Hi Guys
This problem is of my own doing but hopefully someone has a solution, I have an Intel Compute Stick I’ve had lying around for years and decided only yesterday to have a play about with it and decided it would make a perfect media centre to replace my old Xbox running XBMC, It came preinstalled with an ancient version of Android and Windows 8 which I have no interest in, anyway I done some research and it seemed a fairly simple matter to install Linux, To begin with I tried Mint which booted up but wouldn’t load any icons or panel (just the mint background) so foolishly I decided to run the installer from the terminal thinking that the icons & panel etc would load once installed, the install started well however half way through it crashed so I tried again this time in compatibility mode this time it fully booted into the live system although with low resolution so I run the installer which stopped with a message I only had 4gb disc space and Mint needed 16gb, I thought that was strange because it’s my understanding that
the Compute Stick has 32gb so I ran gparted and it’s only showing the live usb there’s no hard drive, fdisk isn’t showing it either, my apologies for the long winded post but I thought it important to explain how the problem unfolded, any help or advice would be much appreciated
Hi,
Sounds like is might be an eMMC compatibility thing. I don’t think the kernel drivers for emmc is present in all versions of all distro’s … might be worth trying something other than MINT.
(so I think while you may have 32G, it may not be seen as a “hard drive” as such) You could check to see if you have a “/dev/mmcblk*” device, I’m guessing this is the problem …
g.
Hi MP
Thanks for your reply
As it turns out your guess was bang on the money, it seems that the Mint install (1st choice in the menu) does have the /dev/mmcblk file which is why it tried to install at the beginning but Mint with compatibility mode (2nd choice) does not, so I tired a few others and no Ubuntu based distro would boot into live mode, they all showed just before the first menu saying /boot missing, I then tried Debian and it installed without a hitch, however it wouldn’t load the login screen, I was only able to get it to load by adding the nomodeset boot parameter, so it seems Debian doesn’t come with the non free driver I need for this chipset & there’s no additional drivers option like you get with Ubuntu so although it’s running well and everything appears to work the screen is slightly oversize & I can’t adjust it and video playback it stuttery and slow especially in Kodi, I’ve searched for ways to add the additional drivers option in Debian and or some other way to install the correct driver but it’s a bit unclear
Thanks MP I did look at one of these tutorials earlier and it seemed a bit intense for me also from what I can see the precompiled version is kinda oldish and no longer available, also it would mean reinstalling which I,d rather avoid if I could because apart from anything else I’m really happy with Debian, but if there’s no way to get it working in Debian I’ll just have to try it because this is really unusable as it is
Hi Guys
Further to my last post, I’ve had to give up on Debian even though it installed and ran fairly well, video playback was horrible, anyway in the past few days I tried over a dozen different distros including every flavour of Ubuntu, Mint and others besides, the only distro I could get to run and install is Fedora 40 Workstation which booted into the live session no problem run smoothly and installed without a hitch, however it wont boot into the installed system it just hangs on the GRUB screen, so my question is does anyone have any idea where I should be looking for this problem
Mm, I did see something about booting from emmc being problematic. There was some mention of a bios update (for the stick) maybe being available and helping … ?
I had a horrible feeling you were gonna suggest updating the BIOS, I have looked at that and I’ve been on the Intel site but I don’t see a update file for that model and even if I did the prospect of updating a BIOS terrifies me, what I find hard to understand is that the live ISO booted effortlessly but maybe that doesn’t mean anything
Ok, so the iso booted off what medium? I think the problem is something to do with how the emmc presents. If it presents as a hard drive, everything can work with it. If on the other hand it presents as emmc, and the kernel has an emmc driver, then it will ‘run’, once its booted. That however isnt going to help the bootloader which loads the kernel …
So … what it sounds like you need is either an emmc driver for your bootloader (i.e a driver for grub) , or a bios update that will cause the emmc to present as a disk.
Third option, when you install, write the bootloader partition to something else (flash drive!), the use the flash drive to bootstrap the emmc.
