Bug 33186 - Installer will not produce a bootable install on newer hardware
Summary: Installer will not produce a bootable install on newer hardware
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: Mageia
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Installer (show other bugs)
Version: 9
Hardware: x86_64 Linux
Priority: Normal major
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Mageia Bug Squad
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2024-05-08 15:27 CEST by David Savolainen
Modified: 2024-05-21 20:40 CEST (History)
4 users (show)

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CVE:
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Attachments

Description David Savolainen 2024-05-08 15:27:48 CEST
Description of problem:
Neither the regular iso, or the live iso will produce a bootable install.  The bios cannot find a bootable hard drive on a newer computer.  This is the case on two computers I have.  One was built when Mageia 7 was current.  Mageia 7 and 8 installs worked fine, but Mageia 9 does not.  On a new build, Mageia 9 will not boot either.  On this computer, a hard drive from a 13 year old computer with a known working Mageia 9 install is available to boot from. That cannot be found either.  In all cases, the Mageia 9 installs proceeded smoothly without error.  Also, all installs, including the working install from the 13 year old machine, are EFI boot.

The model of motherboard on the slightly older computer is not immediately available.  The new build has a TUF Gaming Z790-pro wifi mother board with bios version 1601. And a core i7-12700KF CPU.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
9

How reproducible:
Unknown 

Steps to Reproduce:
1.perform install on affected hardware 
2.
3.
Comment 1 Kristoffer Grundström 2024-05-08 16:37:25 CEST
Just out if curiosity, does any other installer load? Ubuntu? Asahi? If they load just fine I think the problem lies within our installer drakx.

CC: (none) => lovaren

Comment 2 Dave Hodgins 2024-05-08 17:45:21 CEST
Did you ensure the iso image used to do the install was itself booted in efi
mode?
https://doc.mageia.org/installer/9/en/content/installer.html#d4e308

CC: (none) => davidwhodgins

Comment 3 David Savolainen 2024-05-08 18:32:12 CEST
I would have to try again and double check to be sure how 9 install is booting, but in general, Mageia install has been booting in EFI mode for me by default since 7, and when I specifically paid attention this time around, it was.  It is doing EFI installs with the EFI boot partition.  As for other distros, I did install Ubuntu on the slightly older machine, and it is working fine.
Comment 4 sturmvogel 2024-05-08 19:34:08 CEST
https://doc.mageia.org/installer/9/en/content/setupBootloader.html#d4e1069
Is the second checkbox checked?
Comment 5 David Savolainen 2024-05-09 05:31:26 CEST
I have verified that the installer is booting in uefi mode.  I have tried using grub2 and refind with and without the install to /EFI/boot option selected.  No luck.
Comment 6 sturmvogel 2024-05-09 08:25:21 CEST
As the initial description is unclear ( mixing different machines and drives…): do the affected machines have more than one HDD/SSD?
Comment 7 David Savolainen 2024-05-09 14:49:49 CEST
To be clear, there are two computers at issue.
1) This machine was built when Mageia 7 was current.  Mageia 7 and 8 worked fine.  Mageia 9 does not.  It has a single ssd, not nvme though.
2) This machine is a new build to replace a 13 year old computer that failed.  It has a nvme hard drive, plus the hard drive from the old computer.  The old computer had mageia 9 running in EFI mode.  This machine is not bootable from either the new install on the nvme drive, or the old drive.  This machine will boot from a mageia 9 live iso on a usb stick.
Comment 8 Dave Hodgins 2024-05-09 19:04:09 CEST
I'm inclined to suspect something is wrong in the bios/uefi settings, possibly
having been reset back to default settings.

Check things such as the sata mode which must be ahci. Other then that, I'm
out of ideas.
Comment 9 Lewis Smith 2024-05-09 21:40:12 CEST
I think this calls for Martin's opinion, so CC'ing him.

CC: (none) => lewyssmith, mageia

Comment 10 Martin Whitaker 2024-05-10 10:00:47 CEST
Using a Mageia 9 Live ISO, open a terminal window and run

  su -
  blkid
  efibootmgr

and post the output from those commands here.

Do either of your BIOSs have the option to select an EFI file to boot from? If so, try navigating to the disk/partition for the Mageia 9 ESP and selecting one of the .efi files. Given your experiments, you should have .efi files in the \EFI\BOOT, \EFI\mageia, and \EFI\refind directories.
Comment 11 David Savolainen 2024-05-20 16:01:28 CEST
I was able to get this to work.  I removed all other hard drives and let the installer have its way with my new drive with the use entire disk option.  Thankfully, I had a new drive and the installer produced a partition layout I could live with.  This did produce an install that I could boot.  It seems that the installer for Mageia 9 is producing broken EFI installs when instructed to use existing (or custom) partitions without generating any errors.
Comment 12 Lewis Smith 2024-05-21 20:40:40 CEST
> It seems
> that the installer for Mageia 9 is producing broken EFI installs when
> instructed to use existing (or custom) partitions without generating any
> errors.
I do not think this is generally true, since many users (myself included) do just this.

> the installer produced a partition layout I could live with
You are always free to adjust it during installation!

Since you have a working system, and we cannot sensibly progress this because the detailed information is lacking, closing.

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => WORKSFORME


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