UEFI hell?

[oldfred]

I thought you had something installed and could not tell how it was working.

I think the installer finds the efi partition and then knows it should be efi install. Although some posts seemed to just do an install then install the grub-efi as part of a grub repair.

[ClientAlive]

I thought you had something installed and could not tell how it was working.

I think the installer finds the efi partition and then knows it should be efi install. Although some posts seemed to just do an install then install the grub-efi as part of a grub repair.

Yes. I think we're starting to narrow this down to specifics now.

To put it succincly, I think the biggest issue I face atm is whether to proceed with an efi install or a BIOS install. But I need more information, and more definite information at that, before I can make a prodent decision about that.

I'm googling for it right now but if anyone knows how I can make a definite ascertation on how this installer is booted...

Also - what should be selected in the "Use as" menu for the system partition? Which selection would correspond to an efi installation and which would correspond to a BIOS installation?

I see one selection in there called, "Reserved BIOS boot area" which may be the one that correspond to a BIOS install. Thought this may take care of that half of the question, I'd still like verification on it.

Also, either route I go (whether an efi install or a BIOS install) I'm wondering if I shouldn't set the mount piont as "/boot/efi" (exactly as that) ??
-----------------------

Edit:

It's concievable that if I can find out the precise name of the selection for an efi install (in the "Use as" part) that I could use it as a way of telling whether the installer is efi booted or not.

[oldfred]

I boot with BIOS and gpt. So I have a bios_grub partition. My new SSD I also created a 250MB efi partition as the first partition as I hope to get an UEFI system soon. But I did not give it the ef00 (yet) setting as I knew I was BIOS and did not want grub to get confused. So my efi is not really an efi just a label so far.

If using gpt with BIOS create a 1MB bios_grub partition. I used gparted and selected gpt under device, advanced & select gpt over msdos(MBR) default partitioning....

In a GPT partition map, the 31 kiB area after Master Boot Record where GRUB is usually embedded to, does not exist. When GRUB can't be embedded, its only option is to use blocklists, which are unreliable and discouraged.
However, in the GPT setup, there is no space following the 512-byte MBR for embedding the "second stage" core.img. Thus, you must make a separate "BIOS boot partition" to hold core.img.

Since the BIOS Boot Partition ("bios_grub" flag set in GNU Parted) is used without a filesystem for storing GRUB 2 boot code "unknown" filesystem! may be shown in many Partition tools.

One suggestion was to create both from notes from several posts:

Since the BIOS Boot Partition ("bios_grub" flag set in GNU Parted) is used without a filesystem for storing GRUB 2 boot code, and since the EFI System Partition (ESP) is used by EFI with a FAT-32 filesystem for storing EFI files, the two cannot be the same partition.
If you're using EFI mode to boot, you don't need a BIOS Boot Partition, but you do need an EFI System Partition (ESP)
If a new drive, to be safe, create both of these partitions, in addition to your regular Linux partitions. But the efi partition has to be first. Do not configure Linux to use either the ESP or the BIOS Boot Partition; they'll be used automatically by GRUB, if necessary.

If you're using EFI mode to boot, you don't need a BIOS Boot Partition with gpt partitions (only for BIOS), but you do need an EFI System Partition (ESP). This is entirely different; it should be a 200-300 MiB FAT32 partition that's flagged as an ESP and must be the first partition. In libparted-based tools, you'd give it a "boot" flag (which is entirely unrelated to the MBR boot/active flag, although libparted makes them look the same). In gdisk, you'd give it a type code of EF00.
An EFI System Partition (~100 to -256MiB, FAT32) for UEFI, a BIOS Boot Partition (~1MiB, no filesystem) for BIOS, and whatever partitions you want for Linux. You must set the partition type codes correctly, but how you do this depends on the utility you use to create them. Also, you should be sure to create a GUID Partition Table (GPT) on the disk, not a Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table. In BIOS mode, Ubuntu's installer defaults to creating MBR partitions, at least on sub-2TB disks, so you may need to use another utility to do the partitioning.

[ClientAlive]

oldfred,

I'm sorry I didn't get here more quickly to disclose this:

For about the millionth time, I was reading some document online; and, yet again, I read something to the effect of - 'you have to be sure the installer is efi booted.' I know this. Of course I know this - I've been talking on and on about it. But for some reason it occured to me to try going into my uefi settings, once again... and see if I could find some distinction in there.

When I read that, I recalled that with a previous install attempt (with a different distro) that the install media would show up in my uefi interface with a "uefi" prefix on the entry. I went right to it; and, sure enough, there were two separate entries for my dvd drive. One had the "uefi" prefix to it and the other didn't. I hadn't noticed it when I booted the installer the first time but this time I chose the entry with the prefix.

I now am able to see an entry in the "Use as" section of the installer called: "EFI boot partition." This was not there before I rebooted and booted into the installer correctly. Now everything in the installer (fingers crossed) seems to be very straightforward for this. I'm moving forward with this and am hoping it all pans out w/o any further trouble.

Thank you so much oldfred (and everyone who posted here) for the time you've taken to help me. It is greatly appreciated. I will not mark the thread "solved" yet until the install is complete. I may run into some problem yet so please don't stop checking on me. If all goes well, I'll be sure to let everyone know.

Thank you
Jake

PS: Just a reminder in case anyone stumbles on this in the future: The motherboard I have is an Asus M5A99X Evo purchaesed around mid Feb of 2012. I say this because getting any information on this board's settings has been absolute hell. Calling the manufacturer's tech support and looking all - over - the - internet for this specific board's setting has yeilded nothing. I found information for similar Asus boards but not this one. Learning where that setting is was just a fluke for me.

