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Thinkpad P51 Debian Bullseye install fails

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Wm. A. Weasel
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Thinkpad P51 Debian Bullseye install fails

#1 Post by Wm. A. Weasel »

Hello, forum -
Bought a used Lenovo Thinkpad P51 Core i7-7820HQ. There's no OS on the SSD. I ran the quick built-in diagnostics, and it passes all of them. I copied the Debian installer debian-11.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso onto a USB stick, which worked fine in the machine. The install process went normally until the end, where it says to remove the USB stick and reboot. The machine starts up and if I'm not mistaken it tries to boot from the network – the following text appears on the screen:

Code: Select all

Intel Boot Agent CL v0.1.09 © Intel Corp. 
Initializing and establishing link ...
and then the 2nd line changes to

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CLIENT MAC ADDR: xx xx xx xx xx xx GUID: [a bunch of hex digits] DHCP . . . 
(I’ve changed the real MAC address to x's)
That text goes away and comes back once. Then a box appears where you can select a boot device – the heading is Boot Menu. It has 2 lines:

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NVMe0: PM980a NVMe SED Samsung 512GB
PCI LAN: IBA CL Slot 00FE v0109

The 1st line clearly refers to the SSD and it's the default. When I press Enter with the 1st line selected, the screen goes dark briefly then the Boot Menu comes back. This happens as many times as I press Enter. It seems the machine can't find a way to boot from the SSD.
I downloaded the Debian Live image debian-live-11.2.0-amd64-xfce.iso and copied it to a USB stick. The machine boots up just fine to the live desktop. It gives a choice of 4 installers and I tried a couple of them with the same result as before. One of the installers gives you the choice of 2 boot methods – MBR or GUID. I think the other installers all use MBR, so I tried GUID. Everything gives the same result: the machine tries to boot from the network, then goes to the boot menu.
I've tried changing several BIOS settings, especially those having to do with UEFI vs Legacy Boot and CSM support. So far nothing has made any difference. Right now UEFI / Legacy is set to “Both” with Legacy First.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Does anyone here have a P51? I've been using Thinkpads with Debian for a long time; currently a W520 which I believe is like the P51's predecessor. I'm stumped.

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Re: Thinkpad P51 Debian Bullseye install fails

#2 Post by NorthEast »

Wm. A. Weasel wrote:
The machine starts up and if I'm not mistaken it tries to boot from the network
This would be very distressing after all the effort for me. I have a T15 which is somewhat similar to the P51 but not the same. I've had a look at the UEFI/BIOS. You didn't mention what the setting was in there for, "UEFI Wi-Fi Network Boot". I expect you've covered this, but I thought I'd mention it on the off chance you'd missed it. It should be off of course. Also, the settings for "Network Stack" in mine are on, and there's another setting "UEFI Network Boot Priority" that you could look at if you haven't already.

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Re: Thinkpad P51 Debian Bullseye install fails

#3 Post by Wm. A. Weasel »

Thanks, NorthEast. Those exact BIOS settings don't exist. I duplicated as close as I could the settings my Thinkpad W520 uses. It seems like that might be closer to the P51.

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Re: Thinkpad P51 Debian Bullseye install fails

#4 Post by Wm. A. Weasel »

Update: I downloaded and installed Xubuntu. The installer worked and the machine booted up from the SSD. I could live with Xubuntu, but would really rather have Debian.

When I ran the installer, it offered to install alongside the existing (but non-functioning) Debian system. I told it no, just install Xubuntu. Maybe that was a mistake in terms of diagnosing why Debian won't boot.

Does the fact that Xubuntu boots correctly give anyone more ideas about why Debian didn't work?

Here's kind of an off-the-wall question. If I go into Xubuntu's /etc/apt/sources.list and replace everything with the Debian repositories, then update the system, would it magically turn into Debian??

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Re: Thinkpad P51 Debian Bullseye install fails

#5 Post by Hallvor »

Wm. A. Weasel wrote: 2022-01-23 21:27 Here's kind of an off-the-wall question. If I go into Xubuntu's /etc/apt/sources.list and replace everything with the Debian repositories, then update the system, would it magically turn into Debian??
No.
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Re: Thinkpad P51 Debian Bullseye install fails

#6 Post by canci »

Wm. A. Weasel wrote: 2022-01-23 21:27 would it magically turn into Debian??
Debian packages have little knowledge of what for instance Xubuntu did once the packages were installed. I.e., what postinstall scripts were executed? What lives in Xubuntu's /etc/skel and what's a default setting for that system? Does any of Debian's packages assume certain settings or systemd entries that weren't present in Ubuntu? And then there's the issue of version missmatches. You can fire up a VM and try it out. It might work fine, but somewhere down the road, you might have an issue, then come onto the forums, waste everyone's time -- we're all looking at log files, trying to figure something out and at the end, no one can help because the idiosyncratic Frankendebian you've created defies known bugs or quirks that every Debian or Xubuntu release might have and that its users might know about.

I can imagine a Linux ecosystem in 10 years or so where systemd might have a fancy feature that will warn you if a certain configuration of postinstall scripts or config files are weirdly different from Debian's or Ubuntu's norm, but I'm not aware of anything like that at the moment.
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Re: Thinkpad P51 Debian Bullseye install fails

#7 Post by Wm. A. Weasel »

Got it. Here are some of the settings that may be critical. I'm not a Debian guru, so this is just what worked for me.
In the BIOS:
UEFI / Legacy boot is set to UEFI only.
Security Chip and Secure Boot are both Enabled.
There's a setting whose name I don't remember exactly, something about OS-optimized, that seems to be specific to Windows. That is Disabled.
Boot the machine with debian-11.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso on a USB flash drive.
Select Advanced options, then Graphical expert install.
In the Load installer components step, I checked parted-udeb. Probably unnecessary.
In the Force UEFI installation? step, choose Yes.
In the Partitioning step, choose Manual. Then choose gpt as the partition table type.
Create a 1-GB partition (which is certainly bigger than necessary, maybe you know better what size to use), formatted as EFI system partition. Other parameters for this partition are the defaults, including that the bootable flag is On.
Create an ext4 partition for mountpoint /. I gave it 40 GB. The Debian installer earlier wanted 30, which is probably plenty. Once ext4 and / are selected, everything else is defaults.
Create an ext4 partition for mountpoint /home. You choose a size.
I created a 16-GB swap partition. This might be old-fashioned & unnecessary. Don't know.
When choosing a kernel, keep the default.
Choose the generic initrd (the default).
Important: Change the default (No) for "Force GRUB installation to the EFI removable media path?" and make it YES.
Now it's time to boot to the new system. I got a blue screen, rather disappointing. But it turns out you can press any key and get a little menu that includes "Continue boot", which did just that, and my new Debian system came up just fine.

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