[GTALUG] Toshiba Satellite L500 rejects Linux

[Evan Leibovitch]

I'm not sure that it's a portable-media issue.
My first instinct is to try a distro that specializes in older HW such as
Puppy.
That should be installable to and bootable from a USB stick.

If that works it could easily be a wonky Secure Boot implementation.
If your preferred target is Debian, perhaps the "Shim"
<https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot#Shim>tool might help?

- Evan


On Mon, May 22, 2023 at 9:13 AM Giles Orr via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> Hi Don.
>
> Probably a good suggestion, but I don't think it will work for me: the
> Toshiba in question does have an optical drive, but even if I can find
> a CD burner, I'm not sure I have media I can burn to anymore (I have a
> stack of blank CDs ... but they're 15+ years old).
>
> On Mon, 22 May 2023 at 08:38, Don Tai <dontai.canada at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > When I find an old computer that won't boot USB I go back to a 32 bit CD
> install, then upgrade. Some old PCs simply won't reliably boot with USB.
> >
> > On Mon, 22 May 2023 at 08:34, Giles Orr via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I've recently acquired (through a friend who stopped using it) a
> >> Toshiba Satellite L500 - Core i3 (3rd gen?), 4G RAM.  I'm determined
> >> to get Linux onto it (preferably Debian).  I thought I had succeeded:
> >> I booted from a Debian USB stick, installed to the HD.  All appeared
> >> to go well, but the system won't boot.  It returns to the Boot Menu
> >> and says "HDXXXX has failed."  What the search engines are telling me
> >> is that with this generation of Toshibas, the problem is generally
> >> Secure Boot / CSM etc.  Which makes sense, but ... there is absolutely
> >> zero mention in the BIOS/UEFI ("Phoenix SecureCore Tiano Setup") of
> >> "Secure Boot," "CSM," "Legacy," or "UEFI."  Acccording to notes I
> >> found online, "SecureCore Tiano" has "full support" for legacy
> >> booting.
> >>
> >> Another issue with this machine is my mixed success booting from USB
> >> sticks: I have an old-ish USB stick I built myself that has GRUB and a
> >> large menu of ISOs: works great on most systems, won't boot on this
> >> thing - probably because it's an old-style BIOS-boot only(?).
> >>
> >> One of my ideas was to upgrade the BIOS: it appears there's a newer
> >> version available, but it's NOT available from Toshiba, which is the
> >> only place I'd want to download it from.  The rest look like dubious
> >> secondary download sites (if you know one you consider reliable, let
> >> me know).
> >>
> >> What I read online said that Fedora's installer puts an EFI partition
> >> on the HD as part of the install, while Debian doesn't.  And that
> >> may(?) be why I can't boot from my Debian install?  So ... I
> >> downloaded the Fedora installer, put it on a USB stick ... and no joy:
> >> the Toshiba doesn't recognize the Fedora USB stick as a bootable item.
> >> Would this be because I burned it on a "Legacy" system?  Is there a
> >> fix for that?  Except ... I'm about 99% sure the Debian Installer USB
> >> stick was created on the same machine.
> >>
> >> Worst case, I can stick the HD from the Toshiba into another machine,
> >> install Fedora on it, repartition to make room for Debian, put the HD
> >> back into the Toshiba ... but that's getting damn complicated and
> >> annoying.
> >>
> >> As always - any suggestions welcomed.
>
> --
> Giles
> https://www.gilesorr.com/
> gilesorr at gmail.com
> ---
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