Bootloader Problems On New SSD HD With ONLY LM19

[Codesound]

Hi,
first of all, Many thanks for Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamom.... Best SO for my personal opinion..... Thanks again.
I decided to abandon windows10 for billions of reasons and I switched to LM in this last week... I have one Dell Precision3630 and I changed the internal HDD with one new 500Gb. In Mint live mode i created 2 partitions with GParted:



I installed LM in this HD, I restart the pc but LM don't start.... The bootloader is lost: "no boot device"...
How I fix this problem?

Thanks for now

PS: the BIOS is set in Legacy mode and secure boot is off

[HaveaMint]

If you only wish for two partitions I would re-install and set one partition ext4 as / giving it 30GB and the second partition as ext4 /home giving it the rest of the drive.

[AndyMH]

I agree with haveamint, re-install with a / and /home partition, the days of needing a /boot partition are long gone. With a separate /home partition, it makes future upgrades, e.g. LM20.0, easier and if you screw up your system you can reinstall without losing your data. If you have more than one drive in your system check at the bottom of the 'something else' screen that grub is installed to sda.

[Codesound]

Hi, @Haveamint, @AndyMH

thanks for your quick reply!

I have reinstalled LM with Live USB but the BOOT problem remain: at the reinstall moment I have reorganize the partitions and I set:
/dev/sda1 primary ext4 /
/dev/sda5 logical ext4 /home



Thanks again....

[HaveaMint]

Is your bios set to legacy or uefi? If it set to uefi change it to legacy and it should boot, if you prefer uefi then you will need to make some changes.

[Codesound]

Hi,

Bios set in Legacy mode
Secure Boot Off

Let me to explain... I physically disconnected HDD with win10 and attached a new HDD in which I installed LM19.2 Cinnamom, (Win10 is dead for me....and for my pc... ).
When I restart the PC I have this Boot problem

No bootable devices found

what I wrong.... did I have to do anything from windows10 before I unplug HDD?

Thanks again guys.....

[athi]

First need to confirm that Mint was actually installed in legacy BIOS mode. Please run below command in Terminal (ctrl+alt+t) to output installation mode and post results here:

Code: Select all

[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo "Installed in UEFI mode" || echo "Installed in Legacy mode"

Removing the Win10 HDD should have no impact on your Mint installation, if anything it makes it simpler to install Mint by itself.

[Codesound]

Hi,

the response is

Installed in Legacy mode



Thanks

[JeremyB]

Where did you choose to install the boot manager to?

[Codesound]

Hi,

This is my situation.... When I select Install Mint, it is installed in the sda1 partition .... I believe that the bootloader is installed in this partition.... or?



Thanks again guys......

[pbear]

Well, there you go. Actually, you want to put the bootloader on sda, not any of the partitions. Goes in a special place called the MBR (master boot record), which then forwards the system to the rest of the boot files in /boot.

[Codesound]

Well, there you go. Actually, you want to put the bootloader on sda, not any of the partitions. Goes in a special place called the MBR (master boot record), which then forwards the system to the rest of the boot files in /boot.

Ok,how I make this?

Thanks again

[Codesound]

maybe i have to reinstall mint by selecting /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1, right? And the LM installer prepare alone this MBR section into the HDD... right?

thanks guys,,,,,

[pbear]

That you ask makes me wonder whether we have indeed found the problem. From your immediately prior post, where you spoke of installing the bootloader on sda1, I inferred you are using the Something Else installation method and assigning the bootloader location there. Therefore, to do it correctly is simply a matter of choosing sda from the list instead. If that's not what you're doing, we don't yet have the answer to Jeremy's question.

So, please clarify. Which installation method are you using?

By the way, before you reinstall the next time, I would recommend that you simplify the partition scheme. Will take only a minute in Gparted. No reason for an extended partition when you have only two partitions. Do both of them as primary. Much easier to modify in future if you do it that way.

[Codesound]

I simply create one USB bootable with LM19.2 Cinnamom .iso file.
Then i restart the PC, I press the F12 button on my keyboard, this launch the LM Live.
In the desktop is present the Install Linux Mint Icon, I simply click on it.....

When the menu ask me how I want to install LM, I select Other (for creating 2 partitions), then enable formatting for each partition and I go to the next window....

but when I reboot the sys the "No bootable devices found" message is appear

[Codesound]

By the way, before you reinstall the next time, I would recommend that you simplify the partition scheme. Will take only a minute in Gparted. No reason for an extended partition when you have only two partitions. Do both of them as primary. Much easier to modify in future if you do it that way.

Thanks.... now I try to reinstall in this method.....

[pbear]

For clarity from my side, when I refer to Something Else, I'm talking about the fourth option of this screen:



Also, I'm suggesting you set up the partitions with Gparted before running the installer (because I find it
easier that way), but you can do it with the installer if you prefer.

[Codesound]

Hi,

yes I use "Something Else" for set the partitions... Now I have reinstalled LM with all the two partitions sets to "Logical", the boot problem persist....

[athi]

Please run below commands to output partitions detail and location of GRUB in Terminal (click SELECT ALL to select all text for copying) and copy from Terminal and post output:

Code: Select all

sudo parted -l

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l 2>/dev/null | egrep "Disk /|/dev/" | sed "s#^/dev/#Part /dev/#" | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/://' | xargs -n1 -IX sudo sh -c "hexdump -v -s 0x80 -n  2 -e '2/1 \"%x\" \"\\n\"' X | xargs -n1 -IY sh -c \"case  \"Y\" in '48b4') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.96 ;; 'aa75' | '5272') echo X: GRUB Legacy ;; '7c3c') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.97 or v1.98 ;; '020') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.99 ;; *) echo X: No GRUB Y ;; esac\""

[AndyMH]

Don't know why this isn't working, should be straightforward, but you could try boot-repair, think it is now in the mint installation media, if not:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/
If you install again check the bottom of the 'something else' screen shown below and make sure that 'device for boot loader installation' (grub) is installing to sda:

You have installed in legacy mode (obvious from the extended partition in your previous screenshots), just check in BIOS that it is set to legacy and not UEFI.

If none of this works, boot from the mint installation media, open a terminal and run inxi -Fxz, post the output here using the code tag button </> above the edit window. It may help us to figure out the problem.