#1 2017-05-28 10:29:56

Paradoxon

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 22

[SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

Hello fellow BunsenLab-ists,

I have problems setting up a BunsenLabs installation on my new Dell XPS 13:

• Win 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 are already installed; Grub shows both OSes + both work.

• During BL installation (recent Deuterium 64 iso), installation fails at step "GRUB-Bootloader auf einer Festplatte installieren." = install grub to hard disk.

Hints:

• from Ubuntu:

  ls /boot/efi/EFI/ 
  Boot Dell Microsoft ubuntu

  , so BL really did not write to the EFI partition.

• However, BunsenLabs is listed in Ubuntu's Grub! (I had a debian stretch netinstall on that partition before installing BL, and that had been listed in Grub before.)

• If I boot that (unexpected) grub entry, it says:

  Fehler: no such device: d651fed4-4803-4004-b754-517d8075b1a5. 

  (Fehler = german word for error)
  Afterwards, BL boots into emergency mode. While booting, it displays (among other things):

  [FAILED] Failed to mount /boot/efi.
  See ´systemctl status boot-efi.mount´ for details.
  [DEPEND] Dependency failed for local File Systems.

• following that advice, systemctl status boot-efi.mount shows that BL cannot mount the EFI-partition.

Do you have any advice how to proceed?

Thank you very much in advance for any answers!!

(There are other problems, but I think I've figured those out, as they are discussed on the forum:

• No Kaby Lake support on Jessie --> Newer Kernel from backports.

• The Wifi card "killer N1535" is not recognized yet. --> Install with USB-to-Ethernet-Adapter + Newer Kernel + Newest ath10k package.

)

Last edited by Paradoxon (2017-05-29 00:56:18)

Head_on_a_Stick

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From: London

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 9,093

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

recent Deuterium 64 iso

Please confirm the exact URL from which you downloaded that image and also post the full, exact command(s) used to transfer the ISO image to the installation medium.

From what you have posted, it looks very much like the installer was not booted in UEFI mode and was attempting to install in non-UEFI mode (this will fail as you have described if attempted on a GPT disk).

The following command outputs would also be useful:

sudo LC_ALL=C parted --list
sudo LC_ALL=C efibootmgr -v
sudo LC_ALL=C journalctl -u boot-efi.mount

EDIT: you probably have an NVMe drive, don't you?

Hydrogen won't work with that:

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 541#p51541

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2017-05-28 14:13:03)

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Paradoxon

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

1. regarding NVMe: I'm not really sure, as I never heard that name before. On my order confirmation, it says "512GB M.2 PCIe SSD". In the BIOS, I can switch between "RAID" and "AHCI". "RAID" was preselected, but I switched to "AHCI" before installing Windows and Ubuntu. As the NVMe Wikipedia page compares AHCI to NVMe, I might be on the safe side. On the other hand, the "AHCI"-option might just be some compatibility layer, as the SSD is definitely connected via PCIe.

2. I've problems to post the output to those commands, as the BL installation does not mount my USB-sticks. Maybe that is connected to the problem of not mounting EFI? I've taken pictures with my phone, but I do not yet know how to embed them into the posts. I will come back to that later.

3. The USB-Stick should have been booted in UEFI mode, as that is shown in the boot option screen and I've deactivated legacy mode entirely.

4. As I didn't remember how I created the USB-Stick, I just did it again. I downloaded from https://ddl.bunsenlabs.org/ddl/bl-Deute … 170429.iso . Then:

   sha256sum bl-Deuterium-amd64_20170429.iso 
   0d85da4ea9268265aaace0d7fa648bc7dea22da994b5f7052f74e45921b9f4ca  bl-Deuterium-amd64_20170429.iso
   
   sudo dd if=~/Downloads/bl-Deuterium-amd64_20170429.iso of=/dev/sdb oflag=direct bs=1048576
   855+0 Datensätze ein
   855+0 Datensätze aus
   896532480 Bytes (897 MB) kopiert, 62,0425 s, 14,5 MB/s

   The error still remains.

Btw: Thanks for answering so fast!!

Last edited by Paradoxon (2017-05-28 12:12:07)

Head_on_a_Stick

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From: London

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 9,093

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Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

I've problems to post the output to those commands

The output of the first two commands can be posted from your Ubuntu system, their content is not affected by the distribution.

The `parted` command should show if your drive uses an NVMe connection to the motherboard.

