grub-install /dev/sda (ERROR)

[JaZZyCooL]

I got a question regarding the boot sequence.

I got two options to select the legacy boot support.

Boot mode - Legacy support OR UEFI
Boot priority - Legacy support OR UEFI

Should I keep both as legacy support.

[srs5694]

I got a question regarding the boot sequence.

I got two options to select the legacy boot support.

Boot mode - Legacy support OR UEFI
Boot priority - Legacy support OR UEFI

Should I keep both as legacy support.

If these are boot options presented by your firmware, unfortunately it's hard to answer that question, since there's NO standardization between EFI user interfaces, and some of them are extremely weird. What's more, it's unclear what you're trying to accomplish. This thread is about EFI-based installations, so presumably you don't need legacy (aka BIOS, aka CSM) support if you're booting nothing but EFI-based OSes. Thus, you'd probably want to set both of those to "UEFI." That said, if it's working for you the other way, there is some wisdom to the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Switching either setting might conceivably speed up the boot process a bit by eliminating unnecessary BIOS-style initialization from the startup process; however, it's conceivable that some of your hardware relies on such initialization to work correctly under Linux.

In the end, the best advice I can offer is to experiment with it yourself -- but only if it's not working or if you're willing to debug any problems that the experimentation might cause. If you're having problems, I recommend you start a new thread with a clear but concise description of the problem as its title.

[JaZZyCooL]

Well, I was asking that while installation we need to change the boot order to legacy support for mint to load. That is what I am asking that while my dual boot should I keep

Boot mode - Legacy support
Boot priority - Legacy support

And later on when my mint turns compatible with UEFI, I turn back to

Boot mode - UEFI
boot priority - UEFI

Should I do that?

[JaZZyCooL]

Hey actually it asks for me to remove the GRUB, should I click yes or no because like if I remove what should I do to reinstall and get back my things and also it is quite confusing. And it asks for sda so should I install on the windows 8 sda or Linux sda to be compatible.

[viking777]

Hey guys,
When I enter into the boot-repair, there are two options

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OS to boot by default - sda8(linux mint 14)  or  windows(via sda8 menu) 
                 SDA  -  sda3 (system file)  or  sda2 (LRE_RP file)



Which one should I select?

Well it is up to you but I would select sda8 as I have no idea what the other one is.

it asks for me to remove the GRUB

I presume when you are talking about 'it' you mean boot-repair? Because you are responding to a post about refind and you could equally be talking about that, nobody knows.

And it asks for sda so should I install on the windows 8 sda or Linux sda to be compatible.

It is completely and utterly impossible to have two sda's on one computer. You can have, for example, sda1 and sda2, because these are partitions and you can have any number of those, but sda is a disk not a partition and you cannot have more than one of those. If you had a second hard disk it would be called sdb or sdc etc etc. So again you need to make it clear what you are talking about. A picture of your hard disk layout taken from gparted or the output of

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lsblk

Would help people understand what your problem is, because at the moment I don't think anybody does understand it.

[JaZZyCooL]

should I select the sda with Linux or sda with windows 8, because here we are converting Linux from BIOS to UEFI so wanted to make sure which one to select.

[viking777]

should I select the sda with Linux or sda with windows 8, because here we are converting Linux from BIOS to UEFI so wanted to make sure which one to select.

JaZZy, I am sorry, I am not trying to upset you honestly, but unless you can explain yourself more clearly you are never going to get an answer. As I said above there is only one sda per computer. You seem to believe you have two. Until you take the time to explain properly what you mean you are going to be on your own.

Help us to help you - please. Let me illustrate. Here is what a boot-repair screen looks like on my system:

You will see from that, there is only one place to put grub - sda. There is a drop down box there (which I couldn't keep open whilst I took the screenshot) but the only other choice in there is sdb.

So can you see why nobody understands your question? It just doesn't make sense.

[JaZZyCooL]

Here are some of the screenshots so that you can help me with a clear picture of what to select for conversion of Linux to UEFI and load both windows 8 and Linux under UEFI mode without changing to Legacy mode for BIOS.

Image 1 http://i.imgur.com/LMbY65Z.png
Image 2 http://i.imgur.com/pGEscvB.png
Image 3 (Image of my partitions) http://i.imgur.com/Lk5lQHf.png
Image 4 (here is the image of place grub thing) http://i.imgur.com/wMBbboH.png

[viking777]

Jazzy - those pics explain your problem certainly, but they don't suggest to me what you can do about it. I have never seen anything like that in my short acquaintance with Uefi. So much is wrong with it that I don't know where to start. You have a hidden fat32 partition, sda2, with the label SYSTEM_DRV which boot repair thinks is a Efi system partition, presumably because it has the 'boot' flag on it. You have another 1Gb fat32 partition, sda3, labelled LRS_ESP, which from the name appears to be some Efi system partition, but doesn't have a boot flag on it as it should. Boot-repair also detects this as a valid ESP.

I would not hazard a guess as to which is the correct ESP, if I guess wrongly you will trash ALL your installations, so I can't take that risk. In short I can't help you because I have no idea what your partitions are, and not enough knowledge of Uefi to tell you what to do with them. You should have one Efi system partition - and one only, usually about 100Mb, usually labelled EFI, usually mounted at /boot/efi, always Fat32 and always with a 'boot' flag on it. Your system looks nothing like that.

