[SOLVED] System will not recognize bootable USB drive with Mint ISO

[mosritemecha]

Ok, I'm pretty new to using Linux, but I'm generally pretty good at finding solutions to things using google. This has me utterly stumped.

I'm trying to install Mint on an Acer Switch 10 tablet/laptop hybrid. Model number S1003.

I bought it used from somebody with Windows 10 on it, not intending to use that at all. Now, this is where my inexperience came into play. I wanted to try out installing Android x86 on it to see how it would run before installing Mint. I had to change the secure boot settings within Windows 10 to get it to boot off the x86 bootable drive I made, no problem. I now suppose this was foolish, but I went ahead and erased the drive when installing Android, figuring I'd just boot the Mint drive to install over it if it didn't work well. Well, it didn't, and then all my problems began.

This computer absolutely refuses to acknowledge the existence of a bootable Mint USB drive. I've turned off secure boot altogether. I've tried it both in the micro USB port on the actual tablet, as well as the USB 2.0 port on the attachable keyboard, and neither even shows up as a bootable option in the BIOS menu.

What's making me really want to pull my hair out, though, is that it still recognizes bootable Android x86 drives! I've even put different versions of Android in there, and they all show up as an option to boot from in the BIOS menu. I was curious if it was something exclusive to Mint, so for the heck of it I made a Windows 10 drive just to see if it would be recognized, but no dice there either.

My initial attempt was to install Cinnamon 64 bit, but I also tried the 32 bit version to be sure and there was no change. Given that the menu sees an Android bootable drive and nothing else, there's got to be *something* I could do to get it to recognize another one, right? Any ideas?

[mosritemecha]

Something possibly like progress?

I used the installer from an Android drive to wipe the SSD again, so now it goes to boot menu automatically. It still won't recognize the USB drive as a boot option exactly, but I do get the the Mint files showing up on the drive under "Boot From File." I can open it up and browse the files on the USB drive, but I can't seem to find any that I can opt to boot from. On the other hand, I'm not sure what I should be looking for. Below are some images of the menu:

https://imgur.com/a/Ifc43ak

Any hope that I can boot this way?

[michael louwe]

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Certain OEM Win 8.x/10 computers, eg Acer, Asus and HP, have an obstructive or pro-M$ BIOS Setup setting for "select an UEFI file as trusted for executing",(= Live Linux USB cannot boot). For the fix, please refer to ...
https://community.acer.com/en/discussio ... 15-51-78c6
https://itsfoss.com/no-bootable-device-found-ubuntu/
viewtopic.php?t=236560

[mosritemecha]

Thank you for the reply. However these links don't quite apply to my situation. These are all assuming you have actually installed Linux but just can't get it to boot. Presumably, these users all installed Mint from Windows (like I did with Android) but then weren't able to boot it. I don't have the option of doing that now, and I am trying to get the BIOS to boot a flash disk to install Mint, not boot an already installed version of the OS.

However, these seem to be pointing in the right direction. I am able to to attempt to boot from a file on the USB drive, it's just that there is no EFI file for me to use. Given that Mint is apparently UEFI friendly I'm sure it generates one when installing the OS on a hard drive but it doesn't seem to have one for booting the installation drive.

[thx-1138]

https://gist.github.com/franga2000/2154d09f864894b8fe84

Also, because someone thought putting a 32-bit UEFI on a 64-bit system was a good idea.

[mosritemecha]

https://gist.github.com/franga2000/2154d09f864894b8fe84

Also, because someone thought putting a 32-bit UEFI on a 64-bit system was a good idea.

Hey, thank you - I never found this post. It all clicked for me now after reading this.

This has gotten me much closer to successfully installing Mint. The only trouble now is that I have run into this when installing:

' The 'grub-efi-ia32' package failed to install into /target/. Without the GRUB boot loader, the installed system will not boot. '

I have found some info on the forums regarding this error suggesting it was a problem caused by machines being connected to the internet while installing, but that is not the case here and anyway as I understand it that should not be an issue in Mint 19 Cinnamon v2 which is what I'm using.

I have also seen some very old suggestions that the drive needs to be manually partitioned first as described in this guide: viewtopic.php?p=912036 but this all seems very out of date to me. I also saw some info suggesting that running Boot Repair could fix it, but after making a boot drive with 32 bit boot repair and starting with that I just get a blank screen.

