I’m trying to install f43 on a Dell Inspiron box with a Samsung SSD. This thing appears to be a pretty ordinary PC, but I’m struggling with the install process. It throws dracut errors to the effect that it can’t find /dev/root, until finally giving up and going into single user mode. Could there be an issue with a disk driver? The drive is a 1-TByte Samsung 870 EVO SDD. I’d appreciate any suggestions to debug it.
Which model of Dell Inspiron?
Did you manage to look if there is a firmware/BIOS update?
Could you post a screenshot of the error?
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Hi Alessio – Thanks for your interest.
I downloaded current firmware from Dell. The version I see on the front page matches what I see in the firmware tool. I downloaded updates from Dell and when I went to update, they showed the same version. Should I apply the updates anyway? I don’t want to add it if I don’t need to.
From the BIOS front page:
- BIOS Version: 1.9.2 (current per the Dell site)
- Product: Inspiron 3475
- Processor: AMD A9-Radeon R5, 5 compute cores 2C+3G
- Disk: Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB
I am using a confirmed bootable thumb drive created with Media Manager. I have run both f42 and f43. I’ve linked output from journalctl for both, and also dmesg output for 43.
Upon exiting, the installation gives a warning from dracut:
Warning: Not all disks have been found.
Warning: You might want to regenerate your initramfs.
Dropbox links (I don’t see a way to attach a file here).
journalctl-42
journalctl-43
dmesg output for 43
Possible clue: I see this in the journalctl output:
Jan 03 23:22:08 fedora kernel: ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
Jan 03 23:22:08 fedora kernel: ata1.00: Model 'Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB', rev 'SVT03B6Q', applying quirks: noncqtrim zeroaftertrim noncqonati nolpmonati
Jan 03 23:22:08 fedora kernel: ata1.00: supports DRM functions and may not be fully accessible
Jan 03 23:22:08 fedora kernel: ata1.00: ATA-11: Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB, SVT03B6Q, max UDMA/133
Jan 03 23:22:08 fedora kernel: ata1.00: 1953525168 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 32), AA
Jan 03 23:22:08 fedora kernel: ata1.00: Features: Trust Dev-Sleep DIPM NCQ-sndrcv
Jan 03 23:22:08 fedora kernel: ata1.00: supports DRM functions and may not be fully accessible
Jan 03 23:22:08 fedora kernel: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
I assume that’s Digital Rights Management? I see lots of references to lowercase drm, but don’t know enough about the protocol to make even a guess.
Latest updates in this saga:
One of my AI friends tells me that the DRM messages I saw are probably innocuous. That was disappointing.
Another AI suggested I identify the disk in question, and dd /dev/zero to the device file, wiping the partition table so it no longer looks like a full disk to the Fedora installer. I did that – I really don’t need any of the data. The numbered partitions under /dev/disk/sda disappeared immediately. The box no longer tries to boot into Microsoft recovery, which is kind of nice. But the bad news is that it’s still falling into Emergency Boot. I’ve uploaded another copy of the dmesg output to Dropbox. Link is here for anyone’s sleuthing enjoyment.
It may be totally unrelated but on my Dell Inspiron I had to disable “Secure Boot” and “Fast Boot” so I could install any distribution.
You might also check and make sure CSM is disabled in the bios along with what @lendenu posted.
@lendenu, Fast Boot is not an option (that I’ve seen). Is “PowerNow” the same as Fast Boot? Turning that off… Doesn’t seem to have made a difference. @straycat , what’s CSM? Don’t see that either.
Even so, thanks for the suggestions. We know the drive is accessible and writable, so that’s something.
Disabling Secure Boot shouldn’t be necessary on any machine produced the last ~10 years. I would recommend to do the opposite, enable it if possible.
Basically legacy BIOS support in EFI, see UEFI - Wikipedia
I see something like this video:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gc53ESKyUuw
Fast boot is the 5th line.
I would recommend lots of things, unfortunately life is about compromises and like I said, I could not finalize any distribution install with the said options enabled. I never tried to update the bios then, so who knows.
I had other things to take care of and stepped away from this for a day. One of the messages on the screen suggested saving rdsosreport.txt to a thumb drive. It looks similar to the dmesg and journalctl outputs. But browsing the file, I noticed the string “drm panic.” It occurs twice in the output. I’ve grep’ed it with context below. A bit of digging brings me to a new feature for f42 that enables a panic screen upon a panic – as opposed to being silent. Cool. But where does one go to look for what prompted the panic in the first place?
root@fedora:/mnt/usb# grep -n -C10 panic rdsosreport.txt
7998-[ 1.946526] fedora kernel: i8042: PNP: No PS/2 controller found.
7999-[ 1.946537] fedora kernel: mousedev: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
8000-[ 1.946767] fedora kernel: rtc_cmos 00:01: RTC can wake from S4
8001-[ 1.946968] fedora kernel: rtc_cmos 00:01: registered as rtc0
8002-[ 1.948360] fedora kernel: rtc_cmos 00:01: setting system clock to 2026-01-05T16:15:37 UTC (1767629737)
8003-[ 1.948595] fedora kernel: rtc_cmos 00:01: alarms up to one month, 114 bytes nvram
8004-[ 1.948611] fedora kernel: device-mapper: core: CONFIG_IMA_DISABLE_HTABLE is disabled. Duplicate IMA measurements will not be recorded in the IMA log.
