[Discuss] Converting Windows to Linux

[Greg Rundlett (freephile)]

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