New laptop, 12.04.1 failing to boot after install

[rfakhrai]

A preface: I've been using kubuntu for years but I just bought a new laptop and wiped windows 8 off it and now I'm struggling to catch up with UEFI and GPT technology in order to get a working copy of 12.04 on there.

Here's what I've done:

1) created a 150MB partition at the beginning of the drive. FAT32, boot flag, set to mount on /boot/efi
2) ran boot-repair and ticked the checkbox to separate the /boot/efi partition.
3) Here's the output of boot-repair

So I figured at this point grub had been replaced with grub-efi and I'd be set to boot. I restarted and the grub screen came up grey this time instead of black as before. And neither of the options (one is recovery mode) get me anywhere. They both give me a grey screen that goes nowhere. Recovery mode does not give me any error messages which is disconcerting. Does anyone see anything glaringly obvious with my setup? I was purposefully sparse on details because the pastebin has most of the info.

BTW, when I tried to force my install back to legacy, the laptop did not recognize the drive. And I have not seen an option in BIOS to toggle between legacy and UEFI boot. Any help? Thanks!

[GreyGeek]

There is a section of this forum about UEFI problems. An admin will probably move your post there. Steve Riley has done a lot with UEFI but if you box doesn't have an switch in UEFI to disable secure boot then I am afraid that you've been screwed.

IMO, preventing the installation of Linux is the entire purpose of UEFI.

[rfakhrai]

That is what I was afraid of. However I have disabled secure boot so potentially I'm not screwed yet. I apologize, I hadn't seen Steve's section on uefi. Hopefully an admin can move my post there and we can move forward to a solution!

[luckyone]

Some implementations of UEFI are so poor (A Lenovo laptop was mentioned in the article I read) that they only look for a string that says Windows blah blah. In other words it's looking for that string and nothing else. I believe GreyGeek had the link I followed.

It is under Miscellaneous Linux Info/UEFI Assistance/More in the series of bizarre UEFI bugs.
Found it:
http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...arre-UEFI-bugs

[SteveRiley]

I've had no problems installing Kubuntu or Ubuntu on my Lenovo ThinkPad T520 and X1. I am installing in UEFI mode with Secure Boot disabled.

Lines 716-720 in your pastebin indicate that the computer wasn't booted into UEFI mode during the repair. While I've never tried digesting a full boot-repair before, this appears to be the crux of your problem. If you want to clear off everything you have and begin with a pristine machine to set up, here's what I'd suggest.

1. Create a bootable USB drive with GParted Live.

2. Insert the USB drive and power up your computer. Press whatever key you need to start the boot interrupt sequence -- on a Lenovo, that's F12.

3. You will see the UEFI boot manager menu. If you have enabled UEFI's BIOS compatibility mode, the menu should contain two entries for the USB drive: one for UEFI mode and one for BIOS mode (possibly not labeled "BIOS," however). If you have not enabled BIOS compatibility mode, the menu should contain only one entry for the USB drive.

4. Boot into UEFI mode.

5. Once the boot has finished, open a command prompt. Run sudo -i to become the root user.

6. Run gdisk /dev/sda and kill everything: press X for expert mode, press Z to zap all partitions, and answer yes to all questions.

7. Run efibootmgr -v and examine the output. You should see many of the same things that appear in your firmware's setup menus. Near the end of the list, you should also see some entries for boot loaders. For example, I have three:

Boot0019* Ubuntu recovery mode  HD(1,28,100000,35a3de7a-7015-4855-b882-1c8e9432b8fe)File(\EFI\ubuntu\vmlinuz-3.5-generic.efi)r.o.o.t.=./.d.e.v./.s.d.a.2. .r.o. .n.o.x.2.a.p.i.c. .n.o.m.o.d.e.s.e.t. .r.e.c.o.v.e.r.y...
Boot001A* Ubuntu, with Linux 3.5        HD(1,28,100000,35a3de7a-7015-4855-b882-1c8e9432b8fe)File(\EFI\ubuntu\vmlinuz-3.5-generic.efi)r.o.o.t.=./.d.e.v./.s.d.a.2. .r.o. .n.o.x.2.a.p.i.c. .e.l.e.v.a.t.o.r.=.n.o.o.p. .a.c.p.i._.o.s.i.=.L.i.n.u.x. .p.c.i.e._.a.s.p.m.=.f.o.r.c.e. .r.a.i.d.=.n.o.a.u.t.o.d.e.t.e.c.t...
Boot001B* Ubuntu, with Linux 3.6        HD(1,28,100000,35a3de7a-7015-4855-b882-1c8e9432b8fe)File(\EFI\ubuntu\vmlinuz-3.6-generic.efi)r.o.o.t.=./.d.e.v./.s.d.a.2. .r.o. .n.o.x.2.a.p.i.c. .e.l.e.v.a.t.o.r.=.n.o.o.p. .a.c.p.i._.o.s.i.=.L.i.n.u.x. .p.c.i.e._.a.s.p.m.=.f.o.r.c.e. .r.a.i.d.=.n.o.a.u.t.o.d.e.t.e.c.t...

Mine look this way because I no longer use GRUB but instead configure UEFI to boot the kernel directly. It's more probable that you'll see entries for Windows and for GRUB.

8. Delete each entry that corresponds to an operating system boot loader. Use the command efibootmgr -b Bootnnnn -B where nnnn is the boot loader you want to remove.

9. Power down your computer using the icon on the desktop and remove the Gparted Live USB.

10. Power up computer and verify that nothing loads -- you should see some kind of "no operating system" error or the UEFI boot manager containing only a list of the drives in your PC. Power down your computer.

11. Proceed to install Kubuntu 12.10. Everything should work fine now.

[GreyGeek]

Where is the genuflecting icon when you need it?

[SteveRiley]

Oh, stop it... we're all here to learn from each other. No genuflecting required!

[Snowhog]

No genuflecting required!

Correct. Just take a bow instead! :eek: