New Laptop Struggles - Lenovo Ideapad z585 - no Grub?

[Paver]

I hope you don't mind me tagging onto this post. I have a Z585 also & I have been researching in all my spare time about installing Linux on this new machine. A10 AMD Quad Core, 6GB Ram, DVD-RW, 750GB 5400rpm HD.

I have run Ubuntu on various machines since 2007.

I recently added LM 13 (Linux Mint 13 - Ubuntu 12.04 LTS derivative) to my 2007 Dell Inspiron 1501 with no problems.

With this new Lenovo Z585 I have learned about this new fangled thing called UEFI which has caused a STEEP learning curve on my part.

After many hours of searching & reading, I have installed a spare 80GB HD in the Lenovo & using PartedMagic on a usb flash drive checked this drive & prepped for a 2 OS install. (I have seen too many post about installs going bad.) I have loaded & have functioning Windows 7 Home Premium from a usb flash drive on this 80GB drive.

Now my problem(s): Using the 64bit LM13 install on usb, I get the beginning splash screen, hit enter to go to the menu choices of running LM13 etc. When I hit enter, I get the proverbial blinking cursor. I have gone into the bios & disabled UEFI before starting any of this.

I have tried a Live CD. I have also taken the USB & tried it on a desktop. It worked fine & picked up the network right out of boot up.

The bios on this Z585 leaves a lot to be desired. Can anyone give assistance?

I have read multiple threads on UEFI problems, but specific information for the Z585 is lacking. I have tried searching for info on the bios with little success.

[Minipalmer]

@Paver: Interesting, I have a similar problem. When I select Ubuntu 64bit from my list of GRUB entries I get the same blinking cursor. I will have to research a bit more into this UEFI and see if our problems are connected.

[darkod]

Blinking cursor can be related to video issues. What video card do you have?

[Paver]

What has me stumped is PartedMagic runs on the Z585 & the LM13 will give you the initial screen with the "Run Linux Mint, Start in Compatibility Mode, Integrity check, Memory test & Boot from local drive". It will go into Memory check, but nothing else. Not even boot local drive.

There are so few choices in the bios. I have disabled the UEFI as I said before. Tried running the SATA in IDE mode. Disabled BT which put LM13 straight into the blinking cursor. Enabled power up beep which doesn't appear to work.

When I hit tab for the boot string in LM13 Live USB, I get ">/casper/vmlinuz noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash--".

I have been building desktops & repairing PCs for almost 30 years as a hobby. There have been few things that stump me, but this has about got me. I must say software is a weakness for me, but with time I usually figure things out. There is so little info on this computer, it is taking an incredible amount of time on my part to get through this learning curve.

AMD's Trinity A10 APU or Application Processing Unit, combines both a quad-core X86 processing engine as well as a DX11 capable graphics core (Found on the web)

Below is what I copied from Lenovo's site.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help with this install.

Processor

• AMD Trinity A4/A6/A8/A10/E2 series APU

Core Chipset

• AMD A70M FCH M3

Bus architecture

• DDR3 1066, 1333, 1600 MT/s for Ivy Bridge Dual and
  Quad Core CPU
• DDR3 1066, 1333 MT/s for Sandy Bridge Dual Core CPU
• DMI × 4, 4Gb/s
• FDI 8 lanes (2channels), 2.7Gb/s
• PCI Express

Graphic Chipset

• AMD Thames XT

Display

• 15.6 HD LED Panel, Flat type, 1366 × 768 pixels, 200 nit

Standard
memory

• DDR3 up to 1600 SODIMM (× 2)

CMOS RAM

• 256 bytes

Hard disk drive

• 2.5" , 9.5 mm / 7.0 mm Height SATA 320G /500 GB / 750
  GB / 1 TB (5400 rpm)
• 2.5" , 9.5 mm / 7.0 mm Height SATA 320G /500 GB (7200 rpm)

Optical drive

• Rambo/Blu-ray combo/Blu-ray Rambo

I/O port

• External monitor connector
• Stereo headphone jack
• Microphone jack
• RJ45 × 1
• HDMI port
• USB 2.0 × 2, USB 3.0 × 2
• 5-in-1 memory card reader

MODEM slot

• N/A

Audio

• 1/8" Stereo Headphone Output Jack
• 1/8" Microphone Input Combo Jack
• Built-in stereo speakers
• Built-in microphone

Video

• CRT port x 1, HDMI port x 1

Ethernet (on the
system board)

• 10/100 M or 10/100/1000 M Ethernet

PCI Express Mini
Card slot

• 1 slot for WLAN card (half size)

WLAN

• Intel 802.11 a/b/g/n & WiMax combo
• Broadcom/Atheros b/g/n

Bluetooth
wireless

• BT2.1 + EDR CyberTan/USI module (option)

