Unable to install grub in /dev/sda
Phil Fraser
phillor9 at gmail.com
Mon Oct 18 03:17:16 UTC 2021
Thanks Douglas for your reply.
I've installed many versions of Linux on this laptop, the problem is that I
upgraded Windows 7 to Windows 10 and, evidently, it's installed in the
wrong mode.
Liam, you ask a number of questions, one was "is Windows 10 installed as
uefi". How can I tell? I have Windows 10 on a usb stick and I just followed
the prompts. At the time I had Kubuntu 20.10 installed and it was
unaffected by the Windows upgrade. Did you install Windows 10 from a usb
stick, if so how?
Regards,
Phil
On Mon, 18 Oct. 2021, 11:26 am Douglas McGarrett, <dmcgarrett at optonline.net>
wrote:
>
>
> On 10/17/21 8:59 PM, Phil Fraser wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> If Windows is installed first--as it will be on a new or refurb computer,
> then installing most versions of Linux will go practically automatically,
> altho you might want to
> set partition sizes by hand prior to installing Linux. (gparted is the
> self-booting routine to do that. Download it and save it to disk or flash
> drive to boot from it.) Make sure
> that the Windows partitions still exist when you're done, but only the
> main data partition is important in size. You might actually use it someday.
> --doug
>
>
>
> 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
>> UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420)
>> 702-829-053
>>
>> --
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>
>
>
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