Hi All,

I have just purchased a new Dell inspiron laptop, and trying to install Debian linux.

The machine has SSD 32GB and no hard disk. It came with windows 10 installed. Intel Celeron 3060.

There is a uefi and secure boot system. I have never even heard of UEFI until today, so had no idea of this new issue - Dell had always been most easy to install Linux.

I can get into the bios with F2 key, switch off uefi and/or secure boot and go to legacy boot options, and so get the machine to boot from the USB.

However, the Debian installer does not see the SSD memory - it only gives me options to partition the USB disk which the Debian installer is on.

I can also get the machine to boot from USB whilst in UEFI, by booting windows, going into settings, recovery options, advanced options etc

But the result is the same. The Debian installer runs fine, but does not see the SSD memory.


I an unsure what kind of problem this even is. Is it about UEFI secure boot? because Debian installer USB does not have necessary keys? or something to do with the SSD instead of usual hard disk.

Any help greatly appreciated. Most web pages I can find about this issue are talking about windows 8, not windows 10.

Thanks...

Andrew.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Windows. The chipset is simply too new and the old kernel in Jessie cannot see the eMMC controller. My Chuwi Lapbook 14.1 has the same issue. If you download the Stretch installation media, you should be able to see it.

Dear Timothy,

Thanks. Looks promising. I went to this web page:

https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

and found a bunch of options for downloading stretch RC2: for CD for USB for DVD etc and various versions: amd64, arm64, i386.

I have generally done this in the past (with Jessie) by downloading an amd64 version (I think) for CD, and then using some program to put the ISO onto a bootable USB.

Is that what I need to do now? Or should I go with the "other images" (netboot, USB stick etc) category? Or maybe you would recommend a different download site altogether?

(I don't think netinstall is a good option because the installer already reported a problem with the wifi drivers (nonfree) on this machine, so I imagine I will have to get that package separately, but that will have to be after install is done.)

Cheers....

Andrew.

I would do the amd64 DVD to have the largest selection of packages available during install.

Thanks Timothy,

I am going with the (smaller) CD version, and can add other applications later as required. Will post again when I've got it all done to confirm if it is working.

Cheers...

Andrew.

Hi Timothy,

Yes, that much works, and windows is being erased as I write.

Will keep thread open for a while, in case there is any problem with that wifi package, or other functions.

For information, when writing the USB (in rufus) there are 2 options: 1. MBR for BIOS or UEFI and 2. MBR for UEFI. I chose the former option, and used F2 to enter BIOS settings where I reverted the machine to legacy BIOS mode rather than UEFI.

Cheers....

Andrew.

Hi,

The install completed, but the system will not boot. Message is:

No bootable devices. Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility, Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics.

Cheers...

Andrew

Hi,

I tried to address the "no bootable devices" issue by doing the install again, but this time manually selecting where to put grub / MBR.

All of the options I tried failed to install bootloader and all of them gave a message advising that this system appears to be EFI, and offering a workaround option to install elsewhere (removable media?), which also fails.

This leads me to believe that, even with UEFI and smartboot disabled, the present problem is UEFI related.

Would I be better off trying to install a UEFI aware distribution, such as Ubuntu? Please note that there is a version of this laptop that ships with Ubuntu.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Andrew.

Debian is UEFI aware. I don't own any non-eufi hardware, and in fact would consider not being UEFI a dealbreaker for my systems, as I consider it a million times easier to use, troubleshoot, and understand than MBR. The thing for installing UEFI linux is to turn off "legacy support" or "compatibility support", as this will make a lot of installers think that you've got a legacy system and it will attempt to install MBR grub instead of grub-efi.

Thanks. My mistake, then, is that I:

a) left uefi and secure boot disabled and installed in legacy mode and
b) made a usb stick for BIOS rather than uefi.

I shall go back and try it all with uefi enabled and a USB made for uefi.

I did the following:

reinstall windows. Create uefi ready bootable USBs for both Ubuntu16 and stretch.

Set boot options in uefi system to enable each of the USBs to boot.

With the Ubuntu usb, all works fine and I have run ubuntu live desktop.

With the stretch usb, I had to disable secure boot due to invalid signature, but then the USB boots. I then installed debian stretch and gone to reboot from the SSD. The system does boot from the SSD but after selecting the option to start the OS, there are a couple of text screens saying that file system is good, then a black screen which stays black. The system does not load.

Any ideas?

Cheers....

Andrew.

Hi,

I next went back to the Ubuntu USB, tried to install from the options menu, with no luck. However, after starting ubuntu live, and then running install from the desktop, it has installed, and booted and I now have a functioning ubuntu system.

Which is not what I really want, but much better than a black screen.

I would love to try to get Debian working. Failing that, how does one get Ubuntu to run xfce4???

Cheers....

Andrew.

All fixed. After installing xfce4, and a few other debian default appns, ubuntu is doing all that I need, at least for now. Not aware of any non-working hardware at this point, although still a lot to test.

Iĺl now mark this thread solved, and thanks very much timothy.