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Paradoxon

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

You were right! It is an NVMe-disk:

daniel@SilverWingU:~$ sudo LC_ALL=C parted --list
[sudo] Passwort für daniel: 
Model: Unknown (unknown)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 512GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End    Size    File system     Name                          Flags
 1      1049kB  473MB  472MB   ntfs            Basic data partition          hidden, diag
 2      473MB   578MB  105MB   fat32           EFI system partition          boot, esp
 3      578MB   595MB  16.8MB                  Microsoft reserved partition  msftres
 4      595MB   158GB  157GB   ntfs            Basic data partition          msftdata
 5      158GB   238GB  80.0GB  ext4            Ubuntu
 6      238GB   298GB  60.0GB  ext4            BunsenLabs
 7      298GB   508GB  210GB   ext4            home
 8      508GB   511GB  3080MB  linux-swap(v1)
 9      511GB   512GB  1218MB  ntfs                                          hidden, diag

It was directly under my nose, I must have seen the partition names a lot of times in both gparted as well as the BunsenLabs installer. *facepalm*

For completeness:

daniel@SilverWingU:~$ sudo LC_ALL=C efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0000,0007,0008
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager	HD(2,GPT,86e60260-edbc-4903-b128-5feb913fea7d,0xe1800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}...M................
Boot0001* ubuntu	HD(2,GPT,86e60260-edbc-4903-b128-5feb913fea7d,0xe1800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi)
Boot0007* USB NIC(IPV4)	PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(1,0)/MAC(a0cec8083f3d,0)/IPv4(0.0.0.0:0<->0.0.0.0:0,0,0)..BO
Boot0008* USB NIC(IPV6)	PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(1,0)/MAC(a0cec8083f3d,0)/IPv6([::]:<->[::]:,0,0)..BO

(The BunsenLabs USB-Stick is not inserted right now, but I won't need it now anyway, if I understood you correctly.)

Thank you very much for all the useful information!! I couldn't have figured this out by myself, as I didn't consider the harddrive as the source of error at all.

I will now try to set up a stretch system with the Helium netinstall script and post my progress here.

Paradoxon

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

I'm posting this from a fresh Bunsenlabs Helium install!!
Congratulations on the good work, this was a breeze! :-)

At first sight, everything except wifi seems to work, and that's because of the missing firmware that the Debian Netinstall ISO did not want to find.(I had it on another usb-stick)
I will try to fix that with other forum entries first before asking further questions.

Btw: Is bl-welcome not ready yet or does it have a different command now?  It has always been a very nice feature... ;-)

Paradoxon

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

I'm posting this from WIFI!! :-)
As BL configured the repos, it was as easy as

sudo apt-get install firmware-atheros

and the Killer 1535 worked after a reboot.

bl-github-update also seems to work, so I suppose I'm finished.

@ Head_on_a_Stick: Thanks again for the help! :-)

Marking this as solved...

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 12,666

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

I'm posting this from a fresh Bunsenlabs Helium install
...
Is bl-welcome not ready yet?

No, sorry. "Helium" is still very much an experimental project to find out what changes we need to make to our packages in order to work with Debian Stretch. Please don't regard it as a "working" system - just something to play around with.

Anyway, along with the BunsenLabs themes, which need to be completely rewritten for the new GTK3, bl-welcome is another package which will need recoding and I (it's my script) probably won't have the time to get round to looking at it for a bit longer...

bl-github-update also seems to work

Actually, that's not recommended, as it will build packages from the "master" branches, while development for Stretch will be happening on the "helium-dev" branches which will appear soon. It also uses a lot of extra disk space. That script, if it will continue to have any purpose, needs to be edited with new options for different GitHub branches.

---

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Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

Paradoxon

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

Ok, so "Helium" is still in a pre-alpha state?
Well, it doesn't feel that way and it seems to work flawlessly right now. :-)

Thank you for your words of caution!
I will sync all data to my seafile-server and I can switch to my Ubuntu-install if things go awry.
I will also keep an eye on the forums / the github repo so I won't miss the Helium-repo coming online. (I already have experience with unfinished BL-releases: I installed the Hydrogen-Alpha on my PC at university and haven't had serious issues since.)

Is it helpful if I report any Bug I find or is it too early for that?

Keep up the good work! :-)

damo

....moderator....

Registered: 2015-08-20

Posts: 6,734

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

...
Is it helpful if I report any Bug I find or is it too early for that?
...

Of course - there is a dedicated Bug Reports forum area for that. Remember to put the release in the post title though.

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johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 12,666

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

Is it helpful if I report any Bug?

Yes, please do! As damo said, in "Bug reports".

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( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 12,666

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Grub install fails ( EFI , DELL XPS 13, Tripleboot)

BTW the Helium-dev packages are now in a slightly more usable state. There is a provisional bunsen-themes package, and bunsen-welcome now works, bar some possible bugfixes.

---

...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop