Mint on Bare Meta GPT & UEFI. OK, but where is grub?
Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 6:53 pm
Hi,
Most of the posts regarding UEFI and installs seem to center around working with Win7 or Win8.
I had a mobo with a bare disk. No OS at all.
Mobo is ASUS p8Z68-V/ProGen3
Disk is 1TB.
Mobo has UEFI BIOS.
I don't want or need windows on this system but I would like to be able to multiboot different flavors of Linux.
I booted a Nadia 64 bit Live CD.
Ran gparted and first created a GPT. I wanted the convenience of having more than just 4 partitions on the disk.
I then created the following partitions
Name fs size Label Flags
sda1 fat32 200MB EFI boot
sda2 none 5mb none biosgrub
sda3 ext4 10GB BOOT
sda5 swap 8GB swap
sda6 ext4 200GB home
sda7 ext4 20GB LinuxOS1
sda8 ext4 20GB LinuxOS2
I then proceeded to install Linux Mint Nadia 64 bit.
I specified the /, home, and boot partitions as well as the biosgrub partitions.
Much to my surprise the install went off without a problem. Very impressive.
After install I restart the computer and boot into MINT login screen.
I was a bit surprised not to get a grub menu, so one of the first things I did after the inevitable Update to packages, was to
a) check the contents of /boot. Sure enough there are the usual memtest86, etc. images in there.
b) so then I run
sudo update-grub.
It completed OK. and it created a /boot/grub/grub.cfg file. In that file there are entries for Mint 14, Mint 14 recovery mode, and memtest86.
i also did an
ls -l /sys/firmware
but there is no "efi" file or directory there.
I further mounted the /dev/sda1 partition on /boot/efi but it is empty. ls -al just shows the . and .. directories.
I power cycle the machine but still no grub menu.
Everything is fine except I have two or three questions:
1) Why did I not get a grub menu prompt at the boot up?
1b) If I cnt get a grub prompt will this affect my ability to multiboot different linux OS's?
2) Why is there no /sys/firmware/efi directory/file? My MOBO does not have the option of choosing efi or legacy boot that I can find.
I presume that in spite of the GPT, that the computer is booting in legacy BIOS mode and that is why I needed to create /dev/sda2 (the bios_grub partition).
3) The stuff on the net implies that the EFI partition (ESP) should contain bootloader's, ddrivers, a DOS like shell etc.
Where would I get that stuff and how would I put it in there?
4) Is all of the above due to the Mint 14 installer? ie. If i was using Mint 15 would it work better?
Thanks very much for any replies.
pgmer6809
Most of the posts regarding UEFI and installs seem to center around working with Win7 or Win8.
I had a mobo with a bare disk. No OS at all.
Mobo is ASUS p8Z68-V/ProGen3
Disk is 1TB.
Mobo has UEFI BIOS.
I don't want or need windows on this system but I would like to be able to multiboot different flavors of Linux.
I booted a Nadia 64 bit Live CD.
Ran gparted and first created a GPT. I wanted the convenience of having more than just 4 partitions on the disk.
I then created the following partitions
Name fs size Label Flags
sda1 fat32 200MB EFI boot
sda2 none 5mb none biosgrub
sda3 ext4 10GB BOOT
sda5 swap 8GB swap
sda6 ext4 200GB home
sda7 ext4 20GB LinuxOS1
sda8 ext4 20GB LinuxOS2
I then proceeded to install Linux Mint Nadia 64 bit.
I specified the /, home, and boot partitions as well as the biosgrub partitions.
Much to my surprise the install went off without a problem. Very impressive.
After install I restart the computer and boot into MINT login screen.
I was a bit surprised not to get a grub menu, so one of the first things I did after the inevitable Update to packages, was to
a) check the contents of /boot. Sure enough there are the usual memtest86, etc. images in there.
b) so then I run
sudo update-grub.
It completed OK. and it created a /boot/grub/grub.cfg file. In that file there are entries for Mint 14, Mint 14 recovery mode, and memtest86.
i also did an
ls -l /sys/firmware
but there is no "efi" file or directory there.
I further mounted the /dev/sda1 partition on /boot/efi but it is empty. ls -al just shows the . and .. directories.
I power cycle the machine but still no grub menu.
Everything is fine except I have two or three questions:
1) Why did I not get a grub menu prompt at the boot up?
1b) If I cnt get a grub prompt will this affect my ability to multiboot different linux OS's?
2) Why is there no /sys/firmware/efi directory/file? My MOBO does not have the option of choosing efi or legacy boot that I can find.
I presume that in spite of the GPT, that the computer is booting in legacy BIOS mode and that is why I needed to create /dev/sda2 (the bios_grub partition).
3) The stuff on the net implies that the EFI partition (ESP) should contain bootloader's, ddrivers, a DOS like shell etc.
Where would I get that stuff and how would I put it in there?
4) Is all of the above due to the Mint 14 installer? ie. If i was using Mint 15 would it work better?
Thanks very much for any replies.
pgmer6809