Installing Ubuntu 13.04 on a New Asus Q500A Laptop.

[fantab]

It should preferably be the first partition, but I think it can be any partition within the first 100GB of the SSD/HDD. If its not too late then I suggest you make your first partition on SSD as EFI partition (EFI partition is ordinary partition, formatted with FAT32 with a 'boot' flag on it):

300MB FAT32 and put a 'boot' flag on it. You can put a 'boot' flag on it from gparted, right click on the partition ->'manage flags'->boot

[oldfred]

I bought a new SSD about a year and a half ago, but planned on a new system last summer. So I formatted drive as gpt, added both efi partition for future use and a bios_grub partition for booting with my current BIOS. Intel just released new chips so I may be building new system soon.

Model: ATA SSD G2 series 64 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 60.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name     Flags
 1      1049kB  316MB   315MB   fat32                 boot
 2      316MB   317MB   1049kB                        bios_grub
 3      317MB   30.2GB  29.9GB  ext4         Precise
 4      30.2GB  60.0GB  29.9GB  ext4         Quantal

See my signature for accumulated UEFI issue and many links to more info.

[irv]

Thanks fantab and oldfred for the all the info, I will try getting the external SSD going again when I get home, am on the road again.
Maybe one more quick questing. The first time I tried to install Ubuntu on the SSD, I installed it in the laptop. It booted but it seemed to have graphic problems and few other things wrong with the install so I pulled the drive out of the laptop and have been trying to get it working this way: I l put it in a external case and plugged it into the USB port. I got a feeling that every time it tries to boot the grub is pointing to the first install (internal drive) and not the external. (sda and not sdc or sdb which ever one it is) I never changed the default location of the boot loader when I installed it. Any thought on this?

[ubfan1]

The EFI partition does not need to be the first one, just the only one bootable. I wouldn't put it too far into the disk, but within 4G should be OK. Select the fat32 format, and set the bootable flag, I think that's all you need to do. You can easily set up the EFI partition manually -- the partition contains an EFI directory, and under that directory put Boot and ubuntu directories. For removable media, and not secure boot, you should set the /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi file to be a copy of the UNSIGNED grubx64.efi. The grub.cfg file (or just a stub which pulls in the copy in /boot/grub) should be in /EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg. You can store other files in the directories. Usually, the /EFI/ubuntu directory is set up with a copy of shim.efi, grubx64.efi, and gcdx64.efi, and you can even add the signed copies if you want to play around with secure boot. Just for anyone else reading who does need secure boot, the EFI setup would be: make /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi a copy of shimx64.efi, and have a copy of the SIGNED grubx64.efi in the /EFI/Boot directory also, with the grub.cfg still in /EFI/ubuntu.

[irv]

I am going to go in a completely different direction. I just picked up a used Dell inspiron 1521 laptop off of ebay. My old dell died and I have been looking for a motherboard but this worked out even better. I got the whole laptop for the price of a motherboard so all I did was install my memory and SSD and reinstalled Ubuntu. But I went with 12.04 because 13.04 was giving me issues. Mouse and touch pad would not respond. 12.04 is working just great so I am going to stay with that for now.
Down the road I plan on installing Ubuntu on the Asus alongside Win 8, but for now I will just used my Dell. It boots in 20 seconds so when I need it I can just fire it up.

[irv]

Well, this morning I jumped in. I went ahead and installed Ubuntu 13.04 along side Windows 8. Now here is where I am now.
After completing the install and doing a reboot, it booted into Windows 8. Never got a grub menu. So I followed these steps.
While in Windows 8, I went to setting > Change PC Settings. Got the window with setting changes and selected General on the left side and Restart now on the right side. Then selected Use A device then Ubuntu.
The computer rebooted and went to the grub menu.
Now my options on the grub are as following:
Ubuntu
Advance Options for Ubuntu
Windows Recovery Environment (loader) on /dev/sda2
Window 8 (loader (on /dev/sda4)
System Setup

If I try to go into Ubuntu I get nothing. Computer just sits with a blank screen for a long time.
If I try going into Advance Options for Ubuntu I get this on the screen:
Loading Linux 3.8.0-19 generic....
Loading initial ramdisk
And then it sits at that screen and does nothing for a long time.
Finely I just reboot and it starts Windows 8 again.
I tried this several times and it does the same thing. Not sure where to go from here?

I did boot back into the the live OS and check gparted and everything looks good. I could do it again if someone needs to look at a screen shot. Oh, one other thing, I had to shut off fast boot and disabled security.

Edit: here is the screen shot of gparted. gparted screen.png

[oldfred]

That is most likely a video issue, but could be other boot parameters to configure kernel or drives to work.

What video card/chip.

How to set NOMODESET and other kernel boot options in grub2 - both liveCD & first boot, but different
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions
Graphics Resolution- Upgrade /Blank Screen after reboot mega thread - MAFoElffen
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1743535

Have you run Boot-Repair. The default Windows boot options that os-prober creates are just for BIOS and have not been fixed to be correct for UEFI. But Boot-Repair will add correct entries. See also my signature for details.

What model Asus? Several have only been able to boot K55N in BIOS mode and it works. They can install in UEFI mode but video never works. That would be a bug in the UEFI.
But many other Asus have worked.

[SOLVED] Dual Boot on Asus K55vd SX696H - 8 GB (Solved) EFI
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2151394
Asus N56VJ-SH71-CD Shows default Windows partitions Post #25 install instructions
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2105622
ASUS K55A Windows 8 & Ubuntu Some Asus need this boot parameter pci=nomsi
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2088499
Asus x202e dual boot Win 8 full and Ubuntu post #13
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2092966
Asus UltraBook - kernel comparisons K56CA
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMzOTI
Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A (UEFI) Blank screen resolved by turning secure boot off, many tests of Boot parameters
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2086054

[irv]

I am still working on this problem. so far I ran the grub repair (which fix the grub. now I get the grub at boot up. It will boot into windows but not Ubuntu.
Next I booted into the live OS and did a

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub in a terminal.

I changed the line to read

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

But when I went to save the grub file I got this error.
error.png

Also I checked the graphic card and I have a Intel (R) Graphics 4000 in the Asus Q500A

[oldfred]

You cannot change the grub entry from a liveCD unless you do a full chroot. The sudo update-grub has to be from inside your install. Your error message is that it cannot write back to the live install.

You can use e at grub menu and scroll down to linux line and replace quiet splash with nomodeset. That is a one time change but if it does not work you can usually return to grub menu and experiment with other or both nomodeset & other boot parameters.

[irv]

That's what I was thinking. But from the linked post it didn't have a clear way of changing the grub. Not being able to get into the installed Ubuntu on the hard drive I have no way of changing it. Will I have to do another install? I am not even sure if it is a graphic issues. I get good graphics from the live OS. And running off the USB stick everything just works. I wish there were clear instructions on how to install Ubuntu on this new hardware. I could always install Ubuntu on older hardware, but this new hardware is confusing.