On Mon, 22 May 2023 at 21:48, Lennart Sorensen
wrote:
>
> On Mon, May 22, 2023 at 08:34:34AM -0400, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
> > I've recently acquired (through a friend who stopped using it) a
> > Toshiba Satellite L500 - Core i3 (3rd gen?), 4G RAM. I'm determined
> > to get Linux onto it (preferably Debian). I thought I had succeeded:
> > I booted from a Debian USB stick, installed to the HD. All appeared
> > to go well, but the system won't boot. It returns to the Boot Menu
> > and says "HD has failed." What the search engines are telling me
> > is that with this generation of Toshibas, the problem is generally
> > Secure Boot / CSM etc. Which makes sense, but ... there is absolutely
> > zero mention in the BIOS/UEFI ("Phoenix SecureCore Tiano Setup") of
> > "Secure Boot," "CSM," "Legacy," or "UEFI." Acccording to notes I
> > found online, "SecureCore Tiano" has "full support" for legacy
> > booting.
> >
> > Another issue with this machine is my mixed success booting from USB
> > sticks: I have an old-ish USB stick I built myself that has GRUB and a
> > large menu of ISOs: works great on most systems, won't boot on this
> > thing - probably because it's an old-style BIOS-boot only(?).
> >
> > One of my ideas was to upgrade the BIOS: it appears there's a newer
> > version available, but it's NOT available from Toshiba, which is the
> > only place I'd want to download it from. The rest look like dubious
> > secondary download sites (if you know one you consider reliable, let
> > me know).
> >
> > What I read online said that Fedora's installer puts an EFI partition
> > on the HD as part of the install, while Debian doesn't. And that
> > may(?) be why I can't boot from my Debian install? So ... I
> > downloaded the Fedora installer, put it on a USB stick ... and no joy:
> > the Toshiba doesn't recognize the Fedora USB stick as a bootable item.
> > Would this be because I burned it on a "Legacy" system? Is there a
> > fix for that? Except ... I'm about 99% sure the Debian Installer USB
> > stick was created on the same machine.
> >
> > Worst case, I can stick the HD from the Toshiba into another machine,
> > install Fedora on it, repartition to make room for Debian, put the HD
> > back into the Toshiba ... but that's getting damn complicated and
> > annoying.
> >
> > As always - any suggestions welcomed.
>
> Debian can definitely be installed in EFI mode, but you must boot the
> installer in EFI mode to do it, not legacy mode. Usually on UEFI systems
> the boot meny gives you a choice of booting in legacy or UEFI mode.
>
> Of course if the system is set to legacy mode instead and you install
> in UEFI mode, then when it goes to boot later you will get a boot error
> (I think something like BBS HD error (BBS being Bios Boot Specification
> apparently)).
>
> It does appear those machines are a disaster and hence the unofficial
> BIOS versions out there trying to fix the complete disaster toshiba sold.
The problem is solved. I think it's worth reporting here in the
manner of Hugh's "War Stories" because it was so weird. Although it's
probably an edge case that others are unlikely to encounter.
As far as I can determine, this system will only boot from a USB stick
if the USB stick is willing to boot in "Legacy" mode - and even then
maybe only if that stick has an EFI folder. I'm not kidding: it
wouldn't boot from a Fedora 38 installer stick, it wouldn't boot from
my old multiboot stick (pure legacy, mostly used for Knoppix), and it
would only boot from the Debian 11 installer stick if the BIOS was set
for "Legacy" even though the Debian stick should work fine in either
EFI or Legacy mode. But because the Debian installer booted in Legacy
mode, my initial install (see above) wouldn't boot because it
installed Legacy ... and this is an EFI-only system (sort of).
Yesterday I booted from the Debian 11 installer and used the
"Advanced" install (which I hate - so very many steps, with the added
bonus of multiple opportunities for foot-gun). I strayed from the
beaten path three times: once to say "yes, I'd like 'https://' in
/etc/apt/sources.list", once to create an encrypted VG, and the final
time - the reason I used "Advanced" - to say "force EFI install."
That option didn't show up at the point I expected it to. I thought
it would be with the HD formatting steps, but instead it comes much
later, around the GRUB installation. (In hindsight this makes sense,
but it wasn't what I expected.) The install process then failed on
further package installation - I think I know why, we'll get to that.
But everything else went okay, and I had a bootable (if minimal and
text-only) Debian system. What I immediately discovered was that I
couldn't 'apt update' because the certificates on the remotes listed
in /etc/apt/sources.list weren't "recognized." I removed the "s" in
"https://; throughout sources.list and everything's been fine since.
I assume this is why package installation during the