If I were you I would switch off Uefi permanently and reinstall everything in legacy mode - all your problems will then just disappear as they have for me with my Uefi nightmare. (having said that you probably can't because the ever friendly microsoft wont give you an install disk )

Sorry but I can be of no more help than that.

[JaZZyCooL]

Hey but look at my last image it is the same as the one in your thread I think that can help you out with the same.

[viking777]

Hey but look at my last image it is the same as the one in your thread I think that can help you out with the same.

Sure it looks the same as mine, because in the last image you have unchecked 'separate /boot/efi partition' which is telling boot repair that you don't have Uefi, but you do, in fact you as far as boot repair is concerned you have two /boot/efi partitions and you say yourself that you are trying to achieve an efi installation so you don't have to keep switching between the two in the bios.

You would have to go onto a Lenovo forum or their support site if they have such a thing and ask what all these supposed efi partitions are, and which one is the real one - I can't guess, and I won't do so because I don't want to be held responsible for wrecking your system, which I could well do if I try guessing.

[JaZZyCooL]

http://i.imgur.com/onD0ZZ1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/j1BX5Uv.jpg


This is the settings when I clicked apply.
I got this error when I do apply.
Also don't worry if you wreck my system, because I have system recovery disk which I ordered from lenovo so, even if I wreck the system I can recover and also will be able to know which one is the real UEFI sda

[JaZZyCooL]

hey guys,
I am trying to install my EFI grub to get Linux mint under EFI but everytime I type in the command it gives me error here is the error
http://i.imgur.com/wIxeeSHl.png

Also When I used the boot-repair
It showed me this message which I don't know how to create.

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 Please do not forget to make BIOS boot on sda3/EFI/Linuxmint/Grubx64.efi file!

Your help is highly appreciated.

[viking777]

Also don't worry if you wreck my system

OK with that in mind I will give it a go, but I don't hold out much hope because your installation doesn't make any sense to me and probably wont make any sense to boot-repair either. I can think of two strategies.

1) Look on the partition sda3 and see if contains a folder called Microsoft with a file in it called bootmgfw.efi. If it does then that is your Efi system partition. In this case run boot repair again until you get to this situation: http://i.imgur.com/pGEscvB.png and choose sda3 as the separate boot/efi partition. Then complete the reinstallation of grub.

2) Boot from a live cd run gparted, shrink dev/sda3 by about 200Mb and create a new partition there with the Fat32 filesystem. Label it EFI and set the boot flag on it (all this can be done with gparted) the partition will end up being called sda10 by the look of it. Next open /etc/fstab of your mint installation (not the live cd's copy) as root (sudo gedit or pluma not sure) and add the following line:

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LABEL=EFI   /boot/efi   vfat   defaults 0 2

Save the file.

Then, if you don't already have the folder /boot/efi, run the following command:

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sudo mkdir /boot/efi/

Now boot back into linux run boot-repair, go back to this situation http://i.imgur.com/pGEscvB.png and now choose sda10 as the separate /boot/efi partition (or whatever number the new EFI partition is called). At least boot repair will have a chance of understanding this file structure. Switch the bios back to efi mode and try to boot Mint, if it boots OK, next try booting Windows, if that boots as well, you have finished, if it doesn't then carry out the following command:

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locate bootmgfw.efi

Wherever bootmgrfw.efi is, it needs to be copied to /boot/efi/Microsoft (you will need to create the folder Microsoft first).

If I have managed to get all that correct it will be a major miracle, if you manage to follow it, it will be an even bigger one, but if those two miracles have happened then should be able to boot Windows as well.

I suppose a third strategy would be to try what amicose has done in the post above, which is to install refind. If you decide to do that please don't ask me for support as I could never get it to work properly, but others say it works well and I have no reason to disbelieve them.

[viking777]

The only person that would know what that error message means is Yannubuntu the program writer. He is not a contributor here so you would need to start a topic on the Ubuntu forum with a title something like "Boot-Repair Error message". He will probably answer it, he usually does.

[JaZZyCooL]

Thanks a lot brother I will surely post on the ubuntu forum because I really help on that one.

[JaZZyCooL]

Hey I am not getting your second step dude. Can you please explain that clearly. Where should save the sudo gedit file in which I write the command that you posted.

[viking777]

Hey I am not getting your second step dude. Can you please explain that clearly. Where should save the sudo gedit file in which I write the command that you posted.

You have opened and edited /etc/fstab so you simply save it, you do not 'save as', it is saved in the location it came from, if you are trying to save it somewhere else you have misunderstood something, and if you get it wrong your system will no longer boot.

If you are trying to do this I hope you have your recovery disk ready because I don't think for one minute it will succeed.

Good luck though.

[JaZZyCooL]

I am still not getting it, I mean I opened etc/fstab but I didn't find any gedit also I saved the gedit inside etc/fstab by root, but still unable to do so.

[viking777]

I am still not getting it, I mean I opened etc/fstab but I didn't find any gedit also I saved the gedit inside etc/fstab by root, but still unable to do so.

Incomprehensible that, sorry.

Edit. srs5694 has come up with a possible solution here: viewtopic.php?f=46&t=129005&view=unread#p703429 That allows you to boot windows 8 in uefi mode and mint in legacy mode from the refind bootloader which saves you having to go into the bios settings every time you want to switch. It is obviously not easy to do but probably a better idea than my suggestion, maybe try that.