Hi Gang,
Although I also worked at Sun Microsystems as Ian Murdock (the founder of Debian Project) did, I worked mostly with windoze systems afterward. But now, like for so many other windoze users, I can't go beyond W7.
After doing some research, I decided to opt for Debian, mainly because it is said to be stable and with lots of options in terms of packages (apps). I sure will be with both W7 and Debian in a dual boot system for the time being during this transition phase. And, hopefully, I will be able to install my W7 within a VirtualBox on top of Debian sometime later on, to minimize the threats from outside.
I fear I'll have a very steep learning curve ahead, though. But I love these kind challenges and, despite not being any tropical cool breeze, I'd rather face it than the dreadful M$ W10 and its descendants.
Going to the point:
My current system is a 64 bit W7 Pro OS, i3-4170 CPU @3.70 GHz, 16 GB RAM, and with the latest updates possible as of now (Jan 2020).
The original primary HD was a WD 500 GB, which I replaced by a 1.5 TB to make sure I have room enough for both OSs. A second NTFS formatted 4 TB data HD is installed with all my personal data, including Dropbox folder in auto sync setting. UEFI with BIOS legacy compatibility is setup in the UEFI-BIOS settings.
Before anything else I run a chkdsk /f (just to be sure W7 is in good shape), made a W7 Repair Disk CD, and the last thing before starting the Buster install I made an WindowsImageBackup, just in case, which was saved in the D: 4 TB data drive.
I started the install process using the latest debian-10.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso from a USB stick done with the latest rufus-3.8, and followed the recommendations set on the "Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide-January 12, 2020".
By pressing F12 I get the menu where, among other options, I have the same USB stick listed twice: one regular and another one starting with UEFI. I chose the latter, as is the settings in my UEFI-BIOS setup, and I do not want to lose access to my 4 TB data HD.
As per the Installation Guide above (3.6.3 - Systems with UEFI firmware), I have never configured "secured boot", so no need to worry about disabling it.
The 1.5 TB HD has already the following W7 partitions:
#1 System Reserved 217 MB NTFS (System, Active, Primary partition)
#2 W7Pro 287.83 GB NTFS (Boot, Crashing dump, Primary partition)
Swap partition was set on the 2nd 4 TB data drive:
#3 partition of SCSI2 (0,0,0) (sdb) as swap
All others on 1st (sda) Logical 128 GB as ext4 each but:
#3 Primary 128 MB as ext2 for /boot
#5 Logical 256 MB as ESP for /boot/efi
#7 Logical 128 GB as xfs for /home
On the step
Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk I got:
Unable to install GRUB in dummy. Executing 'GRUB-install dummy' failed. This is a fatal error.
Next screen advises to boot manually with the /vmlinuz kernel on partition /dev sda6 and root=/dev/sda6 passed as a kernel argument.
But sda6 is my logical 128 GB / (root) ext4...
I was able to finish the install process, though, and upon exiting it, taken to the GRUB prompt:
Code:
grub> ls
(proc) (hd0) (hd0,msdos13) (hd0,msdos12) (hd0,msdos11) (hd0,msdos10) (hd0,msdos9) (hd0,msdos8) (hd0,msdos7) (hd0,msdos6) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos3) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos1) (hd1,gpt3) (hd1,gpt2) (hd1,gpt1) (hd2)
I know (hd0,msdos3) is my /boot partition. Following a hint I found
here (didn't find anything similar anywhere else including Debian forums): "If you are in grub rescue mode, then run these commands to reconfigure grub:
Code:
set root=(hd0,msdos3)
set prefix=(hd0,msdos3)/boot/grub
insmod normal
normal
"
Which I did, but no output seen. And never had a chance to open a terminal and type grub-install/dev/sda, as advised...
Nothing else could be done, so I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete. And the only thing I got was a blank dark screen saying "
Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key_" if trying to boot Debian... No W7 option to boot to, nothing at all...
So I inserted my W7 Repair Disk on the P4 Atapi driver to fix/recover the Windows Start Process and... Voila!... I was presented with the Windows Boot Manager to choose Windows 7 or Debian GNU/Linux-continue with install process.
At this point I booted Windows and I'm back to business as usual for the time being.
My questions are:
1. what I did wrong?
2. What am I missing?
3. Should I forget about UEFI / Grub install?
4. Forget my 4 TB data disk where swap partition is set up?
Your help on this very much appreciated.
Thank you so much for any advice and support to address this issue.