Bug#733706: installation-report: installation on a Lenovo Thinkpad E431
Hi anarcat,
On 31.12.2013 05:00, anarcat wrote:
> Comments/Problems:
>
> Install went generally well and fast. There was a problem installing
> the boot loader during the install, and although I didn't investigate
> during the install, when I rebooted, grub was not installed in the
> MBR and I was brought back into windows.
>
> It turns out this thing boots using UEFI, and I had to turn that off
> in the BIOS for the boot loader to work at all. I also had to
> manually go back using the live USB stick to install grub2, which
> wasn't installed, although grub1 maay have been installed without me
> noticing.
Installing on UEFI firmware is supported, but is a little bit tricky,
see for example [1]. Particularly you need a GPT partitioned hard disk
with two additional partitions, one EFI partition marked with the 'boot'
flag in gparted and a partition for grub marked as 'bios_grub' in
gparted. Then the installer has to support installing on UEFI, which the
default installer does, but I don't know about the one you created. Last
but not least, you have to select the UEFI:USB in the firmware and not
BIOS:USB, which every firmware has a different marking scheme for, but
disabling legacy-bios (or equivalent option) in the UEFI BIOS, should
always disable the BIOS:USB option. (It can be enabled again after
installation.)
> The next missing thing was wifi. I tried installing firmware-linux-
> nonfree, but that wasn't enough - firmware-iwlwifi was the one that
> was required.
The installer should install the correct firmware, if you have (on some
partition accessible during installation) a /firmware folder that
contains the unpacked firmware bundle, which can be downloaded from [2].
But this is currently broken, see [3].
> I also had to go in the gnome control center to make sure the touch
> pad works as expected.
What exactly did you have to do in the gnome control center?
What do you mean by 'works as expected'?
> Wanting this thing to be pretty, I also had to manually install
> plymouth to get a nicer boot up sequence, *and* I had to edit
> /etc/default/grub to make that work (add the "splash" parameter),
> something I wouldn't expect a novice to be able to do at all on a
> first install.
While I also prefer having plymouth installed, I think there are many
users that prefer not to have it, so one cannot make everyone happy with
the default installation.
That being said, I think it really might be a good idea to install
plymouth by default, as 'novices' generally prefer it, and anyone who
wants to see the boot messages should have sufficient knowledge to
remove it.
Best regards and a happy new year,
Andreas
1: http://www.rodsbooks.com/linux-uefi/
2: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/
3: http://bugs.debian.org/725714
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