[Solved] Debian fails to install on UEFI

[@ttila]

Are you able to boot the testing instead of stable "not-fresh" version? I own a lenovo g580 with "buster" and i know that their uefi bios isn't perfect (i cannot update my Trascend SSD booting their utility, i give up)

[p.H]

If you cannot get the Debian installer to boot in native UEFI mode on this computer, other options include :

- Boot another UEFI-compatible medium (such as Ubuntu or Mint, or rEFInd) and launch the Debian installer from there.

- Install Debian in legacy mode. At first, the multiboot will consist in selecting legacy mode to boot Debian and UEFI mode to boot Windows.
After installation, you can try to set up a UEFI boot for Debian. First step is to mount the EFI system partition on /boot/efi and install grub-efi-amd64-bin. Run grub-install without argument to install GRUB EFI ; it will end with an error because EFI is not available, this is expected. Next step is to register an EFI boot entry for Debian ; this is possible only after booting in EFI mode. In Windows, bcdedit can be used to set Debian's GRUB as the primary boot loader instead of Windows Boot Manager. Or you can use efibootmgr in a UEFI-capable GNU/Linux live system.

Note that if you succeed in registering an EFI boot entry for Debian's GRUB, you may encounter the same issue as with the Debian installer. If that happens, you may have better luck by tweaking options in /etc/default/grub, for exemple to selext the text console instead of the graphical console.

[Augiz]

firmware 9.50

[p.H]

What are you replying to ?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Next step is to register an EFI boot entry for Debian ; this is possible only after booting in EFI mode.

If the Debian .efi loader is copied to the EFI system partition at /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI then it should be booted automatically without an NVRAM boot entry.

Reference: http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/fallback.html

The --removable flag for `grub-install` does this.

The only problem then is that the firmware will almost certainly favour Windows' renegade bootmgfw.efi loader but the OP may be able to use the firmware boot menu to switch between the operating systems (or move bootmgfw.efi and make a custom boot entry for it, which is what I do).

[p.H]

If the Debian .efi loader is copied to the EFI system partition at /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI then it should be booted automatically without an NVRAM boot entry.

This would be my preferred method if Debian was the only OS and there was no multiboot with Windows.

The only problem then is that the firmware will almost certainly favour Windows' renegade bootmgfw.efi loader

And /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI is already used by Windows' fallback bootloader. Of course you can replace it with GRUB, but as you wrote Windows' main bootloader takes precedence, and Windows may restore its fallback bootloader in /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI at any time.

[Augiz]

Sorry didnt even notice theres a second page in this topic now.
Was replying to a guy that asked which install media I was using.

If you cannot get the Debian installer to boot in native UEFI mode on this computer, other options include :

- Boot another UEFI-compatible medium (such as Ubuntu or Mint, or rEFInd) and launch the Debian installer from there.

Could you please tell me more on this. Do I boot ubuntu and then plug the usb with debian just like that?

Been busy these days didnt have much time to try different approaches. But if nothing works I plan on just installing debian on legacy.

[p.H]

If you manage to boot anything using GRUB EFI as the boot loader, press "c" at the GRUB menu to start the GRUB shell. From there you have to type commands to manually boot the Debian installer. I am not going to detail more here, it is better to be familiar with the GRUB shell. Unfortunately sometimes GRUB won't be able to read the drive containing the Debian installer.

An alternative method is to start any other GNU/Linux system in EFI mode and install the Debian base system using debootstrap. You'll have to prepare the partitions manually before.

But IMO the simplest method if you are not familiar with GRUB shell or debootstrap is to install in legacy mode first and install GRUB EFI later.

[Augiz]

Thank you for detailed explanation

[ticapix]

Hello,

For the record, I'm facing the very same problem of installing Debian 9.5 (I tried 8.11 too) on a beelink X55 and VBook A1 celeron.
I tried rufus, unetbootin, etcher, dd, cp, 2 different usb dongles but the results are the same on both PC.
Secure boot and fast boot are disabled.

I can select the USB dongle in the UEFI boot menu (after the hardware manufacturer splash screen) and as soon as I press enter, I get a black screen with a non-blinking white cursor on the top left corner. I can't access grub menu.
Sceenshots here http://www.bee-link.com/forum.php/forum ... a=page%3D1

On the other hand, I managed to install Ubuntu server 18.04 and Centos 7, on both pc.

There is definitely something fishy with the debian iso.

BR