Keyboard

• 6 Row, Lenovo Keyboard

Touch pad

• Two clicks with Dome

Integrated
camera

• HD1.0 Mega or 0.3 Mega

Battery

• 48 Wh, 6 cell cylindrical Li-ion Battery

AC adapter

• 65 W or 90 W

Pre-installed
operating system

• Win 7

Hy HMT325S6CFR8C-PB DDR3 1600 6GB
LG L11L6Y01 3S2P 48Wh battery Comm02
AUO B156XTN02.0 HD G W LED1 NB LCD
ST750LM022 5.4K 9.5 750G HDD
AMD A10-4600M 2.3G/3.2G 4M 4C A1 PGA CPU
TSST SN-208AB Slim Rambo w/o bezel-LH
LZ2B Thermal Module UMA
Cbt BCM4313HMGB BGN+BT HMC WLAN
LZ1 CameraBoard HD
ChiconyCPA-A065 20V3.25A adapter(330PF)
LINETEK LP-30B + SPT-2 + LS15 1 Meter powercord
LZ3 Lower Case to Hinge Antenna
LZ3 Upper Case Grey
CCYT4G8US101BlackKeyMetalgrayFKBD

LZ3B MB UMA

[darkod]

Have you tried booting the recovery mode entry (not the normal entry) from the grub boot menu, dropping to a root shell and installing the AMD driver? AMD has linux drivers for download on their website, I hope they work.

When you use the recovery mode and drop to root shell, it's read-only, so you will have to remount root as RW:

mount -o remount,rw /

[Paver]

As I stated earlier, software is my weakness. I will have to figure out what you are referring to.

It will probably be about 10 hrs before I can get back to this project as I have my "to do" list for the day.

Thanks for the quick response & I will get on this this evening.

Signing off for the daylight hours here in south Louisiana.

[Minipalmer]

@Darko: While I have no idea what Pavel is talking about with all the settings he is playing with, I am running on an AMD Radeon HD 7660G graphics card.

Are there pretty frequent problems with AMD graphics cards on Linux machines?

[darkod]

On my desktop I have a board with built-in HD3200 chip and it just works. But I'm not sure about the new APUs from AMD and the integrated graphics inside.

Usually for Nvidia you have to add a boot parameter almost always, for AMD/ATI it's less frequent.

Try this:
In the grub boot menu, highlight the ubuntu entry and hit 'e' for edit. That will show the boot lines.
Use the arrows keys to go towards the end of the line starting with linux, and before the 'quiet splash' add:
radeon.modeset=0

Press F10 or Ctrl + X to boot. See if that helped.

Note that this is a temporary edit, after you reboot it's gone. But it can help booting once, and activating a video driver.

If =0 didn't work, do it again and this time try =1.

In case you have only ubuntu on the machine and the grub boot menu doesn't show at boot, hold Shift to display it while booting.

PS. You always have the option to try and install a driver in the root shell, as I mentioned earlier. If you need detailed help with that, ask.

[YannBuntu]

I will have to research a bit more into this UEFI

You don't need, because you are not using UEFI now, and you don't need to use it.
Your GRUB is now correctly installed and works, so the Ubuntu entry fails because of a kernel or a graphic driver problem. Please follow Darkod's suggestions.

[Paver]

Have you tried booting the recovery mode entry (not the normal entry) from the grub boot menu, dropping to a root shell and installing the AMD driver? AMD has linux drivers for download on their website, I hope they work.

When you use the recovery mode and drop to root shell, it's read-only, so you will have to remount root as RW:

mount -o remount,rw /

darkod,

You need to help me out here please. When you speak of booting in the recovery mode, are you referring to booting live from the USB flash? Would this be the "Start in compatibility mode" when booting from the USB flash?

Showing my ignorance, what do you mean by dropping to a root shell? When booting from the USB flash there is the ability to hit the tab key & view the boot string. This is what is in the "compatibility" option:

> /casper/vmlinuz noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper xforcevesa nomodeset b43.blacklist=yes initrd=/casper/initrd.lz ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw noapic noapci nosplash irqpoll --

If not, what are you referring to? Also, how to install the AMD driver?

Again, showing my lack of software savy, how to remount root??

I looked around AMD's website & have not found drivers for this APU (CPU/GPU). I get the impression this APU released this year. According to Lenovo's website, this notebook did not go on sell untill October of this year. After this post, I will return to AMD's site & look further for a Linux driver.

From an article I found on the web:

The AMD Radeon HD 7660G or HD7660G is a processor graphics card in the Trinity APUs from AMD. It is based on the VLIW4 architecture of the Radeon HD 6900 desktop series.

I am beginning to get a slight grasp of this & apologize for my lack of experience with command line. It has been many years since I have used dos.

If needed, I can copy the .cfg syntax from the USB flash & post.

Thank you for your time & patience.
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Paver