[GTALUG] Booting Jessie from USB

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2015 at 09:08:34AM -0400, Giles Orr wrote:
> I have an Acer C720 Chromebook with Bodhi Linux installed.  I wanted
> to test Debian Jessie on the machine, so I physically removed the SSD
> and plugged in a 32GB USB stick (SanDisk Cruzer Ultra Fit, USB3).  I
> installed Jessie on it (on an ext4 partition), and added a 5GB or so
> vfat partition on the end.  When I attempt to boot from the USB stick,
> GRUB comes up and works fine, but things go sideways after that.  Here
> are some of the errors that I've copied ("..." indicates dropped
> lines, mostly duplications):
> 
>      -----
> 
> usb 1-4: string descriptor 0 malformed (err = -61), defaulting to 0x0409
> ...
> usb 2-1: device not accepting address 3, error -62 [repeated several
> times with different numbers]

That to me says either the USB key, the USB port, or (pretty unlikely)
the USB driver is broken.

It is certainly failing to start USB properly.

> xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: Command completion event does not match command
> ...

Well xhci is USB3.  Some USB3 controllers (In my experience ASMedia)
are awful and unstable in linux.

Try the USB2 port instead to see what happens then.

-- 
Len Sorensen