Unable to install grub in /dev/sda

Mon Oct 18 04:52:20 UTC 2021

On my way down the hill to my campsite I had a bright idea. I have an old
mechanical drive. I've installed Windows 10 and Xubuntu 21.10 and they both
work! I just followed the prompts.

Now, I cannot see any difference between the mechanical drive and the SSD
using gparted and disk-l. What should I be looking for and what tool should
I use?

Regards,

Phil

On Mon, 18 Oct. 2021, 1:25 pm Phil Fraser, <phillor9 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I just found this:
>
> Https://www.aioboot.com/en/windows-10-gpt-legacy-bios
>
> Is that the answer?
>
> Regards,
>
> Phil
>
> On Mon, 18 Oct. 2021, 1:17 pm Phil Fraser, <phillor9 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> ubuntu-users mailing list
>>>> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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