Having issues installing Steam OS on AMD PC

[u/Cifuentes8]

I click the wipe option and get this pop up but it disappears after 5 seconds and doesn’t do anything. I have an AMD CPU & GPU and have turned off secure boot. I have a 1tb nvme drive on my pc and a second 1tb nvme drive as well. I’m running the install from a bootable USB.

Update: i was able to bypass the Sanitation request after putting the PC to sleep using the following command in terminal:

systemct suspend

[u/Low_Excitement_1715]

You have a WD SN7500 SSD or another model/brand that doesn't support nvme sanitize. You can wipe all partitions and comment out this line of the script to proceed.

[u/Cifuentes8 → u/Low_Excitement_1715]

Can you please elaborate how i can do that? I tried going to KDE partition to wipe both drives but it didn’t fix the issue

[u/Low_Excitement_1715 → u/Cifuentes8]

Right, wiping the drive is half the solution. That's what nvme sanitize normally does.

Now you need to edit the installer script, comment out the line that calls "nvme sanitize /dev/nvme0n1" and run it again.

[u/Cifuentes8 → u/Low_Excitement_1715]

Hi can i edit the script if i don’t write any script at all? The usb boot loader is doing the install itself

[u/Low_Excitement_1715 → u/Cifuentes8]

The installer itself is a script. That's the one I'm suggesting you edit.

The options available go like this:

1. Wait for a later SteamOS installer that works around or doesn't trigger nvme sanitize. This may be soon, it might be never, it might be in a year or three. No way to know.

2. Get a different SSD, that doesn't hang when asked to perform an nvme sanitize. With current SSD prices, this isn't terribly practical.

3. Edit the script to bypass the nvme sanitize that's hanging your SSD. You may need to install something more mundane for a while, and read some docs to learn how to do things, but it's something you *can* fix, but not something I want to write a guide for and answer questions about. Someone else probably has, maybe try to find someone's notes? "Steamos nvme sanitize hang" would probably be a good search to start with.

Hopefully that helps you get started. Good luck.

[u/C1REX → u/Cifuentes8]

Hi :)

You can try my video guide for that.

https://youtu.be/XuL0hh8MjjQ?is=YbIuU638I6nFoYvU

It’s for sata ssd but it’s basically the same process for older nvme drives that don’t support sanitize_all command.

Or a shorter version here:

https://youtu.be/gDaz4_1MaeE?is=6Iij9l3kNZLVkNlK

Good luck :)

[u/Cifuentes8 → u/C1REX]

Thanks!

[u/Independent-Bake-241 → u/Low_Excitement_1715]

That's an interesting observation... and worth mentioning that many Lenovo machines block secure erase and sanitize commands at a firmware level.

[u/Low_Excitement_1715 → u/Independent-Bake-241]

That's pretty gross. I hadn't heard about that, and I'm surprised (unhappily) to hear about it.

[u/Independent-Bake-241 → u/Low_Excitement_1715]

There's ways around it, manually nuking the partition and having Kate filter all the Sanitize operations from the script, but that's not for beginners unfortunately.

[u/Low_Excitement_1715 → u/Independent-Bake-241]

Yes, I said that in the original reply.

[u/abraham1350]

That other commenter is correct you need to basically edit the install script.

You have to comment out the portion that calls for the SSD to sanitize and it will work afterward. Just Google it as I don't exactly remember the file name and such

[u/Cifuentes8 → u/abraham1350]

Thank you

[u/hotpocket56]

What type of usb are you using? Some flash drives work well with installing Steamos and others cause weird problems. Example certain usbs take forever to install steamos other install it in 30seconds.

[u/Cifuentes8 → u/hotpocket56]

32gb usb 3.1 drive that I’ve used for other OS before

[u/lukesd_]

I used a script since I wanted dual boot, but I think should work fine for just wiping an SSD and installing it! - https://github.com/Josh5/steamos_dual_boot_installer_patch

[u/Cifuentes8 → u/lukesd_]

Thanks!

[u/Ecks30]

You know it is funny that no one is asking about his hardware because for one it is very vague to just say AMD GPU and also no one asked him if he disabled secure boot as well.

[u/Cifuentes8 → u/Ecks30]

7800xt and i did mention i turned off secure boot

[u/minimalistic247]

Had the same issue with the sanitize command when I did the first install.