Installing Trisquel on EFI

3 respostas [Última entrada]
Sasaki
Desconectado
Joined: 08/11/2014

Hello,

after having unsuccesfully tried several ways to install trisquel on an efi system, I come here to get some help.
I successfully booted and installed trisquel about ten times, always with the same issue : grub can't install because it "can't get the canonical path of'cow'".
I am aware that some operations must be done when booting (checking whether it is legacy boot or efi boot) and that a GPT partition table with a bios-grub partition must be created before installation in case of a legacy grub install. I tried but am not sure if it was really succesful, because my HDD still can't be selected to boot in the Bios :

The PC is an Asus R900V with an internal hard drive recognized by the BIOS under Sata devices on port 0. Works perfectly when I work with it on a live system, but can't select it on the Boot device priority option. Here is only listed the DVD drive or the USB flash drive when I put one.

Here comes the question : can the HDD absence from boot options be due to a wrong grub install ?
And also : can someone explain me the easiest and most reliable way to install trisquel on this computer (I mean EFI vs Legacy boot)?

nadebula.1984
Desconectado
Joined: 05/01/2018

Once I had one Acer ultrabook with mSATA and SATA drives. The "legacy" mode boot list didn't contain the mSATA option, so if I wished to boot from the mSATA SSD, I had to use UEFI mode (the ESP can be on either SSD or HDD).

I believe what you described was something similar: restrictions by the firmware. (Maybe the manufacturer didn't want users to install operating systems using legacy mode.) Unfortunately, starting Haswell, Intel implemented one treacherous "feature": Boot Guard. It is impossible to fix the broken-beyond-repair non-free firmware with this anti-feature present.

What I can suggest is to try the latest Debian (testing) Installer and perform a minimalist installation. See whether you can boot it from UEFI mode. Use the "Alpha 3" release of Debian Installer. I tested it on many UEFI systems. (Note: Debian does have certain non-free firmware on its mirror servers. Avoid adding the "contrib" or "non-free" repositories and you can have a free/libre system.)

Sasaki
Desconectado
Joined: 08/11/2014

Thank you for your answer. I can neither boot from legacy mode nor from efi. I think this is because there is no efi boot partition with a GPT partition table correctly installed on my hard drive.

I will try with Debian testing.

On the french forum we have found this wich is particularly suitable

https://www.forum-des-portables-asus.fr/forums/threads/plus-de-choix-windows-boot-manager-pour-booter-uefi.8316/page-3

It gives informations on how to recover the disabled SATA HDD. If it works I will traduce the info here.

gnupablo
Desconectado
Joined: 01/04/2019

Looks like you have to save all your /home and, from instalation, click in /dev/sda (no sda1/sda2) and "create a new partition tab". I think is the only way but I'm not sure. https://www.reddit.com/r/trisquel/comments/actybl/software_livre_ptbr/