[michael louwe]

@ mosritemecha, .......

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Please refer to this link ... viewtopic.php?f=46&t=272614&p=1499628#p1499628

[mosritemecha]

@ mosritemecha, .......

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Please refer to this link ... viewtopic.php?f=46&t=272614&p=1499628#p1499628

Hi, is this in regards to the latest issue, the "'grub-efi-ia32' package failed to install into /target/" error? If so I am not sure which parts of the guides here are directly related to this error. That's probably my newness showing again. But if you wouldn't mind could you (or anyone else) be a little more specific about which parts I should be looking at for a solution?

[michael louwe]

@ mosritemecha, .......

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This link should explain better ... https://www.instructables.com/id/Linux- ... h-10-Bayt/ [Linux Kiosk Tablet From Acer Aspire Switch 10 (Baytrail)]

[mosritemecha]

@ mosritemecha, .......

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This link should explain better ... https://www.instructables.com/id/Linux- ... h-10-Bayt/ [Linux Kiosk Tablet From Acer Aspire Switch 10 (Baytrail)]

Thank you, I do find this a bit clearer. The one aspect of this guide that instructs me to do something I haven't tried is step 3; this is consistent with another suggestion I have seen that this problem can be resolved by being connected to the internet while letting Mint install. I wasn't able to find any info on connecting to wifi from the live USB installer, so I thought I couldn't do it. I was excited to see this guide has a way of doing so, but it doesn't work for me. Typing the line "dmesg | grep brcm" does not return anything in the terminal, so I don't have any information to complete the rest of the process with.

Is there any other way to get connected to wifi? I ordered a cheap USB to ethernet adapter on amazon and was going to try that when it arrives, but if there's something I can do sooner that would be great...

[michael louwe]

@ mosritemecha, .......

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Sorry, I can't be of any further help. Likely, you need the USB-Ethernet adapter or USB Wifi adapter to get online and apply the above fix. Try and research more into your specific internal Broadcom Wifi adapter card model and its proprietary driver.

[mosritemecha]

@ mosritemecha, .......

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Sorry, I can't be of any further help. Likely, you need the USB-Ethernet adapter or USB Wifi adapter to get online and apply the above fix. Try and research more into your specific internal Broadcom Wifi adapter card model and its proprietary driver.

That's okay, I appreciate your efforts.

I like many others it seems was duped by the UEFI mess. I'd installed Mint on two computers already and it was so easy I'd foolishly assumed it would be the same on any PC I got a hold of. Lesson learned. I'll get this thing to run Linux if it's the last thing I do, but I sure won't be buying any more computers that aren't proven Linux-friendly.

When I do finally get it working I'll be sure to post everything that worked for me here in case any other poor sods are in my position later.

[bill_steamshovel]

On a laptop that wasnt able to wifi I connected my mobile phone via a usb cable and told the phone to let the computer use the internet, that might be worth trying.

Bill

[mosritemecha]

On a laptop that wasnt able to wifi I connected my mobile phone via a usb cable and told the phone to let the computer use the internet, that might be worth trying.

Bill

Thought of that, but I believe I'd have to pay extra for tethering on my phone plan. I know there are third party apps to work around it but I didn't really feel like trying to figure out which ones work and are free. Seemed like less of a headache to just get the adapter. It should be showing up today, so I'll see how it goes soon.

[mosritemecha]

And... SUCCESS!

So here is a summary of what I had to do, for anyone else stuck with this stubborn system:

