Re: ThinkPad X120e/AMD fusion?
Originally Posted by
afxmac
Have not found a way yet to reliably see the grub menu. sometimes I can get it to show sometimes not. I wonder why my box has both grub-pc and grub-efi installed (my BIOS is set to EFI):
ii grub-common 1.99~rc1-13ubuntu3
ii grub-efi 1.99~rc1-13ubuntu3
ii grub-efi-amd64 1.99~rc1-13ubuntu3
rc grub-pc 1.99~rc1-13ubuntu3
What utility or command produced that output? The "ii" and "rc" strings that precede each entry are probably critical. My hunch is that "ii" means it's installed and "rc" means that it's not, but without knowing what program produced that output, I can't check the documentation to be sure of that.
My experience with Ubuntu 11.04 on an Intel motherboard with UEFI boot support is that GRUB 2 is unreliable. I've had much better luck with ELILO. There's a version in the Ubuntu repositories, but I installed the latest 3.14 version from source downloaded from the Sourceforge download page. If you install the package from the repositories, it includes a setup command that you can use like this:
Code:
elilo -b /dev/sda1 --autoconf --efiboot --root /dev/sda2 -v
Change /dev/sda1 to your EFI System Partition, if necessary (it probably is /dev/sda1), and /dev/sda2 to your Ubuntu root partition. The --efiboot option requires that you also install the efibootmgr package. This option sets up an EFI entry for ELILO. IIRC, you've got to unmount the EFI System Partition (normally mounted at /boot/efi) before you run this command.
Once this is done, you should re-mount the EFI System Partition ("sudo mount -a" should do this; verify it by typing "df" and looking for an entry for /boot/efi) and check (and perhaps modify) the ELILO configuration file, which will probably be /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/elilo.conf. Here's my elilo.conf file, as an example:
Code:
prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
image=vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic
label=linux
initrd=initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic
read-only
root=/dev/sda2
append="reboot=a,w"
This example boots just one kernel. Your file could be identical to this one, except you should modify your root= line to point to your Linux root filesystem. The "reboot=a,w" option works around a bug that causes the kernel to panic when rebooting the computer. You might or might not have the same bug, and you might not care about such a panic, so you might not need this.
If you decide to try this out, it's possible to do this with minimal risk because it's possible to install two EFI boot loaders side-by-side. In other words, your GRUB setup will continue to work if you try ELILO. (I don't know, however, if the Ubuntu packages for each conflict. If they do, you'd need to install outside of the Ubuntu package system.)
One caveat: ELILO loads Linux kernels, and AFAIK nothing else. Thus, if you're dual-booting with Windows, you'll need to use something else to launch Windows. If your EFI's options are convenient enough, its built-in boot loader should work. If not, you might give rEFIt a try. Installing it requires copying the /usr/lib/refit/refit directory tree to the EFI System partition's EFI subdirectory, and perhaps copying /usr/lib/refit/x64/refit.efi over /boot/efi/EFI/refit/refit.efi. You should then be able to launch it from your EFI, and if desired make it the default boot selector. When launched, rEFIt scans for other EFI boot loaders and shows them to you in a menu, so you'd be able to pick between Windows, ELILO, and GRUB (if you leave it installed). On my UEFI systems, rEFIt has some video glitches but works OK. Telling it to use text mode rather than its default GUI mode eliminates the video glitches.
If I've suggested a solution to a problem and you're not the original poster, do not try my solution! Problems can seem similar but be different, and a good solution to one problem can make another worse. Post a new thread with your problem details.
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