@mvirts@lemmy.world @kumi@feddit.online @wickedrando@lemmy.ml @IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz @angband@lemmy.world @doodoo_wizard@lemmy.ml

Update - 2026.01.12

After trying to follow all advices I was given and failling miserably, I caved in and reinstalled the entire system, this time using a Debian Stable Live Image.

The drives were there - sda and sbd - the SSD and the HDD, respectively. sda was partioned from 1 through 5, while sbd had one single partition. As I had set during the installation. No error here.

However, when trying to look into /etc/fstab, the file listed exactly nothing. Somehow, the file was never written. I could list the devices through ls /dev/sd* but when trying to mount any one of it, it returned the location was not listed under /etc/fstab. And I even tried to update the file, mannually, yet the non existence of the drives persisted.

Yes, as I write this from the freshly installed Debian, I am morbidly curious to go read the file now. See how much has changed.

Because at this point I understood I wouldn’t be going anywhere with my attemps, I opted to do a full reinstall. And it was as I was, again, manually partitoning the disk to what I wanted that I found the previous instalation had created a strange thing.

While all partions had a simple sd* indicator, the partition that should have been / was instead named “Debian Forky” and was not configured as it shoud. It had no root flag. It was just a named partition in the disk.

I may be reading too much into this but most probably this simple quirk botched the entire installation. The system could not run what simply wasn’t there and it could not find an sda2 if that sda2 was named as something completely different.

Lessons to be taken

I understood I wasn’t clear enough of how experienced with Debian I was. I ran Debian for several years and, although not a power-user, I gained a lot of knowledge about managing my own system tinkering in Debian, something I lost when I moved towards more up-to-date distros, more user-friendly, but less powerful learning tools. And after this, I recognized I need that “demand” from the system to learn. So, I am glad I am back to Debian.

Thank you for all the help and I can only hope I can returned it some day.

The way you put it, it made me think about the fetish, not the act of procreation.

This whole thing about the couple sharing they are trying to start their family comes as awfully american and cliché.

Is this a real thing in the US?

And if it is… WHY?!

What is the need for it? Is it some sort of twisted social ritual? A perverse bragging? Why not just do the deed, keep to yourself, and after 9 months present the evidence you’ve been rutting like animals in heat?

Going to separate houses for the night.

They are free to talk about theirs, if they are willing to hear about my own beliefs or lack thereof.

Being laic, religion is of no concern to me in my daily life. I do accept others don’t have the same view and stance and if that brings them joy and a feeling of sense to their life, great.

As long they respect me in return.

I’ve made my peace with the threats of damnation. I fear humans more than I fear demons. And I only need to casually surf the web to take a look into hell.

So, I’m good.

Because I like having my disk properly partitioned, to keep things properly separated. Unlike windows.

And no, I haven’t queried any AI. Because why question a machine when I can ask real human beings and learn from them instead?

I’m going to sit down today and get into it seriously. I’ve just been replying to comments that I can clarify with no need for me to be messing with the computer.

I developed the habit of formatting my disks before a new install, so I’m going to push that hypothesis aside for now.

Before installing Debian I tried Sparky and I noticed it had set up a /boot_EFI and a /boot partition, which sounded off to me, so I wiped the SSD clean and manually partioned it, leaving only a 1GB /boot, configured for EFI.

NVRAM is not completely off the board but I find it odd to just flare up as an issue now, under Debian, and having no problems under Mint or Sparky.

I’m fairly confident at this point that the worst of my problems is to be found between the chair and the keyboard.

If I could, I would award myself with a medal for being a glorified idiot.

I’m a sucker for Debian. It was my first good and reliable workhorse. First love is hard to forget.

I’m on track for that, I admit.

As I read this, I’m trying a freshly installed live image.

I have to try… I’m already too invested in this stupidity to just quit at this point.

Why am I interested in a somewhat rolling release of Debian? Because I’m a dreamer with not enough technical capabilities. I like the stability Debian offers and the years I’ve used it as my default distro is a fond memory.

The bare bones mentality, the basic, clean approach to the UI/desktop distro customization and the minimal starting software package was a big plus, especially when using very underpowered machines, like I had then.

What is not a fond memory is having an OS remain static for such a long time span to the extent it feels like jumping into a completely new OS when migrating to the next release and lacking on having newer versions of software. Yes, I do know Backports are a thing but nonetheless.

But the more user friendly distros overcompensate on this, by overloading the starting software package and bloating the distro. Polishing can be too much.

No, I am not about to go and try LFS, Gentoo, or whatever distro that puts me in charge of everything. I have a life. Kind of. But still.

Like you say, I want things to work, I don’t mind doing some work but I really don’t care about nor need the extra bells and whistles the (excessive) polishing carries.

End of rant.

I’m going to torture myself trying to figure whatever might have gone wrong for a bit more.

Through a cable, to the onboard SATA ports…? But somehow I don’t think that was the answer you were expecting.

Bragging rights of the bad kind.

Not exactly the aknowedgement I was aiming for but definetely the one I needed.

Ext4 on all partitions, except for swap space and the EFI partition, that autoconfigures the moment I set it as such.

At the moment, I’m tempted to just go back and do another reinstallation.

I haven’t played around with manually doing anything besides setting up the size of the partitions. Maybe I left some flag to set or something. I don’t know how to set disk identification scheme. Or I do, just don’t realize it.

Human error is the largest probability at this point.

Debian is well known for its stability but it is also known for being tricky to handle when moving into the Testing branch and I did just that, by wanting to have a somewhat rolling distro with Debian.

I’m no power user. I know how to install my computer (which is a good deal more than most people), do some configurations and tinker a bit but situations like this throw me into uncharted territory. I’m willing to learn but it is tempting to just drop everything and go back to a more automated distro, I’ll admit.

Debian is not to blame here. Nor Linux. Nor anyone. We’re talking about free software in all the understandings of the word. Somewhere, somehow, an error is bound to happen. Something will fail, break or go wrong.

At least in Linux we know we can ask for help and eventually someone will lend a pointer, like here.

I can, already done before coming here and I risk I’m going to do it again because people are telling me to do this and that and I’m feeling way over my head.

But not in the mood to quit. Yet.

I’m running a clean machine. No secondary OS. The only thing more “unusual” that I am doing is partitioning for different parts of the system to exist separately and putting /home on a disk all to itself.

I will. Don’t know when, but I will.

You made me think that perhaps the BIOS/EFI is fudging something up. I checked and I had four separate entries pointing towards the SSD.