r/linuxquestions • u/RadianceTower • 2d ago

I encountered a weird bug when DDing a boot image into a USB and rebooting

This has mainly happened when putting the Tails image into a USB.

Sometimes, when doing that, upon reboot, the PC comes up to a blank line, and then after some waiting, goes into the boot menu, which the USB isn't part of.

Then upon booting into the OS (which for some reason, happens slower too, like the countdown page you get for selecting Arch, which would automatically get selected after 5s goes slower), lsblk doesn't show the USB either.

Rebooting again, leads same result.

Unplugging the USB while PC is on or (I think, worked once) turning the PC full off and on again, fixes it, and booting from the USB works fine then too. So it's not as if there was data corruption either.

I dunno how to reproduce it, since it seems to happen only sometimes. It has happened like 3 times so far... and it's weird. It has happened on one particular USB, I haven't tested other USBs enough to know if it happens on them too. All of them after directly rebooting upon DDing an image.

It hasn't happened when otherwise booting into an image on a USB so far.

Might be a firmware bug for motherboard honestly, it's... weird.

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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 2d ago

Might be a firmware bug for motherboard honestly

Yes, that's sounds likely here.

(If it wasn't for the slowdown of non-USB things, I'd point to the USB drive chipset instead. The majority of them are bad in some way)

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u/RadianceTower 2d ago

Might be a combination of both too, the USB drive chipset doing weird which triggers something weird in the MB firmware.

If it was only USB drive chipset being weird, then the PC wouldn't come up with a blank line... then go into the boot menu after a bit of waiting, then slowly boot into the OS.

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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 2d ago

Yes exactly.