Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Wednesday, 5 October 2016 18:29:58 BST Terry Coles wrote: > My main gripe with Dell in this instance is that they actually charged more > for this machine than its Windows counterpart, but provided less support. > Windows customers get access to downloads of the driver, utilities and an > image of the factory installation for recovery purposes. > > If you drill down into the Support pages for recent versions of the XPS-13 > Developer Edition and other Linux laptops, they *used to* provide support. > I don't recall the specific product numbers, but several have support for > not one, but several versions of Ubuntu, eg 10.04, 12.04, 14.04 and you can > download Factory images from their website. > > This one (designated 9350) has none of that and the Restore to Factory > Defaults hot-key is not active, even though the recovery image occupies a > partition on the machine. When I naively upgraded my machine to 15.10 and > thereby lost all the Dell Drivers, they were unable to tell me how to get at > that recovery image or provide me with a copy of the image, even though the > factory must have one. Initially, I was told that they couldn't help me > because this Operating System was unsupported. In the end I took legal > advice and they gave me a new machine, but they still don't support it. > > How not to keep your customers happy. I've just discovered that Dell do now support Ubuntu 14.04 on this machine see: http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/product-support/servicetag/5Q4JP72/ drivers?os=ub14a[1] It's a great shame because this apparently appeared sometime in June, after the 5th and before the 19th (the dates that I posted a comment about this machine on the LXF forums after their glowing review and the date that the author responded and mentioned that they did. I had given up checking the forum for responses by then, so never saw it until today. I received my replacement laptop on the 22nd, so they could have saved themselves lots of money and me a lot of stress simply by providing the image a month before. So if anyone wants one, they do at least support it with their special image of 14.04, although to get anything like the proper performance, you need at least 15.10. -- Terry Coles [1] http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/product-support/servicetag/ 5Q4JP72/drivers?os=ub14a -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
Hi Terry, > That's the top hit for my first attempt: "canonical dell 9350". :-) Following the "System" link from there gets me to http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/catalog/component/dmi/4755/dmi%3AXPS139350/ that lists three more pages that seem to show variation in CPU, disk, etc. So that might make "9350 compatibility" that bit more complex to unravel. Cheers, Ralph. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
Hi Terry, > > http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201507-18777/ > > What kind of alchemy do you use to find these hits? Well, it occurred to me that in the past Canonical, those that own Ubuntu, have press-released stuff about Dell shipping Ubuntu and might have done for this model too. That's the top hit for my first attempt: "canonical dell 9350". :-) -- Cheers, Ralph. https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Wednesday, 5 October 2016 18:40:54 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Are you aware of > > Ubuntu on Dell XPS 13 9350 > http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201507-18777/ > > If there is an issue with the information for this system, please > let us know. What kind of alchemy do you use to find these hits? I've been searching for support on Ubuntu with the XPS-13 9350 since April and never found that page. Even when I typed 'Ubuntu on Dell XPS 13 9350' into Google just now, it never came up (in the first page of hits anyway). I had to add 'certification' to the search string to find it and even then it was over half-way down the page. Of course I would have had to know so much about that page to invent that search string that I might as well have gone straight there ;-( > Perhaps others have clicked that link and put up questions in the past > with interesting answers. No such luck I'm afraid. Very few hits on 9350 and only about a dozen on XPS-13. Nothing that was useful. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
Hi Terry, > This one (designated 9350) has none of that and the Restore to Factory > Defaults hot-key is not active, even though the recovery image occupies a > partition on the machine. Are you aware of Ubuntu on Dell XPS 13 9350 http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201507-18777/ If there is an issue with the information for this system, please let us know. Perhaps others have clicked that link and put up questions in the past with interesting answers. Cheers, Ralph. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Wednesday, 5 October 2016 17:19:54 BST Patrick Wigmore wrote: > That would fit with my experience buying a laptop from Dell, > with Ubuntu installed, in 2008. > > A year or two passed before everything in the laptop was > supported by standard Linux distributions, without Dell's > customisations. I suspect that some of the people who had > bought one ended up contributing the support for it into the > kernel (or elsewhere), to scratch their own itches. It was always this way, especially before PC vendors started supporting Linux Back in 2008 (AFAIR), Dell were only just starting to support Linux, so were probably at the other end of the process that they appear to be ending this year. My main gripe with Dell in this instance is that they actually charged more for this machine than its Windows counterpart, but provided less support. Windows customers get access to downloads of the driver, utilities and an image of the factory installation for recovery purposes. If you drill down into the Support pages for recent versions of the XPS-13 Developer Edition and other Linux laptops, they *used to* provide support. I don't recall the specific product numbers, but several have support for not one, but several versions of Ubuntu, eg 10.04, 12.04, 14.04 and you can download Factory images from their website. This one (designated 9350) has none of that and the Restore to Factory Defaults hot-key is not active, even though the recovery image occupies a partition on the machine. When I naively upgraded my machine to 15.10 and thereby lost all the Dell Drivers, they were unable to tell me how to get at that recovery image or provide me with a copy of the image, even though the factory must have one. Initially, I was told that they couldn't help me because this Operating System was unsupported. In the end I took legal advice and they gave me a new machine, but they still don't support it. How not to keep your customers happy. