[Bug 1557894] Re: Strange usb device format and failure to boot on UEFI system

[Brian Burch]

Finally, I realised that the USB stick was probably getting "lost" at
the same time as my USB keyboard. However, I didn't need to pop the
stick because I could manually mount it under busybox. Unfortunately, I
didn't know how to make casper restart once it had given up!

Now for the good news - how I installed ubuntu 16.04 beta2 (only useful
for stubborn people!)...

First, I re-enabled the CSM (Compatibility Support Manager component of
the UEFI BIOS) by accessing BIOS from windows (you really need to keep
windows until ubuntu is properly installed!) I then booted my legacy-
bios knoppix 7.0 USB system. I used gparted to create four new
partitions on the solid state disk - I had previously shrunk the windows
partiton using its disk manager. My new partitions were for linux-swap,
/ and /boot (both ext4), and a 2GB unformatted partition. I then used
knoppix to DD the ubuntu live iso image onto the new unmounted
unformatted partition.

When I rebooted the machine to windows I found that I was able to
restart using the "device" which was my live iso from its new SDD
partition. The system BIOS (not sure whether the CSM or UEFI component
was responsible) was happy to recognise the hybrid iso on the SDD, and
process its contents. It apparently found the grub2 efi file in my
partition, because I hadn't already copied it to /dev/sda1/EFI/BOOT/.
The presence of a grub menu proved the BIOS had booted the efi
"personality" of the live iso. I selected the "install ubuntu" menu
option, and the installer started running. I told it to use the boot,
root and swap partitions I had already prepared and installation ran OK.

I crossed my fingers when I was prompted to restart the system, and was
very relieved to find my new ubuntu system booted successfully. The wifi
connection came up (no ethernet port on my machine) and I ran apt-get
update and upgrade without a hitch. I then installed gparted to examine
the disk - the three original partitions were intact (EFI, windows
recovery and windows C:). I was very impressed to see that ubuntu had
automatically mounted the /dev/sda1 EFI partition on its own /boot/efi/
path, and grub had been installed into the "real" EFI partition.

The default grub installation had successfully created a directory
structure on sda1 which allowed me to boot windows and the BIOS. I
changed grub.cfg (on sda1) to not hide its menu and use a long timeout.
I then confirmed I could use grub to boot windows, ubuntu (again!) and
even the system BIOS menu. I disabled the CSM and rebooted to grub and
then into ubuntu.

Everything was working normally with minimal effort, so a lot of hard
work from others has made the 16.04 installation process work
brilliantly with EFI and co-existence with windows. The only hurdle is
bypassing this problem of running the live iso from a usb stick. I still
can't do that!

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Title:
  Strange usb device format and failure to boot on UEFI system

Status in usb-creator package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I want to run 16.04 on a new ASUS T300 Chi transformer notebook, which
  is pre-installed with windows 10.

  I started by making a DVD iso from the beta distribution, then booted
  and installed it on a spare partition of my old Dell 1558 Studio
  laptop. The system runs fine in 64-bit mode, but the BIOS is non-EFI.
  I then applied the latest updates to the Dell HDD 16.04 system before
  running usb-creator. I've done this several times, always starting by
  DD-ing zeros over the first 200MB of the target 8mb usb stick.

  The creator reports successful completion, but gparted doesn't like
  the contents of the usb stick after the image has been created. The
  partition table has been changed from type=msdos to type=mac, and the
  sector size from 512 to 2048. The capacity changed from 7.7GB to 57GB!
  There are two partitions: sdb1 is called "Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 LTS, with
  an "unknown" file system type and a size of ONLY 4KB; 1.22GB
  unallocated; sdb2 is fat16 and its 2.31 MB extent is almost full. No
  flags are set on either partition. Whenever I interact with gparted it
  throws a pop-up that says "The driver descriptor says the physical
  blocksize is 2048, but linux says it is 512 - cancel or ignore".

  I am amazed to report this image boots successfully on my Dell with
  its "legacy" BIOS. The ubuntu live/install options page displays and
  it eventually boots the live system, which superficially seems to run
  OK.

  The ASUS uses American Megatrends UEFI BIOS, which I have updated to
  the latest version 207. I have enabled the CSM (Compatibility Support
  Module - legacy BIOS) and disabled both fast start and secure boot. It
  boots the usb stick in non-EFI mode as desired (proved by not getting
  the grub2 efi menu). The "man=keyboard" splash panel appears, then it
  drops to a tty login briefly before the new ubuntu "circling logo"
  appears. After several minutes, it drops back to a tty screen with the
  following:

   (initramfs) Unable to find a medium containing a live system.

  I also have a usb stick with knoppix 7.0 which successfully boots in
  64-bit non-efi mode on both the Dell and the Asus, so I am reluctant
  to blame the Asus legacy bios at this stage. Why is gparted reporting
  such a strange format after creating the usb image?

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
  Package: usb-creator-gtk 0.3.2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-13.29-generic 4.4.5
  Uname: Linux 4.4.0-13-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.20-0ubuntu3
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: GNOME
  Date: Wed Mar 16 16:11:25 2016
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-03-14 (2 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Alpha amd64 (20160225.1)
  SourcePackage: usb-creator
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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