[tlug] Hung Startup

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

CL writes:

 > I have successfully done several installations of Debian Bullseye, using 
 > a Debian+Firmware iso to get the RealTek driver installed 
 > automatically.  I have tried installing the LXQT desktop,

The desktop is going to be irrelevant to everything except the splash
screen.  Changing desktop is not going to 

 > This occurs before keyboard and mouse drivers are mounted so reset
 > options are limited to the large friendly button on the box.

I doubt that's correct.  There may be no mouse driver, but there's
always a keyboard driver in the kernel.  So I suspect that you're
actually seeing a kernel panic.  Once you get access you should be
able to check the logs to find out more about what happened.

You should be able to escape from the GUI bootup by hitting a function
key (maybe F2 but I'm not in a position to check) within a second or
two of the boot sequence starting (this is not for the BIOS, this is
to interrupt Linux's own GRUB bootloader).  Use apt-get or dpkg to
force-uninstall CUPS, and see what happens from there.

If you can't do that, you should be able to do something using a live
boot disk.