Post Live Installation Login Fail

[houtje]

So, yesterday I installed Debian 10 (first time user) successfully from the live setup (the non-live didn't work because the GRUB installation failed)

Everything worked great, but I had to find a fix for the screen tearing issue of my GPU. I did find the fix (manually create and edit the /X11/xorg.conf file to specify display parameters (I'm using a UHD display over displayport, perhaps that could have caused an issue). But before I found the fix, I tried all sorts of stupid crap and ended up breaking Debian. But, lesson learned, and today I'm doing a fresh install.

BUT...

I followed exactly the same installation procedure I did yesterday, but for some weird reason when I first boot from the fresh installation, the login screen shows my REAL name in stead of the username and it doesn't accept my password. I have taken keyboard settings into account (I'm from Belgium) trying to type in Qwerty in stead of Azerty (which was used to create the PW).

BUT... as I'm writing this, I finally managed to login

This *seems* to be the fix: in Debian Live, before installing Debian to your boot device, you have to set the keyboard layout to correspond to the one you're going to use in the installer. In the installer itself you then apply the same keyboard layout.

Then, if you boot, there shouldn't be an issue with the password. Then, first time in Debian, you should AGAIN re-set the keyboard layout once again.

This is really weird.

I'm not even sure if I fixed it... because when I run a sudo command in Konsole, it prompts the following message:

We trust you have received the susual lecture from the local system Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
- respect privacy
- think before you type
- with great power comes great responsibility

So yeah... this is different from yesterday's install and I don't know why because I'm using EXACTLY the same USB stick to boot into Live as yesterday. I mean... I have no idea what sorcery this is.

So I don't really know if I can trust the install I currently have... should I perhaps use a different USB stick, download the .iso again and try it again?

The whole reason why I'm re-installing Debian is so that I can be confident that all my packages are stable and not corrupt... I want to have a stable system. This is going to be my editing workhorse and I'm done with Windows 10. But I'll be using it professionally, deadlines are holy, so stability is paramount.

Anyway, hi, I'm Wouter, nice to meet you all and to become a part of this

[Chrisdb]

Anyway, hi, I'm Wouter, nice to meet you all and to become a part of this

Hi and welcome to the forums!

You're post is not clear as to what to problem really is.
Did you eventually install Debian, or are you just running it from the live session...?

installed Debian 10 (first time user) successfully from the live setup (the non-live didn't work because the GRUB installation failed)

This shouldn't make any difference, although I would advise you to use the main installer (not Calamares) because the latter doesn’t cover all the advanced features of the debian-installer.

We trust you have received the susual lecture from the local system Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
- respect privacy
- think before you type
- with great power comes great responsibility

This is normal and appears the first time you use 'sudo'.

Info we need from you:
- system specs
- preferred Desktop Environment to install (from what I can tell KDE?)
- The partitioning scheme/configuration you use
- Errors you get/got during installation

[houtje]

This is normal and appears the first time you use 'sudo'.

- i7 hexacore, x99s sli plus, 16GB DDR5, gtx970
- KDE Plasma (haha, awesome you deduced it from so little information!)
- GPT I would assume because the mobo is UEFI?

this is what sfdisk returns:

Code: Select all

houtje@HERACLES:~$ sudo sfdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: AVpro500        
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 4EEDD9BA-D291-4FCD-9EB8-22EC52DB5DB9

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1       4096    618495    614400   300M EFI System
/dev/sda2     618496 940859012 940240517 448.3G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3  940859013 976768064  35909052  17.1G Linux swap

Code: Select all

Disk: /dev/sda1
                Size: 300 MiB, 314572800 bytes, 614400 sectors
                      Label: dos, identifier: 0x00000000

- The error I was getting with the netinstall was that the GRUB boot loader couldn't be written to the disk, it failed. The live installation process installed flawlessly (besides the keyboard thing but I managed to figure it out by conforming the keyboard settings within the live session itself)

during boot I always get a small notice, something about the CPU cores being unable to be identified or something among those lines. But in reality, the system runs really smooth and I can run heavy tasks without it behaving weirdly. I'm a Davinci Resolve user and that's a fairly hefty application. Compared to how it ran on windows, there is no real difference... it does load faster on linux though. But I'll have to actually do a project with it in Linux to really be able to put it to the test.

In any case, I'm pretty happy with the system so far! One thing that is difficult about Debian (but also why I chose it) is that it is a bit more difficult to find solutions. But I understand this is because we don't want to trade quick solutions for stability.

I even got Samba to finally work lol. This is important because the system will be connected to a 10G Freenas box.

There is a 10G NIC in the mail and I'm already wondering about how I'm going to get that installed! It's an intel chip sfp+ interface and it has linux driver available from the website... but is that even safe to install in a debian environment? Is there a way we can backup the system quickly before trying wonky crap? Also, is it safe to leave "contrib" and "non-free" into the /sources.list ? Or is it good practice to remove that after you're done?

Hehe, a lot of question, sorry

[Chrisdb]

There is a 10G NIC in the mail and I'm already wondering about how I'm going to get that installed! It's an intel chip sfp+ interface and it has linux driver available from the website... but is that even safe to install in a debian environment? Is there a way we can backup the system quickly before trying wonky crap? Also, is it safe to leave "contrib" and "non-free" into the /sources.list ? Or is it good practice to remove that after you're done?

Hehe, a lot of question, sorry

There are no risks in keeping your 'contrib' and 'non-free'.

Installing proprietary drivers from the manufacturer's site is not recommended. You should first look and see if the kernel recognizes the device after plugin:

Code: Select all

lspci

Look for 'Ethernet controller' in the output.

Regarding your question about backups, there are several possibilities and you will have to determine for yourself which one best suits your needs.
Some examples:
- rsync
- tar
- ..

[houtje]

awesome, thanks! I'll look into those!