Caveot: there may yet be another setting on the board where you set the boot mode. This may be a separate setting or it may not exist at all. If that exists I'm unaware of it.

[ClientAlive]

Well I got an install. I'm typing this to you from that new install. There are a few minor issues/ bugs to work out but I think it best to start a new thread about it. Basically, my real issue was identifying the correct item in my uefi boot options to use. Thanks again fellas.

Jake

[oldfred]

Glad you got it resolved.

We have tested the new git version of Boot info script with one or two efi installs to make sure it parses the efi partitions correctly.

But could you post your boot info script?

wget -O bootinfoscript 'http://bootinfoscript.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=bootinfoscript/bootinfoscript;a=blob_plain;f=bootinfoscript;hb=HEAD'
chmod a+x bootinfoscript
sudo bash bootinfoscript

Current verison does not see efi partition, but has instruction:
Boot Info Script courtesy of forum members meierfra & Gert Hulselmans
Page with instructions and download:
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/
Paste contents of results.txt in a New Reply, then highlight entire file and click on # in edit panel(code tags) to make it easier to read.
Or You can generate the tags first by pressing the # icon in the New Reply Edit toolbar and then paste the contents between the generated [ code] paste here [ /code] tags.
V60 has improved formating and requires code tags to make it legible. New Version is a zip file that you have to extract to get .sh to run.
Install these before running script:
sudo apt-get install gawk
sudo apt-get install xz-utils

Is able to search LVM partitions if the LVM2 package is install
# ("apt-get install lvm2" in debian based distros)
# Is able to search Linux Software Raid partitions (MD Raids) if
# the "mdadm" package is installed.
sudo apt-get install lvm2
sudo apt-get install mdadm
sudo apt-get install xz-utils
unlzma is equivalent to xz --format=lzma --decompress.

Often good to have some repair tools. Boot-repair also runs the git version of bootinfoscript.
Boot Repair:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
You can repair many boot issues with this or post the link to a run of boot info script so we can see your exact configuration.

[ClientAlive]

Glad you got it resolved.

We have tested the new git version of Boot info script with one or two efi installs to make sure it parses the efi partitions correctly.

But could you post your boot info script?

wget -O bootinfoscript 'http://bootinfoscript.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=bootinfoscript/bootinfoscript;a=blob_plain;f=bootinfoscript;hb=HEAD'
chmod a+x bootinfoscript
sudo bash bootinfoscript

I can if I can get another stinkin install working on here. What I got was a full install (full on unity and the works - in all it's bloated glory). What I thought I would have is the option for a minimal, cli only system. I posted another thread here on the forums talking about "how do I strip it down to cli" and I let this guy talk me into reinstalling with the alternate cd. (Actually, he wanted me to use the minimal install cd but that installer won't even boot - gives me a grub command line). So ever since then this thing has been trashed - again. There's just so many stupid details I don't know how to do with this efi thing but they end up being thigs I MUST do or I'm not gonna have a working o/s on here. Asus tech support is useless - I think they aspire to be useless, in fact.

I'm about to attempt another full install. If I can get that working at all it will probably print "error: efi disk read error" to the screen about a donzen times before it starts to boot the o/s. That's what it did before. But hey, if I can get an o/s to boot at all I guess that's progress. Maybe then I can do what I knew I should have done in the first place - go in and remove the packages one by one until I'm down to cli. I also think replacing grub with elilo is a good idea as well.

Maybe I should try the server install, idk.

Wish me luck. Here I go...

If I can get a system working on here again I'll run the boot info script and share it with you.


Jake

[oldfred]

There have been several threads with users asking how to boot to command line. I have not followed but found this one.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9227346
Which is edit grub
gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash text”
I often search the forum with this from google as its search is better than the forum search. Just append this to any search to restrict it to the forum.
site:ubuntuforums.org
or for all linux sites:
http://www.googlubuntu.com/

Minimal install is just that. Only a kernal and enough drivers to connect to the Internet to download just what you want.
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/minimal

Not sure how all the somewhat different versions are updated to include efi. Servers have had UEFI a lot longer than desktops, so I am surprised that efi does not work better.

[ClientAlive]

There have been several threads with users asking how to boot to command line. I have not followed but found this one.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9227346
Which is edit grub
gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash text”
I often search the forum with this from google as its search is better than the forum search. Just append this to any search to restrict it to the forum.
site:ubuntuforums.org
or for all linux sites:
http://www.googlubuntu.com/

Minimal install is just that. Only a kernal and enough drivers to connect to the Internet to download just what you want.
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/minimal

Not sure how all the somewhat different versions are updated to include efi. Servers have had UEFI a lot longer than desktops, so I am surprised that efi does not work better.

Thanks oldfred.

Well, I did another full install last night figuring I would then just go in and strip it down. The install went fine and was able to boot up (with some errors from my firmware). Installed synaptic and proceeded to spend the next 4 hrs finding an marking packages for removal. What I removed is extreme! I think there were something like 716 packages removed or something like that - and only like 89 packages left behind. Stripped everything gnome, unity, all the little packages like media players and browsers, mozilla, openoffice and libre, etc. Now I can't boot. I have a good idea how to go about fixing the situation though (whether I stick with grub or not). I'm going to look into using elilo to boot. I hear it does better with efi but I'm not sure how well it handles / in a logical volume. Anyhow, I think I should start a separate thread about it since this one was really not about that.

[Cheesemill]

If you are still using the Alternate CD to install then you can just hit F4 on the CD boot screen and select 'Install a CLI system'