Unable to install grub in /dev/sda

Mon Oct 18 00:59:50 UTC 2021

Thank you Liam and Ralf,

I'm still in an area with poor mobile phone reception and I still need to
walk up a hill to do almost anything to do with Interneting. Anyway, I have
managed to install Debian 9 but it's a 32 bit version and although it does
run it's far from ideal.

Please forgive me if this e-mail is not formatted correctly or I'm top
posting it's been difficult to reply at all. I'm not on my phone and I'm
struggling with gmail and a flaky Internet connection.

It seems that Windows is the cause of my installation problems but I need
it to update my GPS navigator every six months. I'll study the links
provided but I'm truly at my wits end. I think that I might need some
serious hand-holding to install Windows in a mode that's compatible with
Linux.

On Sun, 17 Oct 2021 at 19:45, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 17 Oct 2021 at 01:34, Phil Fraser <phillor9 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I attempted to install Xubuntu, alongside Windows 10, on my aging
> Thinkpad T420 but have run into a problem, a serious problem. I spent all
> day searching for a solution to what seems to be a common problem.
>
> Hi. Typing on a T420 right now, on 20.04 with Unity. :-)
>
> > The installer warns me that I need to create an EFI directory or else
> the installation will fail, which it did many times. I already have an EFI
> directory, which it seems, Windows created when I upgraded Windows 7 to
> Windows 10. I already had Kubuntu 20.10 installed at the time and didn't
> need to reinstall it after the Windows upgrade.
>
> Is your disk partitioned with MBR or GUID?
> Does Windows start in UEFI mode or in Legacy Boot mode?
> What are your startup settings in the CMOS Setup?
>
> The T420 is from the time when UEFI was coming in.
>
> If you partition the disk with MBR, boot in BIOS mode and install
> Windows and/or Linux in BIOS boot mode, it appears to the OSes and
> runs as a BIOS system. You can press the Thinkvantage key and enter
> the setup at boot time.
>
> If you partition the disk with GPT and boot and install Windows and/or
> Linux in UEFI mode, it appears to be and works as a UEFI machine. You
> can no longer get the startup screen, boot options etc. You have to
> choose the Windows "shutdown and restart in safe mode" option.
>
> In other words, it is both and it depends how you have it configured.
>
> I tried UEFI mode as an experiment, found it was a pain to use, and
> reformatted and reinstalled in legacy BIOS mode, which I find  much
> easier.
>
> YMMV.
> >
> > One of the many suggestions that I came across was to select "Try
> Xubuntu" and then select "Install Xubuntu" from the desktop. That also
> failed with substantially the same  error. "Executing grub-install /dev/sda
> failed cannot find EFI directory" which is not much different to "Unable to
> install grub in /dev/sda". Logging out and then restarting I'm left with a
> prompt grub rescue>.
>
> Do custom partitioning. Tell the Ubuntu setup program where your EFI
> partition it.
> >
> > The following may help:
> >
> > xubuntu at xubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
> > Disk /dev/loop0: 1.73 GiB, 1857892352 bytes, 3628696 sectors
> > Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> > Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> > I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> >
> >
> > Disk /dev/sda: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
> > Disk model: CT1000MX500SSD1
> > Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> > Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> > I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> > Disklabel type: dos
> > Disk identifier: 0x0878bd2f
> >
> > Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
> > /dev/sda1             2048     104447     102400    50M  7
> HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> > /dev/sda2           104448  839874676  839770229 400.4G  7
> HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> > /dev/sda3       1952485376 1953519615    1034240   505M 27 Hidden NTFS
> WinRE
> > /dev/sda4        839876606 1952157695 1112281090 530.4G  5 Extended
> > /dev/sda5        839876608  840925183    1048576   512M ef EFI
> (FAT-12/16/32)
> > /dev/sda6        840927232 1947567856 1106640625 527.7G 83 Linux
> > /dev/sda7       1947764736 1951670271    3905536   1.9G 82 Linux swap /
> Solaris
> > /dev/sda8       1947568128 1947752447     184320    90M 83 Linux
> > /dev/sda9  *    1951672320 1952157695     485376   237M ef EFI
> (FAT-12/16/32)
> >
> > This shows that I now have two EFI directories and a large boot
> directory. I had tried the installation without the second EFI directory
> and without the boot directory. The partition table is a GPT.
>
> 2 is bad.
>
>
> --
> Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
> Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven at gmail.com
> Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
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> 702-829-053
>
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