How to install Ubuntu 11.10 on a Lenovo (U)EFI system (tested on S205, B570)

[ivanmmj]

I did the battery drain fix after I installed. Is there a chance that the battery status is inaccurate? This laptop is awesome so I guess I can live with 3.5 hours.

Was the battery life much better in Windows? I never used the Windows that came with it and I bought this laptop to go UP to the current 3.5 hours. My last laptop would only get 30 minutes if I was lucky.

[VoiDeR]

I cringe every time i see the windows entry in grub so no i haven't tested in windows yet. I suppose I should, but i can live with 3.5.

[nobarte]

I’m trying to update my Lenovo BIOS. The update is described on the first post (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...28&postcount=1). Unfortunately I can not cope.

Now build yourself a bootable USB stick with FreeDos. I used the image of the Ultimate BootCD as source for my USB Stick because FreeDos is already built in.

I've done it.

Copy the extracted "lenovo-bios" folder to the usb stick.

After build a bootable USB stick, I've copied "lenovo-bios" folder to USB root directory. Is it correct?

Now boot into FreeDos.

Yes, I can do that.

cd into your "lenovo-bios" folder.

I've stuck here. I do not know how to cd into the folder on my usb stick.

I will be grateful for your help. Thanks.

[oldfred]

That is in DOS and it has been many years.

But cd is still the same in Dos as Linux. But if you have folders the slash is backslash or is it the other way around. I never knew which was which. Linux is / and Dos is \.

cd lenovo-bios

[nobarte]

In my case, FreeDos boots onto A: drive. To get to C: drive, simply type "C:". Then you can type "dir" to see the files.

I'd like to share how I built a USB stick.

• Delete all partitions on your stick
• Create one primary partition and mark it as active
  
  • The boot flag indicates the partition is active or bootable. Only one partition on a disk device can be active.
  
  
• Format that partition using FAT32 (or FAT16)
• Install UNetbootin in your system.
• Insert your blank USB drive into one of your USB ports first. You can launch UNetbootin on Ubuntu through the menu at Applications→System Tools→UNetbootin. You can also launch from the command line with the unetbootin command. You may get prompted to enter your password. UNetbootin should detect your USB drive automatically and select it.
  
  • Click the Select Distribution button and choose FreeDOS.
  • UNetbootin will begin downloading FreeDOS for you and install it to your flash drive.
  
  
• The rest, as described on #1 post...

[zapperlot]

Hello,

the guide in the OP doesnt work for me. I made 4 partitions, one 200 MB EFI, 8GB Swap and EXT4root/home with 25 and ~460GB. Installation complete, reboot -> no OS found on the HDD. So I ran the live version again, used the same partitioning and formatted both EXT4 partitions -> still not bootable.

Whether I choose /dev/sda (the HDD) or dev/sda1 (the EFI partition) for the boot loader doesn't matter. So why doenst it work for me when it works for everyone else, I dont get it.

Ubunu32 will run right? Maybe I should try to install that instead. But I have 8GB RAM so I need a 64bit OS to make use of that right?

[oldfred]

When you boot to install are you in UEFI mode? Or did you select efi to boot not BIOS mode or AHCI?

If you end up installing in BIOS mode it will not install the efi files to the efi partition. You may be able to manually do that after the fact. But in BIOS with gpt partitioning you need a small 1MB bios-grub partition to get grub2's boot loader to install correctly to the gpt protective MBR.

If you're using UEFI 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 EF00 (~100 to -256MiB, FAT32) for UEFI, a BIOS Boot Partition EF02 (~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-1TB disks, so you may need to use another utility to do the partitioning. You do not need both but it does not hurt as both are small, and then you can configure easily to boot with either UEFI or BIOS. You can boot via bios AND efi (after setting up your efi boot entry using efibootmgr or via efi shell and running the efi binary)
AsRock calls BIOS mode AHCI.

grub EFI -skodabenz
1. Most of the modern UEFI systems come with GPT instead of MBR.
2. GRUB needs to be installed to the ESP (EFI SYSTEM PARTITION). The ESP has to be the first partition in the drive, with file system of a FAT variant, and it has to be larger then 100 MiB (200MiB or more recommended). Ubuntu mounts the ESP by default in /boot/efi .
3. After you install grub in the ESP, you need to make a boot entry for it using efibootmgr, or you could launch it with the UEFI shell
EFI boot loader information - srs5694 & skodabenz
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1849160
http://www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/

[Lovegain]

Hello.

I followed the instructions in the first post with my new S205. But the installed system wouldn't boot.

Instead, I found the guide on Roblog more helpful. Except I used the newly stable-released Precise Pangolin 12.04 version. So, basically, this is how I did:

1. I started off with a system marked from several previously failed installation attempts:
   
   • The default Windows partitions had been erased, except forwhat seems like a recovery partition in the end.
   • sda1 contained an EFI syslinux bootloader created by an Arch installation (which was performed by a friend to help troubleshoot the installation process).
   
   
2. Initiating the installer, I checked the option about online upgrades, but not the one about proprietary software.
3. I did partitioning manually: 230 MB /boot ext2, 8 GB swap, and / ext4 for the rest of available space.
4. The rest of the installation proceeded successfully.
5. (This step will probably not affect anyone else ) At reboot, the Arch created syslinux bootloader was started. So I rebooted into the LiveUSB again, and simply removed that partition through GParted (after taking a backup).
6. After rebooting, the installed system went up nicely.

So how about the system now? Many seem to have problems with wireless networking. For me, on 12.04, I could immediately connect to my WPA home network. However I can't record sound so I guess some (missing) driver is at fault - perhaps because I unchecked that installation option. Playing sound is fine though sound quality is kind of meh. But maybe that's just cheap hardware?

Good luck!

[moteprime]

@Lovegain
Glad to hear that it works well for you.
There seems to be 5-6 different hardware versions of the s205 and they have different WiFi problems. The one problem that most have are not to get WiFi connected, but getting a stable network speed higher that 70-80Kb/sec.

[scorptig]

OK for those of you getting error :

prefix error not set

That's while attempting to install any 64 bit Linux installation & then upon reboot you get this error :

error: invalid arch independent ELF magic.

Previous issues without this EFI partition :

missing firmware : iwlwifi-1000-6.ucode

during install process.

This thread How to Install on a Lenovo (U)EFI system

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1959458

In my case with a Lenovo Z570 i5 CPU, the solution worked well.

However I did following :

Using a live Partition Magic disk and GParted, I created the first logical partition 50 megs FAT 16 and Gparted gave me option to designate as EFI.
As well in my installation I was able to make more partitions.

terminal df-h output

/dev/sda2        12G  580M   11G   5% /
udev            3.9G  4.0K  3.9G   1% /dev
tmpfs           1.6G  868K  1.6G   1% /run
none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none            3.9G  152K  3.9G   1% /run/shm
/dev/sda1        50M  120K   50M   1% /boot/efi
/dev/sda7        12G  310M   12G   3% /tmp
/dev/sda3        15G  3.3G   11G  23% /usr
/dev/sda6        10G  280M  9.2G   3% /opt
/dev/sda9       639G   11G  597G   2% /home
/dev/sda5       8.0G  1.2G  6.5G  15% /var

Thank you for post, this solved my 64 bit installation issue, note I tried alternate disk, did not work, however the Desktop edition of Ubuntu 12.04 booted into desktop without issues..and permitted installation.

Additional note, in my case, Network, Brightness, no issues, all worked without any other steps, latest BIOS 38 installed for Z570 i5-2410