- Make the Mint 19 install drive using Rufus. At first I tried it by using the "make bootable USB drive" right click option on my other Mint machine, but this made the drive read only, which is a problem for the next step.
- Once the drive was made with Rufus, added the file "bootia32.efi" to the folder "efi/boot" on the install drive, downloaded from here: https://github.com/jfwells/linux-asus-t ... otia32.efi
- Disabled secure boot. I could not do this from the BIOS by hitting F2, you have to go into security settings by holding the power button and up on the volume button at the same time. You have to hold them for a good while before it'll pull up. From there, I disabled secure boot, then I exited out and went into the boot settings and chose to boot from a file. From here selected bootia32.efi. I did not need to back and enable secure boot again and specify this as a safe file. Leaving it off is fine.
- Once Mint is booted from the install drive, I had to make sure I was connected to the internet. I could not find a way to do this via wifi, so I had to use a USB to ethernet adapter. Since the system only has one full size USB port, I also needed a micro USB to USB converter, so the install drive could be inserted as well as the ethernet adapter. I found the ethernet adapter did not work through the micro USB converter, but the install drive did, so I had to use the installer through the micro USB converter.
- Once connected to the internet, I was able to install Mint as normal. I did NOT need to manually partition the drives first, manually build grub or do anything in the terminal as some guides direct. The Mint 19 installer is actually very smart, it just seems to need to be connected to the internet to download something to finish the process correctly.



I now finally have this machine running Mint! I do still have to figure out how to get wifi working so I'll post again once I've got this straightened out, but for now I'm just relieved I didn't buy a paperweight. I think this struggle has been MS's revenge on me for switching away from Windows. Worth it though. But my advice to anyone considering buying this laptop to install Linux is to find a better option.

Thank you to everyone who offered help.

[michael louwe]

@ mosritemecha, .......

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Congrats.!

Maybe this link can be of help for fixing your Broadcom Wifi adapter ... http://www.jfwhome.com/2014/03/07/perfe ... book-t100/

[mosritemecha]

@ mosritemecha, .......

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Congrats.!

Maybe this link can be of help for fixing your Broadcom Wifi adapter ... http://www.jfwhome.com/2014/03/07/perfe ... book-t100/

Sadly no luck with the steps outlined there. It seems nothing is ever easy with this computer. I'm still trying to determine the exact card, because when I input inxi -Nn I get "Failed to detect network card!" I know for a fact there's one in there and it works though because I used it when Windows was on the machine. So I'm now hunting for cases of people with that issue before I can even start trying to figure out what driver I need.

Code: Select all

System:    Host: veronica Kernel: 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64 bits: 64 gcc: 7.3.0
           Desktop: Cinnamon 3.8.8 (Gtk 3.22.30-1ubuntu1) Distro: Linux Mint 19 Tara
Machine:   Device: un-determined System: Acer product: One S1003 v: V1.11 serial: N/A
           Mobo: Acer model: One S1003 v: V1.11 serial: N/A
           UEFI: INSYDE v: V1.11 date: 02/24/2017
CPU:       Quad core Intel Atom x5-Z8350 (-MCP-) arch: Airmont rev.4 cache: 1024 KB
           flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 11520
           clock speeds: max: 1920 MHz 1: 556 MHz 2: 729 MHz 3: 1016 MHz 4: 823 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series PCI Configuration Registers
           bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 )
           drivers: modesetting (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 800x1280@60.10hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics (Cherrytrail)
           version: 4.5 Mesa 18.0.0-rc5 Direct Render: Yes
Audio:     Card-1 Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio driver: HdmiLpeAudio
           Card-2 chtrt5645 driver: chtrt5645
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.15.0-20-generic
Network:   Card: Failed to Detect Network Card!
Drives:    HDD Total Size: NA (-)
           ID-1: /dev/mmcblk0 model: N/A size: 31.3GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 29G used: 7.1G (27%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/mmcblk0p2
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 55.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 194 Uptime: 54 min Memory: 1262.5/1891.5MB
           Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 7.3.0
           Client: Shell (bash 4.4.191) inxi: 2.3.56 

[srq2625]

This command MIGHT get you the info you need

lspci | grep Network

[mosritemecha]

This command MIGHT get you the info you need

lspci | grep Network

No dice. Going to put this project on hold for the time being, actually - one of the pegs on the magnets that hold the tablet to the dock snapped during normal use as I was working on it, so I'm returning it. Funny end to a frustrating project. But I've spent so much time on it and made so much progress that I think I'm actually going to get another one and finish due to my inherent stubbornness. I quite like the little thing when it comes to form factor and functionality and I'd gotten pretty invested in finally having it work as a linux machine. So when I get the new one I will resume studying the wifi issue and report back. This time I'll keep windows on it until I've got it entirely where I want it, and that way I can get more info on the wireless card.