It booted off a 16gb USB stick I also tried to get it to boot off an SD card but the SD card doesn’t list in the boot menu and I see nothing in the bios to enable it.
This stick is a STCK1A3WFC or STCK1A8LFC, I had previously looked for a BIOS update on the Intel site and I couldn’t see one, of course that doesn’t mean there isn’t one because according to this guy there is https://jamesachambers.com/install-ubuntu-server-18-04-on-intel-compute-stick-guide/ but I don’t see it, also what I don’t don’t understand is if there was no GRUB driver then why would it boot into Debian but not Fedora, but that said my understanding of bootloaders and bios updates are at best limited.
When I installed Fedora I let the installer do it automatically so I don’t know how it partitioned the drive/emmc, but the installer had an option for custom partitioning which I always avoid, but writing the bootloader partition to a separate drive sounds like an attractive solution if I had some help with it.
As for your 4th option you’re right that would probably solve everything but I already have this thing and I only wanted to see if I can get it to run Linux and make use of it
To be honest I’d never even heard of those sticks until you posted, so other than what I read I’ve no real idea as to whether / what BIOS updates are available for that device - other than bigger manufacturers tend to provide better support / updates.
I think grub has a huge selection of “plugins” for various things, it’s quite possible that there is an eMMC plugin that some distro’s are including and some aren’t. (and there could be many reasons for the difference ranging from IP issues to simply the knowledge of grub and range of hardware)
I’m not sure eMMC is that common (?) these days on mainstream hardware, although it looked quite popular at one point. But hardware support in Linux often comes down to weight of numbers. If one of your combinations actually booted from the eMMC, it would suggest that the distro in question does indeed have eMMC support at grub level … which means it should be possible to add it to the distro you want … albeit it may not be easy.
When I was younger (!) I spent a lot of time trying to re-use old hardware, just because it was there and free … and whereas this is interesting work, I’m afraid I’ve reached a number of conclusions on this front;
If the hardware is “old” (I have Pentium and Atom machines here for example) then the ultimate performance will be disappointing and generally the associated RAM will be insufficient to make the machine all that useful.
If the machine is PC based, it’s power consumption will be higher based on age. The remaining server I have here is a 12-Core Ryzen with 32Gb RAM which relatively speaking isn’t bad consuming between 35w and 40w when idle. My backup server, which is a previous generation AMD Phenom III, 6-core with 16Gb RAM eats north of 60w idle. Both machines head into triple figures when they start to work. My alternates (RPi5) use ~ 5w at idle and might stray upto 10w if you really push hard. So on any scale, a fully kitted RPi5 pays for itself within a year, or maybe within 6 months … just on power.
This month (alone) I’ve had to replace two machines for family members, one was a blown power supply which would have been an £80 fix, the other was a 6-core CPU that had permanently reverted to 3-cores … new CPU could be anything upwards of £90, double that if it also needed a new board. New RPi5 board is £76 incl. So from a maintenance point of view, PC’s feel like cars in that once they reach a certain age, servicing just makes them more expensive than buying a new one.
So … I literally have a “mountain” of old machines here that I feel I should be re-using … maybe a dozen Phenom II/III chips, a few hundred Gig of RAM, couple of dozen power supplies etc … but at the end of the day (ignoring the time factor) I can’t make a cost-effective case for using any of it
That said, most of my RPi’s are running off 10-15 year old reclaimed SSD’s (from aforementioned mountain) which still seem to work quite happily and give good performance, so it’s not all waste
(anybody with their own solar panels want parts? I literally have a trip the the recycling centre scheduled …)
I have looked at that and I’ve been on the Intel site but I don’t see a update file for that model and even if I did the prospect of updating a BIOS terrifies me, what I find hard to understand is that the live ISO booted effortlessly but maybe that doesn’t mean anything
… and whereas this is interesting work, I’m afraid I’ve reached a number of conclusions on this front;