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[Solved] Install on Surface Go SD card won't boot

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CalebX
Posts: 2
Joined: 2023-06-07 00:12

[Solved] Install on Surface Go SD card won't boot

#1 Post by CalebX »

I own an original Surface Go 64gb emmc/4gb ram. I have a 256gb micro SD card plugged directly into the slot under the kickstand. Secure Boot has been disabled.

Booting into the Gnome live environment, evrrything works smooth as expected, but when trying to install it only shows the internal 64gb emmc and not the 256gb. Rebooting into the graphical (and I presume text mode) installer fixes this issue and shows all devices attached. I tried to install many different ways (128gb deb / 128gb shared, 256gb lvm, 256gb manual, 256gb automatic with and without separate partitions) and most of these attempts have resulted in a full install that shows in the windows boot manager as "debian"

However, no matter how I set up the disk, selecting debian posts "Welcome to GRUB" briefly before clearing and going to a grub> prompt. Not Grub rescue but regular grub which I've never seen before. Typing ls lists all drives on the system except for the micro SD card, so I can't manually try and boot from it.

I tried putting the card into and external usb c sd card reader and it boots fine off of that, so is this something weird with Microsoft's implementation of the sd card to try and prevent this? Would putting /boot or /boot/efi onto the internal storage fix it? I'm at a loss as to what to do and any advice would be appreciated.
Last edited by CalebX on 2023-06-07 20:03, edited 1 time in total.

Random_Troll
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Re: Install on Surface Go SD card won't boot

#2 Post by Random_Troll »

Placing the EFI system partition on the internal storage and mounting that under /boot/efi/ might work.

Looks like the Surface Go can't boot from the SD card: https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/c ... t_from_sd/
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CalebX
Posts: 2
Joined: 2023-06-07 00:12

Re: Install on Surface Go SD card won't boot

#3 Post by CalebX »

I figured it would be something silly like that but I searched and somehow couldn't find that.
I did some poking on the system booted off a usb sd adapter and discovered /boot/efi was loaded off the same partition as Windows so it seems to have detected that it couldn't boot off the sd. I followed the guide in the comments https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/c ... 4/ec19h8h/
Summary:
1. Shrink Windows NTFS by about 200mb
2. Start installer
3. Setup partition for /boot in that space
4. Put / and swap on SD
5. Install

And it works great now! The only odd thing is that the debian grub menu isn't the nice looking graphic one but rather just a blue screen with some options, but I plan on using the touch-enabled windows boot manager mostly anyways so that's fine. Thank you for the help I never would've found this reddit post on my own.

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