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I am new to Linux and have been reading and trying lots of alternatives before writing here. I am trying to install Debian10 (through NETINST) from a USB stick on a Laptop that normally runs on Gallium OS. I need to provide non-free firmware in order to use wifi, hence the other partitions.

My process is:

  • wipe my USB Stick with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
  • create partitions with fdisk and assign a bootable flag to the partition that will have the debian install ISO file (/dev/sda2)
  • use isohybrid --partok on the debian-10.9.0-amd64-netinst.iso file
  • use dd if=debian-10.9.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sda2 to create the bootable Debian installer
  • copy the folder with non-free essential firmwares into the other USB partition

When i do the same (without the non-free firmware) on an unpartitioned USB stick, the GRUB installer starts correctly with a graphical interface.

When i do the above (i.e. when trying to boot/install Debian from a partitioned USB) the system displays a GRUB command-line that i cannot use (despite trying browsing contents of the usbstick, i cannot find either vmlinuz nor initrd.img). I am not an expert of GRUB through command-line so maybe I am doing something wrong there, but I cannot get past this phase.

Ideally I would like to boot into Debian through a graphical intallation.

Could anyone see what may be wrong ?

Thank you! Jon

EDIT1: I would prefer to boot from a partioned USB so i can still use other partitions for other functions

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I did manage to find an answer, after 2 days of troubleshooting...

Once the GRUB2 Command-Line starts, i set root=(dev0,msdos2) where the boot disk is, then i use ls inside that drive to find the file called grubx64.efi. I load that file with chainloader <path_to_grubx64.efi> then hit boot and voila: the graphical Debian boot/installer starts !

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