!
You will need to delete this partition or resize it in another utility.
Disk /dev/sda: 1000215216 sectors, 476.9 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 1D907C65-1C74-43FA-ADEC-B114F415A74E
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1000215182
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 66191 sectors (32.3 MiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 1 995954687 474.9 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
2 995954688 1000148991 2.0 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem

 

[Brickwizard]

I was just checkin one of my lappies [same age as you] and it has the same American megatrend bios as yours, and my hard drive has a MBR boot partition
ok so you have got MX running, great its a nice distribution I use to use it before I changes that drive to Parrotsec, it will take a little while to find where everything is so hang in there.
Out of interest, try running a full inxi again [you may need to install it from the MX repository] and check if has changed to MBR

 

[wizardfromoz]

Out of interest, try running a full inxi again [you may need to install it from the MX repository] and check if has changed to MBR

Agree and it is not in their package list so

sudo apt -y install inxi

and then run the command.

I have concerns about

Total free space is 66191 sectors (32.3 MiB)

but we'll see what inxi has to offer first.

Wiz