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Wednesday, 5 October 2016 15:06:34 BST John Carlyle-Clarke wrote: > This thread is a little depressing because at work I was given a brand new > 15" MacBook Pro on arrival which is very lovely I suppose, but I hate it. > It seems that installing Linux on it (other than in a VM) is not allowed, > and besides I get the impression it won't work very well. It seems that > many people have Dell's with Linux, usually self installed over Windows. I > was thinking of asking if I could swap for a Dell, and the > developer edition ones are the obvious choices. However, the more you look > at them the more you see the potential problems. I hate the idea of buying > a Windows one and taking pot luck on Linux to run well on it but that may > be no worse. I think things will gradually become less depressing. Kernel version 4.8 (released at the weekend )and notwithstanding the bug that was only noticed by Linus afterwards)), together with versions 4.4, 4.5 etc bring more support for the Touchscreen and the Skylake processor. Out of the box the XPS-13 Developer Edition gave appalling benchmark results compared to an ancient laptop that Paul brought to a Meeting a few months ago. The kernel version in Ubuntu 14.04 is 3.19, which has zero Skylake support. When I installed Kubuntu 16.04, the benchmark results shot up (that has kernel Version 4.4). When I booted into the latest version of Parted Magic the benchmark results were even better (kernel Version 4.5). In addition, Dell include about half a dozen proprietary drivers that provide Touchscreen support (you can use it as a graphics tablet of a sort). With the standard Ubuntu 14.04 (from the Ubuntu website), the Touchscreen hardly worked at all. In Kubuntu 16.04, the Touchscreen works pretty well but the graphics tablet functionality is still missing. I'm hoping that the kernel will eventually support all of the Touchscreen functionality and that the graphics subsystem (whatever it ends up being) will support automatic display scaling, (like Win 10 does) because text is unreadable on a 13" screen at 3200x1800 resolution unless the fonts are all scaled up (which only works for some things). In the end I have to run the screen at 1920x1400 to make it usable, which kind of defeats the object of having a high-res display. So. As I said in my earlier post, the XPS-13 is a really nice machine, but it is let down by the total lack of support from Dell. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Wednesday, 5 October 2016 10:25:55 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > On your laptop at the pub last night I edited /etc/default/grub to > change true to false for GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER. And then run > `update-grub'. All sudo'd. > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Setup#line-237 And there hangs a tale ;-( In the stock Kubuntu installation (and I assume on Ubuntu as well), that line doesn't even exist, let alone be set to true. Last evening and this morning, I've been pondering why Dell set that flag at all. I'm assuming that this was to protect their support staff from people ringing them up and trying to get problems solved when the default shipped version had been upgraded or superseded with a dual-boot, as I had done. However, there are two arguments against that. First, anyone who installs an extra distro will find it working perfectly at first because update-grub will have been run by the new distro's installer not by the shipped distro. That all works fine until the shipped distro has another kernel update, as happened a week or so ago. Now grub-update ignores the new distro's partition and the user is left wondering why it has broken. As with myself, this might only be discovered weeks after the kernel update that triggered the problem. The second argument against that is that Dell are not supporting Ubuntu on this machine anyway; only W10, so they created a problem for their users for absolutely no purpose whatsoever. So the message here is, no matter how good the reviews are (and they are good), don't be tempted into buying a Linux Laptop from Dell. They are not providing anything like the same level of support that a Windows user gets, but they charge a premium price. It is a nice laptop, but I'd have been better off by the Windows one and dual-booting that. Anyway, thanks Ralph for sorting it out for me. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
Hi Terry, On your laptop at the pub last night I edited /etc/default/grub to change true to false for GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER. And then run `update-grub'. All sudo'd. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Setup#line-237 -- Cheers, Ralph. https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Tuesday, 4 October 2016 19:22:04 BST Tim wrote: > I downloaded this boot dvd the last time I had an issue with grub > > http://www.supergrubdisk.org/super-grub2-disk/ > > It scanned the disk found the two disk with the two distro on, offered > me a solution and when I agreed it wrote me a new grub, worked > perfectly. Don't know if it will work for your or not terry. Thanks for the link Tim, I had actually tried that (it is included on the Parted Magic live disc). It allowed me to boot into the lost partition, but didn't seem to offer a repair tool. Maybe that wasn't included in the Parted Magic version of the tool, because the full PM toolset includes a boot repair tool (which didn't work for me). Ralph sorted it out for me last night at the Meeting. I'm glad he did (more about that later), because if I had fixed it with a tool such as Super Grub2, I would never have known *why* it broke in the first place. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
