I did a bit of research into this and you are right, quite astonishing, I didn’t think that was a thing!
1 Like
Ok Huge update on this! The system now has Linux Running, however…
Despite all the really good suggestions you guys gave me, it still wasn’t able to install a Linux distro.
I went through lots of guides I found online, videos and more.
I tried with Unetbootin, with Refind, and a few other options, until I did this combination of things:
-I managed to get Windows10 USB installer working
-I used to wipe everything down
-I installed win10 with my settings into the hard drive, leaving the emmc drive empty
-I changed a ton of bios settings again.
-used windows partition software to create a NTFS-Logical partition into the emmc 32gb ssd.
-I downloaded the 16.04LTS version of WUBI (current one wouldn’t work)
-I downloaded Xubuntu 16.04.4 (yeah not even their latest 16.04 release, Xubuntu was not my first pick, but seriously, any other options wouldn’t work for some weird reason).
-I added the Bootia32.efi AcidzDesigns suggested to that Xubuntu download.
-I launched wubi by adding the iso path to the launch options from windows 10.
-used wubi’s Xubuntu profile to install it on the emmc drive, however it was using my local files with the .efi added, instead of letting wubi download the image from the official repo.
-the installer suddenly vanishes without letting me do anything and the PC resets
-went back and changed the bios settings again.
-Now I’m able to boot into Grub2, with Xubuntu installed.
Ok. So I now have a fully working Xubuntu 16.04.4 install. Ok, that’s acceptable. However I have more new issues…
I want to upgrade to 18.04LTS of Xubuntu, I’ve been using a 18.04 based distro at my main rig, and on the alt-rig I have, and I like it.
It should be sudo do-release-upgrade, right? well it aborts the process. As it can’t find /boot/efi anywhere!
The problem is, Xubuntu is installed on a ntfs partition, and the /boot/efi is a 100mb partition on the hard drive. If I try with “sudo mount /boot/efi” it won’t do it, as it’s not in fstab.
Now, let’s go to fstab to tell it where /boot/efi is, and have it mount it.
Well, my fstab looks weird…
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/host/ubuntu/disks/root.disk / ext4 loop,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/host/ubuntu/disks/swap.disk none swap loop,sw 0 0
The emmc drive is called /dev/mmcblk1p1 and it is a locked volume with the ntfs file system (according to gparted), its mounting point is /host and inside it there is my root directory as well as that swap disk the fstab files talks about.
How do I mount /dev/sda2 which is my /EFI partition according to gparted?
How do I even mount /dev/sda in general? How can I access windows files if I want to?
How can I create a new ext4 partition in /dev/sda and auto mount it when I boot into xubuntu?
Sorry for the question storm, I’m glad I got Xubuntu working, after so many days and hours spent, I was going to settle down even for 16.04 vanilla ubuntu with their amazon stuff! Luckily Xubuntu worked which has less bloat than ubuntu, seems a bit more private and secure as well. It also runs xfce which was my preferred DE for this system.
1 Like
I just remembered that the first time I did dual boot I intalled rEFInd on Windows. And then used that to boot my linuxes. So maybe that can work out for you?
actually did try refind, it wasn’t easy to install tbh, but I followed some guides and did it, to no success.
I’m running Xubuntu and I’m ok with it, I’ve been using the system and all.
However my main issue right now is that fstab doesn’t have a /boot/efi mount, so there are a few things I can’t do.
I want to get more info on mounting /boot/efi through editing fstab, like where it actually is
1 Like
lsblk -f will list all partitions and give you their UUIDs
I mount devices in fstab based on their UUIDs instead of paths.
(btw, my /boot is my EFI partition)
1 Like
Thanks for the tip! I Got this:
eze@ubuntu:~$ lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE LABEL UUID MOUNTPOINT
mmcblk1boot0
mmcblk1
└─mmcblk1p1 ntfs Linux 567EF5107EF4EA1F /host
loop0 ext4 c7a53fd6-e2be-4a4e-b488-cef5a778529e /
mmcblk1boot1
sda
├─sda4 ntfs 7C7E02E67E029952
├─sda2 vfat C0F7-3898
├─sda3
└─sda1 ntfs Recovery 621EF4EE1EF4BBDB
After digging some more, I found that
/boot/efi is present inside this root.disk ext4 block device that is inside the mmcblk1p1 ntfs filesystem.
Also, I have 3 block devices, root.disk, swap.disk and boot, which only has a folder name boot, which has an empty folder named GRUB.
eze@ubuntu:/host/ubuntu/disks$ ls
boot root.disk swap.disk
Please correct me if I’m wrong:
/host/ubuntu/disks/root.disk /boot/efi vfat loop, defaults 0 1
should be the correct fstab entry
to be honest I am not sure at all. This is very unusual setup.
lol I know, but it’s fun, and if I can’t get it to boot like that I’ll just delete the line from the fstab file with recovery
1 Like
I just realized what you did. (Re-read previous post) If the root.disk has more than just /boot/efi you can’t just mount it like that.
if if has whole root tree it needs to be root.
Can you create a new partition (either with parted or gdisk or cgdisk) make sure it’s marked as EFI (I think the code is ef00 but do double check). Angd copy the contents of /boot from root.disk into that partition. Then mount it as /boot in fstab.
might work
that actually makes a lot more sense, i’ve read about having a dedicated partition for /boot/efi
This could make much more sense from a practical standpoint.
Thanks, I’ll give it a try later tonight and post my findings!
1 Like