Struggling to install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to newly built PC

[oldfred]

If it has installed everything but grub, lets see what this says.

Lets see details, use ppa version with your live installer (2nd option) or any working install, not older Boot-Repair ISO:
Please copy & paste the pastebin link to the Boot-info summary report ( do not post report), do not run the auto fix till reviewed.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair &
https://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair/home/Home/

[flexbriggs]

When you say live installer, do you mean while I'm still "trying ubuntu"? And sorry, I'm not following the instructions clearly. You want me to use the 2nd option and install boot-repair and use the recommended repair, then copy paste the log link afterwards?

And this is AFTER or BEFORE an attempted install of ubuntu 20.04?

Note: When I run boot-repair after a grub-install failure ubuntu install attempt, I get the following messages: /boot detected. Please check the options. I click OK and I'm brought to the boot-repair menu. I choose recommended repair and I get the errror message: /target detected. Please close the Ubuntu installer, then retry. The ubuntu installer is not open (to my knowledge). If it is, somehow in the background? how would I close that? Or am I supposed to be running boot-repair right when I boot into
a live usb ubuntu (before trying to install ubuntu 20.04 to the nvme)

Edit: I ran boot-repair using the advanced option, and got the following link ----> https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/Vqq9shPsz4/

[oldfred]

I do not think Ubuntu live installer installer mounts /target until you start install.
It is both an installer and a flash drive you want to always have to make repairs. Just like you have a Windows repair flash drive.
I keep multiple flash drives, but usually have a full install & some or most of my backup data on them also.

You show one ESP - efi system partition nvme0n1p1, but report shows no Windows UEFI boot files and shows an old BIOS boot loader in MBR????
Windows only boots from gpt partitioned drives with UEFI from ESP. Did you tell Ubuntu installer to reformat the ESP during install & it then erased your Windows boot files?
You can only fix that using a Windows repair disk and a full set of repairs to restore the .efi & support boot files to ESP.

I prefer to have an ESP on each drive. But Ubuntu's Ubiquity installer only installs to first ESP seen, usually the Windows drive.

Posted work around to manually unmount & mount correct ESP during install #23 & #26
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...y/+bug/1396379
Some have posted just removing boot/esp flags from Windows ESP and adding an ESP with those flags on the Ubuntu drive also works.
Some also in UEFI change Windows drive to "disabled" so not seen from Ubuntu installer.

Ubuntu does not now require swap partition, but uses a swap file. It will use swap partition if found. Those with servers still suggest a swap partition, but otherwise you should not need it.

Please review link in my signature below.

Some like to separate / (root) from data with either partition(s) for /home and/or data.

[flexbriggs]

Hey @oldfred thanks for the reply. So you're telling me that the EFI partition on my windows hard drive was changed during an Ubuntu install? And that it was GPT and now it's MBR, and I need to repair that in the windows OS?
I was able to boot to my windows hard drive just fine... And in disk management the efi partition says healthy..
What do I do to repair that?

I'll attempt an install using #23 and #26. By the way, how would you disable the Windows drive? That seems like it could work. And removing/adding flags would be done in GParted right?

[oldfred]

My older motherboard's UEFI have 'disabled' settings for drives. And it is same entry as changing to AHCI. Mine seems to be an all or nothing, but newer systems should have a per drive as NVMe devices are often hard to remove and are not really designed to be installed & removed a lot.

Gparted is one way to change flags. You can use terminal commands and if Gnome, Disks Utility (which I do not recommend for most things).

[flexbriggs]

Hey @oldfred I removed the boot flag on the Windows EFI partition before entering the install, and I also attempted your #23 solution of umount and mount on the /target/boot/efi (Just to make sure, that would be mounting the EFI partition
of my linux hard drive nvme1, correct?), and I am still getting the grub-error. I feel like I'm running out of solutions here, and may just resort to running a virtual machine of linux instead.

[oldfred]

Did you check what mount the installer had?
And was the partition you mounted flagged as an ESP?

And if install otherwise completed, you often can just use Boot-Repair to install/reinstall grub.

[flexbriggs]

The EFI partion of the nvme needs to be on /target/boot/efi, correct? I did check and it was correct, but I unmounted and mounted it again.

[oldfred]

Sounds about right.

I normally check mounts before I start. Then as password screen as by then it has added the required mounts. And that is where I change it.

From one of my installs:

# mount of ESP does not show until about end of username & password entry screen
ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ history
    1  mount
    2  sudo umount /target/boot/efi
    3  sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /target/boot/efi
    4  mount
    5  history

[flexbriggs]

Right, I did exactly that... but instead of sdc1 I did nvme1n1p1 or something along those lines. I coped the directory from fdisk -l