Older Non-UEFI machine, won't boot from libreelect USB Installer

1st Official Post

    I have found this problem in my days of searching, but none of the solutions I have found made any difference.

    I have been running kodibuntu for years.

    Prior to that, XBMCbuntu, all the way back to XBMC on an actual Xbox.

    (So I have been around the block a little)

    Kodibuntu is dead, so I have been trying to replace it with LibreElec, and no dice.

    The machine I am working on is an old Core2Duo HP desktop.

    I have never had any problems installing the 30+ linux based distro's on it in the past via USB installer drive.

    But now, here I am.

    No matter what method I use to create a libreElec USB installer, it will not boot.

    "Non-System Disk or Disk Error"
    I'm pretty sure the last time I have been frustrated by this screen, was 1993, trying to get Windows 3.1 to install off a floppy drive.

    (a REAL floppy drive. Not that rigid 3.5" crap people call "Floppy" for some reason)

    This machine does not use UEFI.

    Is that the problem?

    Every forum thread I have found with similar issues has resulted in comments like, the bios settings must be wrong, the usb drive is probably broken, or the usb drive wasn't created properly.

    My problem is definitely none of those things.

    As far as I can tell, the usb installer is supposed to boot on either BIOS or UEFI platforms, but maybe there's some sort of bug regarding the backwards compatibility on some BIOS machines?

    For now, I guess I'll just need to go back to super old kodibuntu, but I would really like to figure this out before I throw a perfectly good machine through a perfectly good window.

    Thanks

    In general legacy boot does work with LibreELEC installation media.

    For getting the "Non-System Disk" error the BIOS seem to perform some additional partition layout or file system checks that fail on the GPT partitioned installer media with protective MBR.

    To work around that you can try to set up the hard disk on a different legacy boot machine. The installer will create a MSDOS partition table on disks < 2TB.

    Or install a different minimal Linux distribution, create the two LibreELEC partitions and add LibreELEC as default option to the boot manager.

    Quote from mglae

    In general legacy boot does work with LibreELEC installation media.

    For getting the "Non-System Disk" error the BIOS seem to perform some additional partition layout or file system checks that fail on the GPT partitioned installer media with protective MBR.

    To work around that you can try to set up the hard disk on a different legacy boot machine. The installer will create a MSDOS partition table on disks < 2TB.

    Or install a different minimal Linux distribution, create the two LibreELEC partitions and add LibreELEC as default option to the boot manager.

    Thank you, I will try and give installing on a different machine a shot.

    Do you have any idea if I will run into driver related problems?

    For example, if I install on a computer with an AMD graphics card, then throw the hard drive into the HTPC in question, will it be a disaster?

    Thanks again.

    Up until now, the only info I could find, just said it should work, which wasn't helping me, because it sure doesn't work for me.

    I'm so sad that Kodibuntu is no more.

    Libreelec is great for Raspberry Pi's and kind, but so far, everything I have tried for full blown PC's has caused nothing but problems since Kodibuntu.

    • Official Post

    To manually install LE .. create two EXT4 partitions on a disk; 1GB for "BOOT" and remaining space for "STORAGE" then install any bootloader that works on that hardware and configure it for boot=LABEL=BOOT and disk=LABEL=STORAGE .. and ensure KERNEL/SYSTEM live in the boot partition (and mark it active). That's all our installer does. We use syslinux but GRUB and others are fine. We don't touch boot ever after install.

    NB: Team Kodi gave up on maintaining an entire distro (Kodibuntu) but the stable/unstable PPA's are still maintained for use with current Ubuntu.

    See Kodi stable : “Kodi” team

    Quote from cbanakis

    Do you have any idea if I will run into driver related problems?


    For example, if I install on a computer with an AMD graphics card, then throw the hard drive into the HTPC in question, will it be a disaster?

    There is no hardware depended installation. All drivers are selected at boot time.