To anybody on this list not already familiar with EFI or
{Trusted,Secure} Boot, you may wish to read up on EFI if you'll
configure a new consumer x86 system. I reference a few links I've
vetted, below in case you don't know where to start. I've kept you CCed
for that.
On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 09:13:25AM -0500, Eric Brackenbury wrote:
> Having a bit of a brain teaser at the moment.
> I have been running Ubuntu 12.04 on all my machines but out of
> curiosity I tried putting 13.10 on my Thinkpad X120e,
I run a rolling-release distro and would be fine with 13.10. You may or
may not wish to wait four months for the LTS release, 14.04.
> it has a 250gig SDD which ran 12.04 just fine.
Likely just generic AHCI. I doubt you'll have driver problems.
> I looked at the partitions and saw it had an efi boot partition before
> I tried the 13.10 from a thumb drive.
Please look at the earlier thread that R. P. Day started.
http://www.oclug.on.ca/archives/linux/2013-October/004363.html
> I went through the standard install procedure
Which likely won't won't work unless Ubuntu automagically installs
itself differently depending on whether it was EFI or BIOS-booted, and
whether or not the target system is EFI or BIOS.
I wouldn't depend on automagical, only on something that would
explicitly ask me. Anyhow, installing something on EFI manually on a
more transparent distro isn't that hard. I've done it before on
something EFIish (Macbook Pro 6,2, and 10,1—Yes, I *used* to be a Mac
noob). In spite of all the bloat Ubuntu has on top, I wouldn't imagine
it being that hard to swap out the boot loader, etc.
You really should get a whole background on EFI before attempting to
install. I'll quote something I sent R. P. Day but not the list:
On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 09:27:17AM -0400, Alex Pilon wrote:
> […] you may find the following useful.
>
> * http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/principles.html
> * http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/efi-boot-process.html
The two above in particular.
> * http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/efistub.html
I boot using efistub, with rEFInd passing the arguments to the image.
> * http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html
> * http://www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/index.html
>
> They're not just HOWTOs; they actually explain (U)EFI.
>
> […]
>
> Do you also have ‘secure boot’ in there?
>
> * http://www.rodsbooks.com/secure-boot/index.html
> * http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/secureboot.html
>
> You may need to work around that too.
>
> Once that's all done, you may want to change the default boot option by
> setting a few EFI variables, which are stored in NVRAM.
>
On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 09:13:25AM -0500, Eric Brackenbury wrote:
> till I hit "install" when it told me to go back and put an efi
> partition of at least 35megs right at the beginning,
The Ubuntu installer?
> that meant starting all over so I did.
I doubt Ubuntu had anything in there that depended on hard-coded
partition layout. Couldn't you have just tarred the filesystem,
repartitioned, and untarred?
> to cut a long story short after three attempts I decided to use the
> latest gparted IOS and partition before installing so as to make sure
> the efi was correctly placed.
Unless you have very odd firmware, I'm not sure how EFI depends on
partition placement. If I recall correctly, it depends on label and/or
partition code.
> So whats happening is on reboot after installing the hard drive cannot
> be found whichever way I installed.
Really? Or the appropriate *boot option* cannot be found?
> I did go into the BIOS
I thought this was EFI? If you colloquially mean ‘some configuration
menu offered by the firmware before handing off boot to something on
secondary storage’, fine.
> and make sure UEFI was enabled in both USB and SATA locations,
You have to explicitly enable EFI booting instead of CSM per-medium? It
won't just scan for EFI partitions or give you the option to try to
CSM-boot?
> also I tried a DVD install
What do you mean? That you plugged in a portable DVD drive?
> as person on a Ubuntu forum in the UK suggested that would work,
Your troubles should be agnostic from the installation medium.
> the laptop is from Oct 2012 and the SDD is less
> than 6 months old so all hardware is current.
I don't think that this is a hardware problem at all. It's more likely a
firmware issue, or just a misunderstanding about EFI.
> I hope I have provided enough information for someone to perhaps make a
> suggestion or two.
Call?
> 13.10 works fine on this machine installed on a spinning disc
Do you mean that CSM-booting the stock live Ubuntu DVD works?
Regards,
Alex Pilon
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