Can't get Grub to install on 32bit UEFI

[unicav]

Installing the 9.5.0 MultiArch on a Dell Venue 8 Pro. This is a 32-bit UEFI with a 64bit CPU.
I have the firmware for my AR6004, but the installer never finds it in /firmware. I have to drop to another terminal and to the following

Code: Select all

mkdir /lib/firmware
cd /lib/firmware
ln -s /cdrom/firmware/ath6k ath6k

Then returning to the GUI Installer everything rolls along until the bootloader install.
It reports "unable to install grub in dummy, executing grub-install dummy failed"
There's several threads out there in Google-land but so far nothing has worked. I can boot with the install media in rescue mode, or from reFind, or from Boot-Rescue-CD, but no matter how many directions I go in to install, reinstall or update grub it will not complete the install. I've had other distros on this in the last few weeks, all of which were able to install Grub and boot, so I don't understand why Debian, which is reported to be the easiest one to install a 32bit Grub on a 64bit system. And Debian has the most potential to run the smoothest on this little sucker and make it usable again.
Would appreciate any suggestions.

[p.H]

Is there an EFI partition on the drive ? Is it mounted on /boot/efi (check fstab) ?
Right after the installer displays the error, can you switch to the log console (tty4) and see the detailed error message ?
Or in rescue mode, run a shell on the installed system root and run grub-install. You can also try to install GRUB as the fallback boot loader with

Code: Select all

grub-install --removable

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Could be https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=865417

You could try copying /EFI/debian/grubia32.efi on the EFI system partition to /EFI/BOOT/BOOTIA32.EFI, that should boot without an NVRAM entry.

See https://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloade ... ive-naming for more on this.

EDIT: what @p.H said