Re: Can't install Debian to CF card in SATA adapter

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

Mike wrote:
> I don't think that it's a bad grub binary, as I have reinstalled several
> times, with the same result.

But if it's indeed shim which is complaining then it complains about the
content of grubx64.efi.

I guess that the problem would show up in the output of

  objdump -x ...path.../grubx64.efi

which with the binary from debian-11.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso shows:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/mnt/iso/EFI/boot/grubx64.efi:     file format pei-x86-64
/mnt/iso/EFI/boot/grubx64.efi
architecture: i386:x86-64, flags 0x00000103:
HAS_RELOC, EXEC_P, D_PAGED
start address 0x0000000000001000
...
PE File Base Relocations (interpreted .reloc section contents)

Virtual Address: 00001000 Chunk size 232 (0xe8) Number of fixups 112
        reloc    0 offset   33 [1033] DIR64
        reloc    1 offset   4b [104b] DIR64
...
        reloc  115 offset    0 [1000] ABSOLUTE

Virtual Address: a017a006 Chunk size 2688524326 (0xa03fa026) Number of fixups 1344262159
        reloc    0 offset   58 [a017a05e] DIR64
...many.more...
        reloc 1923 offset    0 [a017a006] ABSOLUTE

Sections:
Idx Name          Size      VMA               LMA               File off  Algn
  0 .text         0000b000  0000000000001000  0000000000001000  00001000  2**4
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
  1 .data         00010000  000000000000c000  000000000000c000  0000c000  2**4
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
  2 mods          0017a000  000000000001c000  000000000001c000  0001c000  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
  3 .sbat         00001000  0000000000196000  0000000000196000  00196000  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  4 .reloc        00001000  0000000000197000  0000000000197000  00197000  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
SYMBOL TABLE:
no symbols
------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not familiar with the nomenclature of objdump and shim.
Maybe objdump's "Chunk size" is what shim is complaining about.
(The numbers of the second occurence of that term look unhealthy.)


> I'm a bit perplexed as to the difference between a SATA > CF adapter and
> any other drive. I thought one would send instructions along the lines
> of "give me block x" and receieve "<block of data>".

I think the same.


> I was equally perplexed that I
> got the exact same error when using a USB drive.

Given the rare occurence of the problem in the internet i'd say it is not
about something as systematic as SATA versus USB.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas