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Kubuntu 22.04.1 Live USB won't boot on desktop machine

cn flag

TL;DR Known good USB stick won't boot, ends with stdin: Not a typewriter literally about a hundred times.

Hardware: Gigabyte 970A-DS3P MB, AMD Fx8350 (8 cores, 8 threads, 4.1 GHz max), 32 GB DDR3-1600 Micron Tech RAM (4x 8GB sticks -- MB maxed out with this), nVidia GTx 1650 4 GB VRAM. New 700 W power supply, 256 GB SSD (Transcend SSD340) and Seagate 1 TB platter drive (boots from and Kubuntu installed to SSD).

Old (overwritten) OS Kubuntu 20.04.5, new (failed install) OS Kubuntu 22.04.1.

I've been running Kubuntu 20.04 on the above machine for the past two years plus, and recently started getting "nag" popups warning me I only had about 4 months until Kubuntu 20.04 loses support. Because of that, and multiple reports that upgrading was no big deal any more, I attempted to upgrade from 20.04 to 22.04; this was two weeks ago. After the upgrade failed, of course, I had a machine that wouldn't boot; when I turned it off for 24 hours it then wouldn't even power up, so I replaced the old 500W PSU with a new 700W unit.

After installing the new PSU, I downloaded the Kubuntu 22.04.1 .iso file and tried "upgrade via reinstall" -- manual mode, installed without formatting to the same volume that contained Kubuntu before -- expecting the installer to overwrite the contents of my OS volume and leave my other partitions alone. The USB key, written from my Thinkpad T430 laptop (currently on MATE 16.04, yes very out of support but it starts and runs reliably, so I'm not messing with it ATM) with SHA256 verified contents, boots on the laptop. The desktop machine took a couple tries to boot (once in "safe graphics" and a second time with a regular start), then ran for a couple hours while it installed with no error reports -- and then wouldn't boot after restarting. Nor would it boot from the USB stick again. Same results with a brand new (purchased for this operation) Aiibe 32GB USB stick, and a couple years old Lexar 1100 16GB stick (at this time, I've gotten only the Lexar stick to boot on my laptop, leading to a suspicion the Aiibe stick may be defective or damaged).

I created a Memtest USB key with a fresh download (boots on UEFI only, confirming the computer has working UEFI) and ran a full test regimen (one pass, not the default four, didn't want to let it run all night), zero errors. I'm confident the hardware is good.

I read a question that suggested current Ubuntu versions/flavors won't boot on non-UEFI machines without a lot of special treatment, but this issue occurred with both UEFI and Legacy boot options; with "Create Startup Disk" and dd used to create the USB, standard and "safe graphics". I also read that some machine/version combinations may not start without a USB hub also connected, so I plugged in my (known working, as of shortly before the upgrade failure) USB hub with no change in results (other than Boot Override giving me an option to try to boot from the SD card plugged into a reader in the USB hub).

All the Google searching I can do keeps coming back to very old questions on AskUbuntu or Unix Stack Exchange, other than the ones about not booting on non-UEFI machines (and I do get GRUB consistently, so I don't think it's the last bit, plus I've tried both "UEFI First" and "Legacy First" in setup).

How can I get past stdin: Not a typewriter to boot to Live session to allow retrying the install?

oldfred avatar
cn flag
Check iommu setting(s). [SOLVED] GA-970A-DS3P revision 1 no usb 3.0 uses this boot parameter: amd_iommu=on iommu=pt & UEFI settings http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2188370 What tool to make USB installer? Most find this works: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb or https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Win32DiskImager/iso2usb
Zeiss Ikon avatar
cn flag
@oldfred My MB has two USB 3.0 ports on the backplane, never functional under any Ubuntu flavor I've used. Does this change anything?
cc flag
From the EFI menu (some key at powerup to let you choose device or os to boot, choose your USB, then interrupt the boot (ctrl+alt+_del) and run the EFI menu again -- maybe another boot choice gets added (the USB device I guess). That added choice then would work for me, while the original USB choice fails.
oldfred avatar
cn flag
Did you change the iommu setting? That is common with AMD and often one of the issues it fixes is the USB3 ports.
Zeiss Ikon avatar
cn flag
@ubfan1 I was getting the boot attempt from the USB, it would go until the "Not a typewriter" spam. fixed now, see below.
Zeiss Ikon avatar
cn flag
@oldfred I didn't intentionally change the IOMMU in EFI/BIOS settings, but apparently (after a "corrupted BIOS" message) when I reloaded "optimal defaults" or prior successful profiles it defaulted off. Now I can boot, but haven't had time yet to try adjusting the GRUB startup command to include "iommu=tp" which I found online as likely to fix my USB3 ports. It's booting now, though, after a couple reinstalls, Boot Repair, and more reinstalls (last one to get the right username so my desktop was correct).
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