8005-[ 1.948624] fedora kernel: device-mapper: uevent: version 1.0.3
8006-[ 1.948636] fedora kernel: device-mapper: ioctl: 4.50.0-ioctl (2025-04-28) initialised: dm-devel@lists.linux.dev
8007-[ 1.948647] fedora kernel: amd_pstate: the _CPC object is not present in SBIOS or ACPI disabled
8008:[ 1.948900] fedora kernel: simple-framebuffer simple-framebuffer.0: [drm] Registered 1 planes with drm panic
8009-[ 1.948918] fedora kernel: [drm] Initialized simpledrm 1.0.0 for simple-framebuffer.0 on minor 0
8010-[ 1.949942] fedora kernel: ehci-pci 0000:00:12.0: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
8011-[ 1.950285] fedora kernel: usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002, bcdDevice= 6.17
8012-[ 1.950533] fedora kernel: usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
8013-[ 1.950743] fedora kernel: usb usb3: Product: EHCI Host Controller
8014-[ 1.950954] fedora kernel: usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 6.17.1-300.fc43.x86_64 ehci_hcd
8015-[ 1.952376] fedora kernel: usb usb3: SerialNumber: 0000:00:12.0
8016-[ 1.952671] fedora kernel: hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
8017-[ 1.952917] fedora kernel: hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
8018-[ 1.952932] fedora kernel: fbcon: Deferring console take-over
--
8389-[ 17.930784] fedora kernel: [drm] DM_PPLIB: memory_max_clock: 106600
8390-[ 17.930795] fedora kernel: [drm] DM_PPLIB: level : 8
8391-[ 17.930804] fedora kernel: amdgpu 0000:00:01.0: amdgpu: [drm] Display Core v3.2.340 initialized on DCE 11.0
8392-[ 18.014032] fedora kernel: [drm] UVD initialized successfully.
8393-[ 18.115112] fedora kernel: [drm] VCE initialized successfully.
8394-[ 18.115178] fedora kernel: amdgpu 0000:00:01.0: amdgpu: SE 1, SH per SE 1, CU per SH 3, active_cu_number 3
8395-[ 18.116059] fedora kernel: amdgpu: pp_dpm_get_sclk_od was not implemented.
8396-[ 18.116107] fedora kernel: amdgpu: pp_dpm_get_mclk_od was not implemented.
8397-[ 18.116123] fedora kernel: amdgpu 0000:00:01.0: amdgpu: Runtime PM not available
8398-[ 18.116525] fedora kernel: amdgpu 0000:00:01.0: amdgpu: [drm] Using custom brightness curve
8399:[ 18.116829] fedora kernel: amdgpu 0000:00:01.0: [drm] Registered 2 planes with drm panic
8400-[ 18.117141] fedora kernel: [drm] Initialized amdgpu 3.64.0 for 0000:00:01.0 on minor 1
8401-[ 18.125040] fedora kernel: fbcon: amdgpudrmfb (fb0) is primary device
8402-[ 18.125122] fedora kernel: Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 240x67
8403-[ 18.125136] fedora kernel: amdgpu 0000:00:01.0: [drm] fb0: amdgpudrmfb frame buffer device
8404-[ 25.825189] fedora kernel: usb 1-1: reset high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
8405-[ 46.817163] fedora kernel: usb 1-1: reset high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
8406-[ 179.014695] fedora dracut-initqueue[594]: Warning: dracut-initqueue: timeout, still waiting for following initqueue hooks:
8407-[ 179.016560] fedora dracut-initqueue[594]: Warning: /lib/dracut/hooks/initqueue/finished/devexists-\x2fdev\x2fdisk\x2fby-label\x2fFedora-WS-Live-43.sh: "[ -e "/dev/disk/by-label/Fedora-WS-Live-43" ]"
8408-[ 179.018067] fedora dracut-initqueue[594]: Warning: /lib/dracut/hooks/initqueue/finished/devexists-\x2fdev\x2froot.sh: "[ -e "/dev/root" ]"
8409-[ 179.020443] fedora dracut-initqueue[594]: Warning: dracut-initqueue: starting timeout scripts
All that for that…
The issue all along was a bad thumb drive. It passed tests, but failed the real one when it counted. I installed and reinstalled it with Media Writer and I used the same thumb drive to install the laptop I’m using now, and it even booted this laptop. The only clue (other than the boot failure) was when the thumb drive needed to be re-written after a single installation. When I uploaded the dmesg extract above, Claude.AI called it out.
The log shows the issue clearly! Look at lines 8406-8409:
Warning: dracut-initqueue: timeout, still waiting for following initqueue hooks: Warning: ... "[ -e "/dev/disk/by-label/Fedora-WS-Live-43" ]" Warning: ... "[ -e "/dev/root" ]"The installer can’t find its own USB drive - specifically the live filesystem labeled “Fedora-WS-Live-43”. This isn’t about your Samsung SSD at all!
The Problem
The USB installer is having trouble mounting itself. This usually happens when:
- The USB was written incorrectly
- USB port/controller issues
- The USB drive itself is flaky
Bought a new one and we’re good to go.
