Unable to install grub in /dev/sda

[Liam Proven]

On Sun, 17 Oct 2021 at 01:34, Phil Fraser <phillor9 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I attempted to install Xubuntu, alongside Windows 10, on my aging Thinkpad T420 but have run into a problem, a serious problem. I spent all day searching for a solution to what seems to be a common problem.

Hi. Typing on a T420 right now, on 20.04 with Unity. :-)

> The installer warns me that I need to create an EFI directory or else the installation will fail, which it did many times. I already have an EFI directory, which it seems, Windows created when I upgraded Windows 7 to Windows 10. I already had Kubuntu 20.10 installed at the time and didn't need to reinstall it after the Windows upgrade.

Is your disk partitioned with MBR or GUID?
Does Windows start in UEFI mode or in Legacy Boot mode?
What are your startup settings in the CMOS Setup?

The T420 is from the time when UEFI was coming in.

If you partition the disk with MBR, boot in BIOS mode and install
Windows and/or Linux in BIOS boot mode, it appears to the OSes and
runs as a BIOS system. You can press the Thinkvantage key and enter
the setup at boot time.

If you partition the disk with GPT and boot and install Windows and/or
Linux in UEFI mode, it appears to be and works as a UEFI machine. You
can no longer get the startup screen, boot options etc. You have to
choose the Windows "shutdown and restart in safe mode" option.

In other words, it is both and it depends how you have it configured.

I tried UEFI mode as an experiment, found it was a pain to use, and
reformatted and reinstalled in legacy BIOS mode, which I find  much
easier.

YMMV.
>
> One of the many suggestions that I came across was to select "Try Xubuntu" and then select "Install Xubuntu" from the desktop. That also failed with substantially the same  error. "Executing grub-install /dev/sda failed cannot find EFI directory" which is not much different to "Unable to install grub in /dev/sda". Logging out and then restarting I'm left with a prompt grub rescue>.

Do custom partitioning. Tell the Ubuntu setup program where your EFI
partition it.
>
> The following may help:
>
> xubuntu at xubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
> Disk /dev/loop0: 1.73 GiB, 1857892352 bytes, 3628696 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
> Disk model: CT1000MX500SSD1
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disklabel type: dos
> Disk identifier: 0x0878bd2f
>
> Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
> /dev/sda1             2048     104447     102400    50M  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> /dev/sda2           104448  839874676  839770229 400.4G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> /dev/sda3       1952485376 1953519615    1034240   505M 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
> /dev/sda4        839876606 1952157695 1112281090 530.4G  5 Extended
> /dev/sda5        839876608  840925183    1048576   512M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
> /dev/sda6        840927232 1947567856 1106640625 527.7G 83 Linux
> /dev/sda7       1947764736 1951670271    3905536   1.9G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
> /dev/sda8       1947568128 1947752447     184320    90M 83 Linux
> /dev/sda9  *    1951672320 1952157695     485376   237M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
>
> This shows that I now have two EFI directories and a large boot directory. I had tried the installation without the second EFI directory and without the boot directory. The partition table is a GPT.

2 is bad.


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