I downloaded this boot dvd the last time I had an issue with grub http://www.supergrubdisk.org/super-grub2-disk/ It scanned the disk found the two disk with the two distro on, offered me a solution and when I agreed it wrote me a new grub, worked perfectly. Don't know if it will work for your or not terry. Tim On 04/10/16 16:59, Terry Coles wrote: On Tuesday, 4 October 2016 16:18:20 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#GRUB_vs_GRUB_2 says On a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10 or later with no other installed operating systems, GRUB 2 will boot directly to the login prompt or Desktop. No menu will be displayed. Hold down (right) SHIFT to display the menu during boot. In certain cases, pressing the ESC key may also display the menu. It also suggests in that list that /etc/grub.d/40_custom is where you should stash your own menu entries. And that `update-grub' looks for other OS. It looks like an interesting read, with links off to other pages. Unfortunately, none of that seems to work. When I first installed Kubuntu 16.04, a menu was generated, with choices between Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I didn't need to invoke it. Your link says that '*grub.cfg* is overwritten by certain Grub 2 package updates, whenever a kernel is added or removed, or when the user runs update-grub'. It seems to me that grub.cfg was updated at some point when I updated the kernel, but now it doesn't seem to be writing it to the right place, because no matter how I run it, the result is the same. If I run Super Grub2, I can see the bootable kernels and listing the menu seems to show that both distros are available, but whatever is being run when I boot normally, it isn't seeing that list. I suspect that if I re-install Kubuntu, it might all burst into life, but that's a bit drastic, so I might just wait until (K)ubuntu 16.10 is released next week. That will include kernel V 4.8 which brings several extras to the party which will (hopefully) enable some more of my touch-screen features. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-10-04 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Tuesday, 4 October 2016 16:18:20 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#GRUB_vs_GRUB_2 says > > On a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10 or later with no other > installed operating systems, GRUB 2 will boot directly to the login > prompt or Desktop. No menu will be displayed. > > Hold down (right) SHIFT to display the menu during boot. In certain > cases, pressing the ESC key may also display the menu. > > It also suggests in that list that /etc/grub.d/40_custom is where you > should stash your own menu entries. And that `update-grub' looks for > other OS. It looks like an interesting read, with links off to other > pages. Unfortunately, none of that seems to work. When I first installed Kubuntu 16.04, a menu was generated, with choices between Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I didn't need to invoke it. Your link says that '*grub.cfg* is overwritten by certain Grub 2 package updates, whenever a kernel is added or removed, or when the user runs update-grub'. It seems to me that grub.cfg was updated at some point when I updated the kernel, but now it doesn't seem to be writing it to the right place, because no matter how I run it, the result is the same. If I run Super Grub2, I can see the bootable kernels and listing the menu seems to show that both distros are available, but whatever is being run when I boot normally, it isn't seeing that list. I suspect that if I re-install Kubuntu, it might all burst into life, but that's a bit drastic, so I might just wait until (K)ubuntu 16.10 is released next week. That will include kernel V 4.8 which brings several extras to the party which will (hopefully) enable some more of my touch-screen features. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-10-04 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
Hi Terry, > I can no longer see a menu from the boot-screen; it goes straight into > Ubuntu. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#GRUB_vs_GRUB_2 says On a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10 or later with no other installed operating systems, GRUB 2 will boot directly to the login prompt or Desktop. No menu will be displayed. Hold down (right) SHIFT to display the menu during boot. In certain cases, pressing the ESC key may also display the menu. It also suggests in that list that /etc/grub.d/40_custom is where you should stash your own menu entries. And that `update-grub' looks for other OS. It looks like an interesting read, with links off to other pages. -- Cheers, Ralph. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-10-04 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
[Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
Hi, You may remember that I was less than impressed with Dell when I bought an XPS-13 Developer Edition earlier this year because it came with Ubuntu 14.04 and zero support. Since I couldn't upgrade the Ubuntu installation without throwing away the touchscreen capabilities, I compromised and installed Kubuntu 16.04 as a dual-boot system. This has worked fine until now, but since I last used the machine a week or two ago, something has overwritten my Grub menu. The two partitions that I created for Kubuntu are still intact (I can boot into using Super Grub2 from a live disc), but I can no longer see a menu from the boot-screen; it goes straight into Ubuntu. I've tried a few tools from the Parted Magic Live Disc, but cannot seem to be able to write a viable Grub Menu. According to this page: http://www.wensley.org.uk/gpt[1] there are some peculiarities associated with using GPT discs and grub2 has to be written to a special partition, but I cannot see for certain which one to use and I've had problems matching the incantations on that page to the reality of my disc line-up, which has an SSD Drive. Does anyone know I good (safe) way to recover my grub menu? I'll be bringing the machine tonight. -- Terry Coles [1] http://www.wensley.org.uk/gpt -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-10-04 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
