Garuda Mokka ISO does not boot

[JWalk9000]

I am going to piggy back here, because that is an actual issue that I would love to find a solution for. I have been using Garuda Dragonized as my living room gaming computer OS for about 4 years, my 11 y/o kid switched over to it this winter, and some variation of Dragonized and Hyprland as my secondary OS on my laptops for about 2 years. When I say I like Garuda and what has been accomplished so far by the team I REALLY mean it.

Mokka looks amazing, I may finally be able to convert my wifes system over finally if I can ever get it installed on her system…

I have tried to install the Mokka edition on multiple systems, both from a USB and via Ventoy.

Systems tried:
desktop 1(Wife’s):
Ryzen 3900x, Gigabyte x470 gaming, 32GB RAM, Nvidia 2080 TI.
Desktop 2 (My Main):
Ryzen 5900X, ASUS X570 Tuff Gaming WiFi, 32GB RAM, Radeon RX 6900XT.
Desktop 3:
Lenovo ThinkStation P340, i3-10300T, Nvidia P620 2GB.
Desktop 4:
MinisForum MDA5F, ryzen 5 3550H, Vega 8, 32GB RAM.
My laptop 1:
Lenovo P15, Xeon 11855M, 32GB RAM, Nvidia A2000 4GB.
My laptop 2:
Dell Latitude 5500, i5-8265, 16GB RAM, Intel UHD 620.
VM 1:
PVE Sea bios, 4 cores, 8GB RAM.
VM 2:
Boxes EFI, 4 cores, 8GB RAM.

Of the real metal systems only the Lenovo P340 was able to boot and install, and flawlessly too, from both USB and via Ventoy. Both VMs worked flawlessly, albeit with much longer load times than any other Garuda flavor I’ve tried to date.

Desktop 1 would only boot via ventoy, and only with Grub 2, and only with Proprietary Nvidia support. However it would get stuck and freeze up during the loading of the live environment at different points, and overheat the USB drive(almost hot enough to burn skin).

Every other system when booting directly from USB only shows the bootloader (grub 1 from what I’m able to see) on the screen for a fraction of a second then goes to and stays a black screen, however the USB drive continues to be used and over heats.

Every other system when booting via Ventoy behaves the exact same when booting from Grub 1, and at least shows the Grub 2 screen and allows to choose with or without Proprietary Nvidia support. It doesn’t matter however though because none of the other systems boots the live environment, only giving a black screen and over heating the USB drive.

Considering that I have never had any issues with any hardware when booting any other Garuda Flavor, I think it is safe to say there is something wrong with this one in particular. If there is something we can do manually until its fixed officially I’d love to know.

[nepti]

Hi there, welcome to the forum.

Please do not hijack threads that have already been solved and whose solutions do not work for you.

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Name of the iso (for example garuda-mokka-linux-zen-250308.iso)?

Did you check the checksum of the iso after downloading AND after copying it to the ventoy stick?

Is the ventoy version up to date?

Have you tested a different usb stick?

@JWalk9000

Desktop 1 would only boot via ventoy, and only with Grub 2, and only with Proprietary Nvidia support. However it would get stuck and freeze up during the loading of the live environment at different points

Are there any error messages, if so, which ones?

[dr460nf1r3]

@JWalk9000

Desktop 1 would only boot via ventoy, and only with Grub 2, and only with Proprietary Nvidia support. However it would get stuck and freeze up during the loading of the live environment at different points, and overheat the USB drive(almost hot enough to burn skin).

This is usually a sign of a bad quality USB stick (at least to my knowledge) when being exposed to writes ?

One thing I can think of as a reason for this is that the driver gets built when booting, IIRC. Depending on how the installation takes place, it might write some files to the storage (=USB stick). But that’s just a guess.

[JWalk9000]

@nepti

Please do not hijack threads that have already been solved and whose solutions do not work for you.

Apologies. they hadn’t said that Ventoy was their solution yet when I started my reply. Since I found 2 other conversations that had closed with the same problem it seems more logical to not having fractured and scattered solutions to the same problem.

@nepti

Name of the iso (for example garuda-mokka-linux-zen-250308.iso)?

Did you check the checksum of the iso after downloading AND after copying it to the ventoy stick?

garuda-mokka-linux-zen-250308.iso

Yes, every time after the first couple fails.

@nepti

Is the ventoy version up to date?

Yes. just updated recently. I use a 2TB NVME USB, I use it daily for work, and play.

@nepti

Have you tested a different usb stick?

Yes, 2 brand new Kingston 32GB Data-Travelers in addition to my first drive which is an older 16GB Kingston.

@nepti

Are there any error messages, if so, which ones?

That’s my Wife’s PC, I don’t get to test/play on that one often. I will probably be able to try it this coming weekend.

[LolFlasherNoobX]

Try dd instead of Ventoy ? Make sure SATA controller mode is set to AHCI in BIOS and also see if there any graphics or GPU related options you have changed in the BIOS earlier, try reverting them to stock settings.

[Jeshu]

A very good point!

i found that i had to revert my bios to default, quite a few times, installing a Linux distro. Though i could always restore it to how i had it before i did that after the installation was successful. This seems to be true in particular when i have a graphic card, as well as integrated graphics.

[bucky2780]

I would like to add my 2 cents to this:
I initially installed mokka to a vm in unraid. Liked it so much I wanted to install as my daily driver.

Tried burning with rufus, etcher, and no luck. Will not boot.
Tried to pxe boot via the network, and goes black screen.
Tried to ventoy with grub2, and shows the iniital screen, but fails shorthly thereafter. To quick for me to see what the error was.

In short the iso is really problematic… for me. If there are any other solutions I’m surely listening.

[nepti]

@bucky2780

Tried to ventoy with grub2, and shows the iniital screen, but fails shorthly thereafter. To quick for me to see what the error was.

Check whether this is the case for you:

@filo

I’m having the same issue (unable to boot garuda-mokka-linux-zen-250308.iso, also using grub2 option, with Ventoy, latest release).
Actually, shortly before showing the black screen, the following dracut error is displayed (it is so quick that I had to try several times before being able to take a picture ).
The iso checksum is correct, of course (that’s the first thing I checked). It must be something else. And the same iso in a VM works.

@filo

Turns out, it was a PEBCAK for me​.
The checksum of the downloaded file was ok, but the one of the file on the USB was not.
So, there must have been an issue in the copy…
Grub2 mode works.

[bucky2780]

thank you… this worked for me.
I created a new ventoy drive, and copied the iso to it. I waited patiently for completion, and it worked.

thanks

[dbarron]

My theory on this is that people are rebooting or removing the USB before the write completes, due to buffering.

[dr460nf1r3]

Classic. Lost a backup file with important stuff due to this once. Neverrrr again.

[Seimus]

and who didnt

But at least now when I do images in Linux I just use the default tool thats in KDE and calculate the HASH. As long I am not having a matching HASH providing by the devs I am not considered the ISO being properly copied over.

[dbarron]

I just issue the ‘sync’ command in a window to ensure.

[Seimus]

Yes that works as well, but the final stage is to anyway verify the HASH. I use it in work when pre-staging images for devices upgrades so it sticks to me.