[Discuss] Converting Windows to Linux

[Jerry Feldman]

I had issues with Ubuntu 16.04LTS with secure boot turned on. 17.04 and
17.10 are ok. But 17.10 has a lot of problems.


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Jerry Feldman <gaf.linux at gmail.com>
Boston Linux and Unix
http://www.blu.org
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On Jan 25, 2018 4:59 PM, "Greg Rundlett (freephile)" <greg at freephile.com>
wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 2:24 PM, Richard Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > If you really overwrote the EFI boot partition with grub then you
> > temporarily wrecked the system because that's not Windows. That's the
> > hardware. It's required for booting from GPT drives. Reinstall, and let
> > the installer create and populate a new EFI partition and don't put
> > anything else there. Give grub it's own partition to play with.
> >
> >
> It didn't actually overwrite the Windows EFI boot partition (FAT32) - I
> think because it's protected / smart enough not to let me shoot myself in
> the foot.
>
> While trying to reinstall Ubuntu, I got this error message (warning me
> about what you said Rich)
>
> > The partition table format in use on your disks normally requires you to
> > create a separate partition for boot loader code. This partition should
> be
> > marked for use as an "EFI boot partition" and should be at least 35 MB in
> > size. Note that this is not the same as a partition mounted on /boot. If
> > you do not go back to the partitioning menu and correct this error, boot
> > loader installation may fail later, although it may still be possible to
> > install the boot loader to a partition.
>
>
> I tried to reclaim some space from the partition allocated for Ubuntu, so
> that I could create a new EFI partition of at least 35 MB but wasn't able
> to without creating a whole new partition table.
>
> So, I went back and selected the "wipe the disk and install Ubuntu" option
> (which lets the installer create partitions on the selected device).  That
> worked fine.
>
> For some reason the installer wouldn't complete the reboot after ejecting
> the install CD.  But 'Alt'+'SysReq'+ REISUB rebooted the system into
> Ubuntu.
>
> So, now I have a working Ubuntu system.  I think I'll reinstall one more
> time to manually resize and reformat partitions to my liking (instead of
> using EXT4).
>
> For the curious, here is what the installer gave me:
>
> sudo fdisk -l
> Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 119.2 GiB, 128035676160 bytes, 250069680 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disklabel type: gpt
> Disk identifier: D4ED0142-2C97-4AD0-BD00-7C43E8FB20A6
>
> Device           Start       End   Sectors  Size Type
> /dev/nvme0n1p1    2048   1050623   1048576  512M EFI System
> /dev/nvme0n1p2 1050624   2549759   1499136  732M Linux filesystem
> /dev/nvme0n1p3 2549760 250068991 247519232  118G Linux filesystem
>
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
> Disklabel type: gpt
> Disk identifier: 8AE8A54E-9373-4C0A-9BFB-3AF16EBED4F3
>
> Device          Start        End   Sectors  Size Type
> /dev/sda1        2048  102402047 102400000 48.8G Microsoft basic data
> /dev/sda2  1929410560 1953523711  24113152 11.5G Microsoft basic data
>
>
>
>
> Disk /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p3_crypt: 118 GiB, 126727749632 bytes, 247515136
> sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>
>
> Disk /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root: 106.1 GiB, 113921490944 bytes, 222502912
> sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>
>
> Disk /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-swap_1: 11.9 GiB, 12771655680 bytes, 24944640
> sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>
>
> Disk /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: 11.9 GiB, 12771131392 bytes, 24943616 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
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