Hey there,
This is kind of a follow up to a previous post of mine.
I advice you to read that post before reading this one.
We’ll call that post Part 1 one and this post Part 2.
So after installing Ubuntu with my usbstick (written in DD-image-mode) everything worked fine as I mentioned in that previous post.
Two days ago I did some sudo apt update/upgrade. It was quite a big list of things that it updated.
I noticed in the list of things “kernel” something. It was probably updating the kernel or something. After everything was done, it said it needed to reboot, probably because it had updated the kernel, so I clicked OK (I was using the gui version of update/upgrade).
It shutdown and when it booted up, I couldn’t ssh into it, so I shut it down again. I hooked up a monitor to the server and started it up. I got the following on startup (I dont know it word for word):
invalid magic number
press enter to continue
[can’t remember what it exactly said, had something to do with failing to boot both two options]
can’t boot in normal mode and recovery mode
press enter to continue
you need to load the kernel first
press enter to continue
And then automatically went into gnu grub 2.04, getting the options to boot ubuntu, go into recovery mode, do a memory test or do a memory test with [someting, i think terminal].
It doesn’t matter which option I choose, I get back to the “invalid magic number bla bla bla” screen. It shows to whole thing which you saw above and then get loaded in the gnu grub again. It’s a loop, every option brings me to that screen and back to gnu grub.
I wanted to compare the sha245sum, and found the following link: Link
I compared the sha265sum of the iso file that I used, with the sum on ubuntu’s website. Using the following command in my (correctly working haha) ubuntu vm (I’m more comfortable with linux terminal than with Win10 terminal):
cd /media/cas/[usb-stick]/ubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
sudo sha256sum ubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
As a result I get:
b45165ed3cd437b9ffad02a2aad22a4ddc69162470e2622982889ce5826f6e3d *ubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
Which, using the sha256sum’s on ubuntu’s website, compare correctly. So my ISO-file is correctly downloaded.
But when I do the following to check the live usb (that is the usb that was used to install ubuntu at the end of part 1, with exactly the same flash, so not a replaced/new flash on it), I get a different result.
cd
sudo sha256sum /dev/sdb
I checked that the live-usb was /dev/sdb using “sudo fdisk -l”
I get the following sha256sum back:
23d41850f0c0802eb3d5a869ffc486c4447f9df701e505302268c6e3e4a3049c
Which is a totaly different sum. Compare for yourself:
ISO file [correct]: b45165ed3cd437b9ffad02a2aad22a4ddc69162470e2622982889ce5826f6e3d
Live-USB [incorrect]: 23d41850f0c0802eb3d5a869ffc486c4447f9df701e505302268c6e3e4a3049c
But ofcourse we can’t forget about the fact that it worked for 30 days. It worked for 30 days, but when the kernel gets updated and needs to reboot, it doesn’t work any more.
For the people that forgot it:
I noticed in the list of things “kernel” something. It was probably updating the kernel or something.
It’s logical to say that the sudo apt update/upgrade crashed it. Which I agree on. But what crashed it? It updated the kernel, which crashed it. And the screen I got, which I also got in part 1, suggests a corrupted usb install.
What I said in part 1 btw:
It said that it (something like, can’t remember) couldn’t load kernel or something.
Conclusion:
The system updates the kernel and suddenly can’t boot. I get an error message that I had before and that suggests a corrupt usb install, as said by the following people:
Source 1 (reddit)
Your install USB is corrupted, […] all involving “rufus” or some similar installation utility.
It sounds like the transfer of the ISO to the USB drive wasn’t done successfully.
And isn’t it strange that the sha256sum of my live-usb (rufus, DD-image-mode) doesn’t match up with the sha256sum of ubuntu? Maybe it has something to do with it, don’t you think?
I have done a new flash with the ubuntu ISO-file to the usb-stick (which i tested with h2testw and ended up working correctly) with balenaetcher (AKA balenaetcher, normal), and at the end got the following message:
“Checksum does not match for range [0, 2785017855]: “518b67e0fd147506” != “30862bfab4641c2c””
When I go to my Ubuntu vm and do the following (AKA checking balenaetcher, normal instead of rufus, DD-image-mode):
sudo sha256sum /dev/sdb
I get the following sha256sum
1c8dd4ab049ba5cb1970dd0f62dfb572ad82b9d627716192502773aa934fe69b
Which does not compare to any:
Original Ubuntu sha256sum [original]: b45165ed3cd437b9ffad02a2aad22a4ddc69162470e2622982889ce5826f6e3d
ISO file [correct]: b45165ed3cd437b9ffad02a2aad22a4ddc69162470e2622982889ce5826f6e3d
Live-USB [rufus, DD-image-mode]: 23d41850f0c0802eb3d5a869ffc486c4447f9df701e505302268c6e3e4a3049c
Live-USB [balenaetcher]: 1c8dd4ab049ba5cb1970dd0f62dfb572ad82b9d627716192502773aa934fe69b
Now in part 1, I mentioned the following:
When i choose the iso file and the drive and balena starts doing it’s thing, at the end I get an (NTFS) ‘1 failed target’ message. But with exfat I get an (exfat) ‘1 successful target’.
A little explanation is that when I format the usb-stick to ntfs, and then flash it with the ISO-file, I get an error message. But when I format the drive in exfat, and then flash it with the ISO-file, I get no error message.
In part 1, someone mentioned that balenaetcher formats drives before it starts flashing, but it’s still a fact that, when it’s formatted exfat, it works and when it is formatted ntfs, I get an error. So I don’t care that balenaetcher formats a drive before flashing, because when I format it ntfs, I get an error, and when I format it exfat, I don’t.
So I formatted the drive to exfat, flashed it again with the ISO-file, checked the sha256sum and got the following:
c30f4abe3cbec12fbe35a6492f0b21247d563ad83c0413e4e05b8159443aeb2f
A last comparison:
Original Ubuntu sha256sum [original]: b45165ed3cd437b9ffad02a2aad22a4ddc69162470e2622982889ce5826f6e3d
ISO file [correct]:
b45165ed3cd437b9ffad02a2aad22a4ddc69162470e2622982889ce5826f6e3d
Live-USB [rufus, DD-image-mode]: 23d41850f0c0802eb3d5a869ffc486c4447f9df701e505302268c6e3e4a3049c
Live-USB [balenaetcher, normal]: 1c8dd4ab049ba5cb1970dd0f62dfb572ad82b9d627716192502773aa934fe69b
Live-USB [balenaetcher, exfat]:
c30f4abe3cbec12fbe35a6492f0b21247d563ad83c0413e4e05b8159443aeb2f
Different again. They’re all different (aside from the original ISO-file).
This explains why my vm works but my server not. The ISO-file works, so the vm works. But when I flash it to a USB-stick, it goes wrong.
So now I really need your help. That’s it. Help.
P.S. I don’t know why but I find it kind of fun to fix things like this. I’m just a 15 year old boy but I’m learning a lot from this, and I find it kinda entertaining. Only thing that’s not entertaining is that I’m probably gonna lose 1.5TB of plex media because of this thing but ok. I can re-download that haha.
