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New UEFI/EFI Motherboards & Linux - Boot Problems

  • 10-10-2011 1:03pm
    #1
    bobbytables
    Registered Users Posts: 498 ✭✭


    Long story short: I had an ASRock P67 (Sandybridge) Pro3 motherboard, which was based on the new UEFI BIOS. I built the machine last July and immediately installed Ubuntu (Natty, 11.04) and all went without a hitch. It was not a dual-boot setup, just Ubuntu. Fast forward 2.5 months and all of a sudden one day my machine does not boot the OS. At the time I thought it was a hardware failure and I posted this thread on Building & Upgrading: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056412502

    So yesterday I swapped out the ASRock board and installed the ASUS P8P67 (rev 3.1, B3). Upon first boot, the machine did the exact same thing (didn't boot the OS) and upon further reading I have now discovered that a lot of people have had issues with getting Linux to boot with these newer UEFI based boards.

    So I have performed a default natty install, which consumes an entire SSD (twice, since yesterday). What is really frustrating me is that it almost seems random whether or not I am able to either boot from the SSD or from a live image on a USB key. There are times when I can't boot from the SSD or the USB key, which leaves me with nothing but the UEFI/BIOS to play around with. Then I power down, walk away and come back and then the machine magically starts up first time like there is nothing wrong. Right now at this very moment I am left guessing what will happen the next time I attempt to boot the machine.

    The last thing I did when I was on the Ubuntu desktop was uninstall grub-pc and install grub-efi (and the 64bit version for my machine). This I hoped would rewrite everything as needed for a proper handover from UEFI to Ubuntu. I simply rebooted the machine and hey presto it came up again no problem. So then I performed a shutdown, and the machine powered down. I then attempted to boot the machine again, and now it won't start once again. :mad:

    Has anyone managed to get Linux/Ubuntu up and running on a UEFI/EFI based board?. Both P67 motherboards I have don't seem to allow for switching back to the legacy BIOS setup, so I'm stuck with UEFI.

    Also does anyone know will Ubuntu 11.10 have better support for these new boards out of the box?. It is only this weekend I have naively realised that UEFI is a hell of a lot more than a fancier motherboard UI. It seems that the entire computer boot process has not seen this much revision in over 20 years.

    If anyone can suggest a step-by-step or an explanation I would really appreciate your help in getting my machine up and running.


Comments

  • #2
    bobbytables
    Registered Users Posts: 498 ✭✭bobbytables


    Long story short, I fixed it. Solution:

    Install via UEFI: USB. Manually create partitions including an "EFI boot partition". Mount your root partition, and modify /boot/grub/grub.cfg adding rootdelay=90 towards the end of the line that loads your kernel. Save. Reboot.

    Verify you're using GPT partitioning (fdisk will be able to tell you this). efibootmgr will be able to show you your boot options if configured correctly.


  • #3
    eth0
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,635 ✭✭✭eth0


    I was expecting this thread to be about a motherboard that mysteriously "doesn't support" turning off secure boot in order to protect Windows ;)


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