Grub fails to install in a VirtualBox installation of Ubuntu MATE Groovy Aug 01, 2020

[jagsdesai]

I have installed Groovy in VirtualBox.
The installation failed without the "Enable EFI" setting.
This is however on a computer that supports EFI, but try to install with the EFI setting.

Yes, I can confirm that the installation went through after selecting "Enable EFI" option in VirtualBox settings, and Groovy runs fine afterwards.

EDIT: Forgot to add, installation went through fine with manual partitioning.

But as I said in my original post, I intentionally did not select it previously, even after few failed installations, as I wanted to know why the Groovy installer needed EFI to be enabled because Focal installer did not need it.

Now this raises a question (if anyone have the answer) that, since this was a VM, I was able to enable the EFI but, how would you install Groovy on an actual hardware with BIOS (no UEFI at all)?

Thank you all.

Screen for Enable EFI option in VirtualBox:

https://i.imgur.com/ED7TDIF.jpg

[saivinoba2]

@jagsdesai,

I tested several scenarios today and following are my observations.

1) Groovy ISOs now default to GPT partitioning scheme by default.
a) If we booted in BIOS mode, this will create minimum three partitions, 1M 'BIOS grub', 512M as 'EFI System Partition' for /boot/efi and remaining for /.
b) If we booted in UEFI mode, this will create two partitions, 512M as 'EFI System Partition' for /boot/efi and remaining for /
c) If we are doing manual partitioning, it is not mandatory to create a BIOS grub partition. Just and EFI partition and root partition is sufficient.

2) Focal ISOs default to MBR partitioning if booted in BIOS mode and GPT if booted in UEFI mode. However, I noticed, for BIOS mode, Focal will offer following partitioning scheme,
a) during install but before grub-install: 512M as W95 FAT32 (/dev/sda1) and remaining for / (/dev/sda5, extended partition)
b) after grub-install: 512M /dev/sda1 will change time to ef (EFI FAT 16/24/32). It will be mounted as /boot/efi (or /target/boot/efi during install).

For your test case, you can do following.
a) create only EFI partition (200M should be enough). Do not format and choose /boot/efi as mount point.
b) if you create BIOS grub, then,
i) BIOS grub should be the first partition not second. It is enough if it is 1M not 1G. Should not be formatted and no mount point to be assigned.
ii) create an EFI system partition, do not format and mount as /boot/efi

You had created 1G BIOS grub but as second partition. BIOS grub has to be the first partition.

If you are still planning on testing, please use above suggestion to verify.