Parrot-Sec not booting

Hey
I decided to use dual Boot with Parrot Security. Everything worked fine with flashing the usb, and booting from there. Then I click me through the install menus, choose the created partition and it installs. Then it tells me to remove the usb. I do that it takes about half a minute, reboots, and boot on windows again. I already put the windows boot manager as low as possible in the boot order in the BIOS but that doesn’t help. I appreciate ever help.
Details:
I‘m using the Parrot 4.5 ISO
I use win 10 home
I have an Acer Aspire e5 575g 75 ul (gtx 950m, i7-7500u)
Running the liver version worked, but I want to install it to use without usb

Just making sure. But when you were creating your partitions did you make a swap partition?

No. Is that necessary? I don’t think so…

I’m getting a similar issue. The install goes smoothly, no problems and no errors. However, when I go to boot into the O.S., it gets to the Parrot Logo screen with the 4 flashing dots that act like a loading screen, and after 2-3 times of the dots cycling, the screen locks up and I’m stuck there. This happens regardless if I’m booting into the actual Parrot HDD or even if I boot from the live stick.

I was able to install Parrot in a VM and on my 2011 MacBook Pro flawlessly, but for some reason it does not like it when I install it to a separate drive on my desktop. I’m almost positive the hard drive is fine as well, seeing as it was running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS a week ago.

I’ve tried both the Security and KDE Home ISO’s, and have also tried installing with the standard installer as well as GTK. I am dual-booting with Windows 10 and Kali Linux as well. I’ve both booting with secure boot on and off. It still locks up in the same spot.

Swap isn’t needed since ParrotOS now uses btrfs filesystem.

My roommate also is using Acer laptop and too has the same problem. I think the problem is with EFI partition, maybe somehow grub can’t install itself. You can try to boot with LiveCD and try to install grub by yourself, there are many guides all over the internet.

Swap isn’t needed when selecting the default btrfs type partition. To keep reasons low let’s disable secure boot until you can update with the right PK, efi key etc) try running a grub update in your kali if you use grub to boot otherwise go to windows and update your mbr or just repair it or even grub4win

I was installing Parrot with Windows on 1 SSD - tell You what i did:
1 - Divide SSD on 2 partitions (i have 256 GB so for WIndows i left 160 GB, and 96 GB for Linux)
(BTW - i checked because some people say that we shouldnt partition SSD - but the difference in “lifetime” or other stuff - is irrelevant)
2 - In Windows i had (in DIsk Partitioner) - this 80 GB Free Partition (but i checked just to be sure)
3 - I put USB with Parrot and started to install it using GFK Installer
4 - WHen i came to “partition” - i chose “Manual” and here:
a) 80 GB for ext4 (generally for system ie Parrot)
b) 15,5 GB for swap partition
c) 500 MB for GRUB (ie EFI)
Then i clicked “FInish partition” - and installer said something about “Do You want to format all 3 …” Yes - and we w8
5 - After removing USB (as You said) - the system reboot and (in my case) - i have no GRUB and WIndows was starting … So what now?
6 - I entered BIOS --> Boot --> And “voila” i have 2 options to choose from in which:
a) WINDOWS Bootloader
b) PARROT OS Bootloader
Of course i chose b) - what is IMPORTANT HERE - You must save those changes! If You only choose Parrot Bootloader without saving - of course it will go back to WIndows one
7 - After restarting - i had GRUB - and now i can choose - Parrot or Windows
/Thats what I did - hope it helps (or maybe You solved your problem already) :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I would not pick ext4 over btrfs, and you dont need swap partition with btrfs. I would order efi then btrfs all the rest is solid sughestions

Didnt know that. Thanks for information :slight_smile:
EDIT: ext4 and btrfs - are there any significant differences?

Yes this is a great question. One of the favorite differences is the advantage of snapshot backups and revert images you can restore a broken system with!

Thx! Will try this

If you have your system installed and you just need the grub to be reinstall, here is a guide you can follow:

https://community.parrotsec.org/t/tuto-installing-grub-using-live-usb/5672

3 Likes

so my Grub is apparently hosed which is obviously only one of my current issues, but in following instructions from a 4.6 ParrotSec KDE Live boot, I attempted to reinstall Grub and hit a road block early on:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: HGST HTS541010A9
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 3DC15C41-952A-42ED-9E9D-177162EEA2A7
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1333247 1331200 650M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda2 1333248 1865727 532480 260M EFI System
/dev/sda3 1865728 2127871 262144 128M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda4 2127872 791140190 789012319 376.2G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda5 1902262272 1904003071 1740800 850M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda6 1904003072 1953513471 49510400 23.6G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda7 791140352 1885628415 1094488064 521.9G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda8 1885628416 1902262271 16633856 8G Linux swap

sudo mount /dev/sda4 /mnt

The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0).
Metadata kept in Windows cache, refused to mount.
Falling back to read-only mount because the NTFS partition is in an
unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown Windows fully (no hibernation
or fast restarting.)
Could not mount read-write, trying read-only

Since I cannot get grub running, and can not get back into the Win8.1 partition to clear the botched windows update cache or even boot to the system OEM restore to let windows reinstall I am at a bit of a loss…anyone got any ideas?

BTW - I have a new hard drive on order for this laptop since I have some bad sectors reporting.

Why trying to mount sda4 which is a windows partition ? Mount sd7 instead.

If it still present, I’ve found a solution to get grub booting on acer laptops. They have an option in Security tab where you can select .efi file to boot, and you need to choose grub file. More info here:

This topic was automatically closed 6 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.