[CIRCUMVENTED]: unable to install new siduction or debian in a UEFI PC desktop

[orca]

Hi there,

I used to have a functional(old) siduction release in my PC desktop. I screwed it up after a d-u and then decided to go for a brand-new release. I tried both from the latest siduction 13.2.1 dvd iso and from the Debian 7.5.0 netinst iso, with the same error after a seemingly normal installation to the hard disk (in fact a Samsung SSD disk): right after the first boot, there comes the error message (for both linuxes)

error: file `/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod` not found

and then it goes to grub rescue mode...

I should say that I suspect the issue is related somehow to the UEFI vs Legacy booting system of the machine. In fact, the media I used for siduction was a burnt dvd, from the downloaded iso, whereas for Debian I used a usb-stick, recorded from the corresponding downloaded iso. I am only able to boot, in both cases, when the Intel booting system is chosen as UEFI, never as Legacy. Now I will describe my hardware in detail:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770
Motherboard: Intel DH87MC
Bios: Intel MCH8710H.86A.0043.2013.0412.2225 (I know there is a more recent version in their site, but do not get much excited about upgrading to it, but perhaps this might be worth a try...)
Graphics card: NVIDIA GK107 (GeForce GTX 650)
Hard disk 1: Seagate ST2000DM001, with 2.0 TB, at /dev/sda, originally partitioned as /dev/sda1: swap, /dev/sda2: my old home, from previous installations, and /dev/sd3: my desired new /home
"Hard" disk 2: Samsung SSD 840, with 256 GB, at /dev/sdb, originally partitioned as /dev/sdb1: fat (flagged as boot), and /dev/sdb2: /

Besides, I have usual cd/dvd drive, American USB Logitech keyboard and Logitech USB mouse

Some random observations or doubts of mine, which may or may not be pertinent, are:
1) with this new UEFI/Legacy stuff, I really am unsure about the correct partitioning for preparing the installation from the cd/dvd (or, in case of Debian, from the usb-stick) to the SSD disk. The partitioning i tried was as described above, but I remember, during the Debian trial, that the installer compalined of not existing a UEFI partition (or the like) and, nevertheless, I kept going on
2) indeed, in the root partition /, after the misleadingly apparently succesful installation, I checked (both under siduction and under debian) that there was no directory i386-pc but there was one named boot/grub, with several .mod files and one named grub.efi and another one named normal.mod (SIC)
3) when I use the siduction live dvd and am able to get into a working live environment (only through the choice of UEFI in the Intel booting stage), I am given automatically a plain KDE desktop environment, never passing through an intermediate step in which I might choose some lower submenus identified by F2, F5, etc keys
4) if I insist on trying to boot with the Legacy Bios mode, I end up with a screen such as in https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4036227/20140622_180210.jpg
and pressing any key takes me a kind of terminal window in which I am asked to choose one of 3 possibilities: siduction amd64, a second and a third ones I don't remember. Anyhow, choosing whichever leads me nowhere

Well, I have chatted a lot with several people at #siduction, today and also yesterday, but with no success. I would like to again thank everybody and I really hope you can give me some solution: I just want to keep using siduction, but I am getting somewhat helpless, since I cannot now even begin to have problems with it...

Cheers!

[piper]

Have a look at

https://communities.intel.com/thread/48964
and
http://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=4254.0

[GoinEasy9]

I have a feeling you didn't create an ESP partition, which is where UEFI stores its bootloaders.  Also, the regular iso that siduction releases will only boot in UEFI fully, when burnt to a usb stick using syslinux.  While what is needed for UEFI functionality are contained in the iso, booting into to the live iso on cd/dvd or usb stick, using dd or some other workable usb stick burner, does not bring you into a full UEFI environment.  I was also fooled by this when I first got my UEFI motherboard.

Look at my post here: http://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=4254.0 - After being frustrated for a long time, I finally figured out how to make a bootable, UEFI enabled, usb stick, and, documented what the UEFI install needed.

Edit: Damn piper you beat me to it.

[piper]

Edit: Damn piper you beat me to it.

lol,

[orca]

Thanks piper and GoinEasy9! I will take a look at the links and report back.

[orca]

Hi GoinEasy9 and piper,

I have good news and some doubts regarding GoinEasy9's excellent message at http://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=4254.0 before proceeding to the full hd-installation.

First the good news:
1) i have now been able, following your procedure, to boot from the usb-stick, with UEFI mode, something I had never been able to using dd to burn the (siduction 13.2.1-kde-amd64) iso to the usb-stick. Thanks a lot!

