So I made an attempt today to install and was more or less successful. The workarounds I had to do are detailed as follows:
1. Create a EFI (FAT32, 300MB) and root file system (ext4/btrfs, the rest of the drive) manually on the removable media. 2. Create a back up of the host system's EFI partition, with just a simple copy. 3. Install the system with the own partition layout. Set use EFI on the removable (although nothing will be done due to this bug and #1173457) and set the rootfs mount point on the removable. 4. Finish installation. Do not restart. 5. Copy the EFI directory in /dev/sda1 to /dev/sdX1 (the EFI partition you created). Possibly make another backup copy as well. 6. Make a directory on the removable's EFI partition called BOOT. 7. Copy over grubx64.efi and shimx64.efi from /mnt/removable-efi-partition/EFI/ubuntu* to /mnt/removable-efi-partition/EFI/BOOT, create the BOOT directory if not exists. 8. Rename shimx64.efi to BOOTX64.EFI if secure boot is enabled, otherwise I think you can just rename grubx64.efi to BOOTX64.EFI, although I'm not sure as I only tested with secure boot thus far. 9. Mount the root fs from the removable media, change /etc/fstab to disable the swapfile (somehow prevented boot on my system if enabled). 10. Use blkid to find out the UUID of /dev/sdX1 (the EFI partition on the removable). 11. In /etc/fstab again, the /boot/efi mount entry should have the UUID of the one above (i believe it by default filled the uuid from whatever /dev/sda1 is). 12. Copy the original backed up EFI partition back to the EFI partition on the internal hard drive. One thing to note that may be confusing: ubuntu mounts the efi partition in /boot/efi. The partition itself should have a folder called EFI (/boot/efi/EFI), and the BOOT/ubuntu directories are contained under that folder (/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT). Don't just copy BOOT/ubuntu directly into the partition, the system won't boot. The some of the path fragments are the same, which could make this confusing. *don't take this path literally, you need to mount that partition yourself. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1229488 Title: EFI install to removable media not supported To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1229488/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
