Debian installation using debootstrap and grub-install - no entry in ESC boot menu

[Valentin Caracalla <vorubergehend@tutanota.com>]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to install Debian on my Asus UX31A using command line utilities like debootstrap and grub-install. However, the installed system is not bootable. The problem is that the internal drive (which I install the system to) doesn't show up in the boot menu (which is what the user sees when pressing ESC during power-on).

I created a minimalist recipe demonstrating the issue:

sudo parted /dev/sda mklabel gpt 
sudo parted /dev/sda mkpart init 0% 50% 
sudo parted /dev/sda mkpart root 50% 100% 
sudo parted /dev/sda set 1 bios_grub on 
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2 
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt 
sudo debootstrap stable /mnt 
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys 
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc 
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev 
sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts 
sudo mount --bind /run /mnt/run 
sudo chroot /mnt apt install grub-pc 
sudo chroot /mnt grub-install /dev/sda 
sudo umount /mnt/run 
sudo umount /mnt/dev/pts 
sudo umount /mnt/dev 
sudo umount /mnt/proc 
sudo umount /mnt/sys 
sudo umount /mnt

I've intentionally stripped the parts concerning installation of a kernel and creating configuration files like grub.cfg and fstab, these things work already. For now, all I want to see is that the user can get a GRUB command line after power-on.

The grub-install command outputs "Installation finished. No error reported." and therefore I expect being able to boot into the GRUB command line. But again, the problem is that the ESC boot menu doesn't show an entry for (the model name of) /dev/sda, so I can't boot into it.

Previously, I've successfully installed Debian using official installation media on this machine (also using BIOS boot interface), so I know that it works in principle. But now I want to do it using command line utilities like debootstrap and grub-install.

Any help would be very appreciated.

Kind regards,
Valentin Caracalla