Then the doubts, some perhaps peripheral, but one of them which seems crucial to me:
1) when booting from the UEFI-enabled usb-stick, the process goes straight to a live siduction desktop KDE environment, without presenting any intermediate stage, with selectable menus from the F* keys. In fact, it passes throught a GRUB 2.0-22 menu, with three entries, of which I chose the default first one. I just expected perhaps for those other F* keys menus to appear sometime, but I guess this is no big deal at all, right?
2) I have a former partition, in my (SSD /dev/sb) drive which is unallocated, comprising only 2 GB, and which used to be a fat partition, but in these last two days, during this ordeal, I managed to screw it and cannot help recovering it. I guess this is no big dealt either, except for the fact that is flagged as b(oot). Should I be concerned with that?
3) *CRUCIAL*: in the stage of Mountpoint Definitions, I understood and configured the /home mount point to the device sda3. But, as concerns the instructions for the efi stuff, I was able to use the click button entitled "Freitext" (sic: German, not English) and enter /boot/efi; however, what is exactly I have to choose for the corresponding Device? Is it sdc1, as per your example, because that's the place where we have, right now, the UEFI-enabled stuff? Or is it something else? Finally, will it be mounted on boot as well?

If it helps, the partition scheme which I intend to use, according to gparted, during the install process, is:

Device | Label             | Size         | Part. type |  FSys
sda1                             2000MiB                       swap
sda2      OLD_HOME       14GiB                          ext4
sda3                             1719GiB                       ext4
sdb1                             2000MiB     b
sdb2                             236GiB                         ext4
sdc1                             1967MiB                       vfat

The sda corresponds to a usual Seagate hard disk, with  around 2TiB; the sdb corresponds to a Samsung SSD, with around 250GiB, and sdc corresponds to the UEFI-enabled usb-stick with the live siduction distro.

Thanks again for the help!!!

[orca]

I have reread Goineasy9's post http://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=4254.0, particularly the paragraphs:

MOUNTING THE ESP (/boot/efi) AND HOME (/home)
Here you want to mount the ESP and /home partitions (if you choose to make a separate /home partition).  The dropdown menu contains a choice for /home, so as long as you choose /home and match it to the correct partition on the left, and, then hit "ADD", your /home will be mounted at boot.

Since there is no choice for /boot/efi in the dropdown menu, click the button below the mountpoint window and manually enter /boot/efi.  Now, make sure it's matched to the partition where the ESP resides, (You jotted that down earlier, right?  If not, you can always go back and look.), and, don't forget to click "Add".

On new disks or for fresh installs that use the whole disk, that partition should be sda1.  If you're adding siduction to a UEFI machine that already contains other OS's, it's probably sda1 also.  Then again, the ESP doesn't need to be on the first disk partition.  For example, if you converted an old mbr install to UEFI, you could place the ESP anywhere on the disk (restricted possibly by being on a primary partition).

I got really confused: in the case of my very last post, what is the exact device I should choose to have mounted on /boot/efi? The only thing which seems to be "matched to the partition where the ESP rsides, (You jotted that down earlier, right?..."is the usb-stick sdc1 device, but the following paragraph quoted above seems to deny this. In fact, my hd-install will use 2 disks (sda and sdb), with sdb2 for the / mount point and sda3 for /home mountpoint, both being ext4 partitions. I do not really know the device I should ascribe to /boot/efi and whether is has to be a device specifically associated to only this mount point... If so, it cannot be any of the existing devices, because they are all full with:
sda1: swap
sda2: my old home, from a former siduction installation (ext4)
sda3: my intended new /home (ext4)
sdb1: unallocated ("useless" partition, which I was not able to format or "recover"). It used to be a fat partition...
sdb2: the new / (ext4)
sdc1: the UEFI-enabled usb-stick "place"

Should I create a new specific partition/device to associate with /boot/efi? If so, what is recommended i nmy case? If so, what should be its File system: fat32 for instance?? The only things I demand are: preserving my old home (current sda2) partition and having the / system in the SSD device (sdb); apart from that, I can, if necessary, change, resize, delete, format any partitions at all! If it woud make things easier still, I might even backup my old /home partition and then erase everything from both disks and start from scratch, but I would consider this my last option.

I am lost...

[GoinEasy9]

Sorry, I'm at work and don't have a lot of time.

Your SDA should contain the ESP, /boot/efi.  It must be fat32 or fat16 and at least 200mb. 

[orca]

Hi there

I guess I have been able to prepare a EFI System Partition (ESP) in my machine right in the /dev/sdb1 partition, by using mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sdb1. I checked it turned out to be a fat32 with boot flag, by using gparted. So I think this is now the device which must be mounted on /boot/efi.

I have a new doubt, however, in the window "Bootloader and Timezone" of the sidu-installer: For Bootmanager, I guess I should use GRUB (not None), but and for Installation Target, what should I use? Masterboot-Sector, Partition or sda or sdb?? I guess it is no longer Masterboot-Sector, since I am in a UEFI machine; in fact, I would bet in sdb, but am not sure at all... Is this the correct choice? Are there any other possible choices, having these two hard disks with the aforementioned partitions??

Cheers

[orca]

I have tried a total hd-install, after apparently having created succesfully a fat32 /dev/sb1 (resurrected with mkfs.vfat command) with boot flag mounted at /boot/efi, and choosing GRUB for Bootmanager and sdb for Install Target, but *no success* :-(  After reboot (with UEFI enabled firmware), there came the usual error:

error: file `/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue>

My hopes are at their lowest... :-(

[GoinEasy9]

From looking at your original partitions, you must have had siduction installed in legacy mode, since there was no fat32 partition on sda.  Then, you installed a new version of siduction in UEFI mode, on sdb.  Could it be that the motherboard is still using legacy mode?  That's one observation.

When you go into your bios when booting.  What are your boot options?  I have an ASUS motherboard, and have never seen the UEFI boot screen on an Intel, but, you should have options to boot into the OS directly from that screen, if in fact UEFI is recognizing your new installation.

I have 4 distros on my machine.  Each of them I boot directly from the UEFI boot screen.  ASUS calls it EZ-Mode.  If you successfully installed siduction in UEFI mode.  It should have placed itself in the default 0001 position, and you machine should boot directly into it.  You shouldn't need to go into the UEFI screen, but, you should also see an option there, and, be able to boot siduction from within that screen.  If that option isn't there, you messed up the new install.

Look at my setup:
Model: ATA ST1500DM003-9YN1 (scsi)                                                                               
Disk /dev/sda: 1500GB                                                                                           
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B                                                                       
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name                  Flags
1      1049kB  206MB   204MB   fat16           EFI System Partition  boot
2      206MB   1279MB  1074MB  ext3                                  msftdata
3      1279MB  377GB   376GB   ext4                                  msftdata
4      377GB   420GB   42.9GB  ext4                                  msftdata
5      420GB   437GB   17.2GB  linux-swap(v1)
6      437GB   469GB   32.2GB  ext4                                  msftdata
7      469GB   845GB   376GB   ext4                                  msftdata
8      845GB   877GB   32.2GB  ext4                                  msftdata
9      877GB   1253GB  376GB   ext4                                  msftdata
10      1253GB  1254GB  1074MB  ext4                                  msftdata
11      1254GB  1500GB  246GB   ext4                                  msftdata


Model: ATA OCZ-VERTEX3 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 120GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
1      1049kB  1075MB  1074MB  primary   fat32
2      1075MB  2149MB  1074MB  primary   ext4
3      2149MB  45.1GB  42.9GB  primary   ext4
4      45.1GB  120GB   74.9GB  extended
5      45.1GB  77.3GB  32.2GB  logical   ext4
6      77.3GB  110GB   32.2GB  logical   ext4

I also have an SSD installed and partitioned, and I planned on doing something similar to your adventure.  But I started using UEFI after I built the machine, and, have the initial ESP on the first partition of my HDD.  So, you have something miss configured in UEFI somewhere.

I'm wondering if disconnecting the HDD and putting the SSD into the first position might help.  You can reformat the SSD, partiton it with the ESP in the first partition, then reinstall.  After making sure that your UEFI options are set correctly, and you point to /boot/efi during install, and, you write grub to a partition.  After you have a working install, you could reconnect the HDD and mount it as a data disk.

[orca]

Dear all,

I have finally been able to have siduction 13.2.1 december-kde-amd64 installed to my hard disk.

This was acomplished by means of an updating of the Intel VIsiual Bios firmware for my motherboard (Intel DH87MC). After this updating, at first, I still tried the installation via UEFI boot, from a live dvd, but that still kept not working. Then, I decided to try via Legacy boot, and it went smoothly with the usual GRUB and MasterBoot-Sector.

Thus, properly speaking, I did not solve the problem with UEFI installation itselt, but circumvented it, by going to the tradiitional Legacy one. At the end of the day (in fact, some 5 days), I learnt a bit more about Linux and the important thing, for me, was that I have again a working machine :-)

Thank you all for your patience, suggestions and excellent work with siduction in general!

[piper]

Good deal